Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Born July 23, 1856, in Ratnagiri, in the state of Maharashtra; died Aug. 1, 1920, in Bombay. Scholar and a leader of the democratic wing of India’s national liberation movement.

Tilak studied law before becoming a social and political activist in the 1870’s. Beginning in 1881 he published two newspapers, Mahratta (in English) and Kesari (in Marathi), that served as the voice of the national movement’s democratic wing during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A bitter critic of British colonialism and its oppressive rule in India, Tilak, as a member of the swadeshi movement, advocated India’s independent economic development. He was among the first nationalists to suggest the need to enlist the broad popular masses in the struggle for freedom. He invoked India’s religious traditions in his effort to bring about unity in the national movement.

During the 1890’s and the early part of the 20th century, Tilak was active in the Indian National Congress (INC) and from 1905 to 1908, during a period of revolutionary upsurge, became a national leader of the extremists (that is, revolutionary democrats) in the INC. He publicized the revolutionary experiences of the Russians, the Irish, and others and proposed that the Indians in their struggle adopt the general political strike, which was being used in Russia, as a weapon. While training cadres of Indian revolutionaries, he called for the overthrow of colonial rule and the establishment of a republican government composed of representatives of the people. Tilak was imprisoned several times for his anti-imperialist activities; in 1908 he was sentenced to six years at hard labor. The sentence provoked a protest by workers in Bombay, who staged a general political strike (seeBOMBAY STRIKE OF 1908).

In 1914, Tilak helped organize the struggle for home rule. Later, influenced by the October Revolution of 1917, he began focusing attention on the necessity for the Indian proletariat to assume political power. In his newspapers he welcomed the October Revolution and supported the activities of the Bolsheviks under V. I. Lenin’s leadership.

Tilak wrote several scholarly works on the Vedas and on India’s early civilization.