Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Before Gandhi, the best-known leader of Indian resistance to British rule was Bal Gangadhar Tilak, a teacher and newspaper editor from Pune whom his followers called Lokmanya, "accepted by the people". He was among the first to demand swaraj, self-rule, and he turned nationalism from a cause of the educated elite into a mass movement, though his use of Hindu festivals and his hostility to social reform made him a divisive figure.

Tilak was born on 23 July 1856 in Ratnagiri, on the coast of the Bombay Presidency, into a Chitpavan Brahmin family that moved to Pune when he was a boy. He took a degree in mathematics from Deccan College in 1877 and a law degree in 1879. With friends including Gopal Ganesh Agarkar he founded the New English School in 1880, the Deccan Education Society in 1884 and Fergusson College in 1885, where he taught mathematics. In 1880 and 1881 the group also launched two weekly papers, Kesari in Marathi and Mahratta in English, which became Tilak's main political platforms.

Tilak joined the Indian National Congress in 1890 and soon emerged as the leader of its radical wing, impatient with the cautious approach of moderates such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale. In 1894 he turned the household worship of Ganesha into a large public festival, and in 1895 he launched celebrations of the birthday of Shivaji, founder of the Maratha Empire. These events spread political ideas well beyond the educated classes, but they also sharpened tensions between Hindus and Muslims.

When bubonic plague reached Pune in 1897, the British used soldiers to search homes, isolate the sick and destroy property, provoking deep anger. Tilak's newspapers attacked the measures, citing the Bhagavad Gita to argue that killing an oppressor without selfish motive was blameless. In June 1897 the plague commissioner, Rand, and another officer were shot dead by the Chapekar brothers. Tilak was tried for sedition and sentenced to eighteen months in prison, and emerged a popular hero. He took up the slogan "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it".

After the partition of Bengal in 1905, Tilak championed swadeshi, the use of Indian-made goods, and the boycott of British ones. With Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai he formed the radical trio known as Lal-Bal-Pal, and at the Surat session of 1907 the Congress split between moderates and radicals. In 1908, after two young Bengali revolutionaries killed two women with a bomb meant for a British magistrate, Tilak defended them in Kesari. Despite being represented by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, he was convicted of sedition and served six years in Mandalay, in Burma, from 1908 to 1914, where he wrote his commentary on the Gita, Gita Rahasya.

Released on 16 June 1914, Tilak took a more conciliatory line, backing the war effort and rejoining the Congress in 1916, the year of the Lucknow Pact. With Annie Besant and others he founded the Home Rule League movement; his league grew from about 1,400 members in April 1916 to some 32,000 by 1917. In 1916 he was again charged with sedition and, defended by Jinnah, acquitted. He urged the rising Mahatma Gandhi not to rely on non-violence alone. He died in Bombay on 1 August 1920.

Tilak is honoured in India as a founding figure of the independence movement. Historians also stress his social conservatism: he opposed the Age of Consent Act of 1891, which raised the age at which girls could marry, attacked schools for girls and lower castes, and sided with Brahmin claims in caste disputes, positions that put him in conflict with reformers such as Jyotirao Phule and Pandita Ramabai.

Our 1900 and 1914 maps show the British Raj in which Tilak campaigned, including Burma, where he served his longest prison term.