Person · nationalist & editor · India
Bal Gangadhar Tilak
The Poona editor of Kesari and Mahratta who turned the Ganesh festival and the Shivaji festival into mass public politics in the 1890s, was jailed twice for sedition — six years in Mandalay — and made swaraj is my birthright the movement's first popular slogan.
- Date
- 1856–1920
- Function
- Social reform & movement
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 18.520, 73.857
Worth knowing
The 1907 Surat split between his extremists and Gokhale's moderates broke the Congress for nine years. He also wrote a book arguing from Vedic astronomical references that the Aryan homeland was in the Arctic, most of it composed in prison.
About the place
Placed at Pune, where he edited his newspapers, founded Fergusson College and built the festivals into political occasions. He was born at Ratnagiri and died in Bombay.
Connections (4)
- Alternative toMohandās Karamchand Gandhi
Tilak died in August 1920, a month before the Calcutta session at which Gandhi carried Non-Cooperation, and the succession is the hinge of the movement: an extremism built on Maharashtrian public festivals, Sanskrit learning and the acceptance of violence, replaced by a method built on vows, fasting and the refusal of it. Gandhi had called Tilak his political guru, which was gracious and not quite true of anything he actually did.
- Member ofIndian National Congress (founding era)
Bal Gangadhar Tilak led the Indian National Congress's extremist wing from the 1890s, broke with Gokhale and the moderates at the 1907 Surat split, served six years in Mandalay prison for sedition from 1908, and returned to Congress affairs through the Home Rule League from 1916 and the 1916 Lucknow Pact that reunited the Congress's extremist and moderate wings. His 'swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it' speech of 1906 was the Congress's first popular slogan.
- OpposedAnnie Besant
Annie Besant and Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920) became the two leading figures of the Indian Home Rule League movement during the First World War. Besant founded the All India Home Rule League in September 1916 at Madras, and Tilak had founded the Indian Home Rule League in April 1916 at Pune — the two leagues operated in parallel geographic jurisdictions (Besant's covered Madras Presidency, Bombay Presidency, the United Provinces and the eastern provinces; Tilak's covered Maharashtra, Karnataka, the Central Provinces and Berar). Their 1916-1918 coordinated campaigns demanding self-government linked Besant's Theosophical and educational networks with Tilak's established nationalist movement, helping spread Home Rule politics across different regions of British India.
- Patronage networkTanguturi Prakasam Pantulu
Tanguturi Prakasam Pantulu was a disciple of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and modelled his 1921 Rajahmundry Non-Cooperation campaign on Tilak's Home Rule League work in Maharashtra. Both were founding members of the Congress's Extremist Faction (Garam Dal) that broke with the Moderate Faction at the 1907 Surat Session.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Bal Gangadhar Tilak”. Tilak’s Kesari and Mahratta; Stanley Wolpert, Tilak and Gokhale (1962).
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