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Freedom fighter

Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Lokmanya, voice of Swaraj, author of Gita Rahasya

1856—1920

23 July 1856 – 1 August 1920

Teacher, editor, scholar of the Vedas and the Gita, and the first leader of the freedom movement whom the common people took as their own. He brought Ganeshotsav out of homes into the street and wrote the Gita Rahasya in a Mandalay prison.

“Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it.”Home Rule campaign, 1916 (Marathi original)

01Schools, Kesari and the festivals

He was born at Ratnagiri, a Chitpavan Brahmin, and studied mathematics at Deccan College, Pune. In 1880 he joined Vishnushastri Chiplunkar and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar in founding the New English School, and in January 1881 they began two weeklies, Kesari in Marathi and Mahratta in English. In 1884 they formed the Deccan Education Society, which opened Fergusson College in 1885. Tilak wanted the common people in public life, and not just the English-educated. In 1893 he helped turn Ganeshotsav into a ten-day public festival with mandaps, melas and lectures, and from 1895 he led the Shivaji festival, with a gathering at Raigad.

02Sedition, Mandalay and the Gita

In 1897, after the Rand killing, he was tried for sedition over Kesari articles and served eighteen months. With Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal he led the extremist wing of the Congress through the Swadeshi years; Bengal, Punjab and Maharashtra spoke of Lal-Bal-Pal. In 1908 he was sentenced to six years for Kesari articles on the Muzaffarpur bomb and sent to Mandalay in Burma, 1908 to 1914. There he wrote Shrimad Bhagavad Gita Rahasya, published in 1915, which reads the Gita as a call to karma yoga, selfless action in the world. He had already written The Orion (1893) and The Arctic Home in the Vedas (1903), arguing for great antiquity of the Vedic hymns from their astronomy.

Pune
Place · Old town on the Mula–Mutha; resettled by Shahaji and Jijabai in the 1630s; Peshwa capital from 1730PuneThe town where Shivaji grew up under Jijabai’s eye, and for nearly a century the seat of the Peshwas, from which Maratha armies rode to Attock and Bengal. Later it became the workshop of Tilak, Agarkar and the Deccan Education Society.Read →

03Home Rule and the last day

Back from Mandalay, he founded the Indian Home Rule League at Belgaum in April 1916 and worked for the Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League that December. His Marathi words, rendered as ‘Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it’, became the cry of the movement. He went to England in 1918–19 to fight a libel case and to press India’s claim. He died in Bombay on 1 August 1920, the day the Non-Cooperation movement began. Gandhi called him the maker of modern India.

“Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it.”

Home Rule campaign, 1916 (Marathi original)

Places

PuneStanding
Maratha ascendancy and the Sikh empire

Pune

The town where Shivaji grew up under Jijabai’s eye, and for nearly a century the seat of the Peshwas, from which Maratha armies rode to Attock and Bengal. Later it became the workshop of Tilak, Agarkar and the Deccan Education Society.

RatnagiriStanding
Renaissance and the struggle for Swaraj

Ratnagiri

The Konkan port town where Bal Gangadhar Tilak was born in 1856, and where Vinayak Savarkar was confined from 1924 to 1937 and opened the Patit Pavan Mandir to every Hindu. The last king of Burma lived here in exile.

MandalayStanding
Renaissance and the struggle for Swaraj

Mandalay

The last royal capital of Burma, which became after 1885 the British jail of choice for Indian nationalists they wanted far from home. Tilak wrote the Gita Rahasya in its prison between 1908 and 1914.

On the timeline

  • 23 July 1856

    Bal Gangadhar Tilak born at RatnagiriResistance

    Keshav Gangadhar Tilak is born at Ratnagiri. He gave Bharat the cry ‘Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it’.

  • 4 January 1881

    Tilak’s Kesari first publishedCulture

    The Marathi weekly Kesari appears at Pune, started by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar. For four decades it is the loudest Swaraj voice in western Bharat.

  • 1893

    Tilak makes Ganeshotsav a public festivalFaith

    In Pune, Lokmanya Tilak turns the household Ganesh festival into a ten-day public celebration. The pandals became meeting places for people of every class.

  • July 1908

    Tilak sentenced to six years in MandalayResistance

    Convicted of sedition for Kesari articles, Tilak is sent to Mandalay jail in Burma. There he writes the Gita Rahasya, his commentary on the karma yoga of the Gita.

  • 28 April 1916

    Tilak founds the Home Rule LeagueResistance

    At Belgaum Tilak launches his Indian Home Rule League; Annie Besant starts hers in September. Swaraj becomes a demand of the street.

  • 1 August 1920

    Tilak dies; Non-Cooperation beginsResistance

    Lokmanya Tilak dies in Bombay; the same day Gandhi launches the Non-Cooperation movement. Lakhs gather for Tilak’s last journey to Chowpatty.