• Capt. Praveen Davar

Lokmanya Tilak was inarguably the tallest of the stalwarts of freedom struggle in the pre - Gandhi era of the independence movement which ended with his death on August 01, 1920. By a strange coincidence, this date had been fixed for the inauguration of Gandhiji's non-cooperation movement which marks the beginning of the Gandhi era that led to India's independence twenty-seven years later.

Amongst the contemporaries of Tilak who died a few years earlier were Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917), Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915) and Pherozeshah Mehta (1845-1915). But the Lokmanya, according to Mahatma Gandhi, had become more popular than them as he was a 'man with an iron will whose courage never failed him' and he was a 'giant among men with a voice of a lion’. On August 04, 1920, Gandhiji wrote in the ‘Young India’: 'Let us erect for the only Lokmanya of India an imperishable monument by weaving into our lives his bravery, his simplicity, his wonderful industry and his love for his country.'

Bal Gangadhar Tilak was born in Chikalgaon in Konkan's Ratnagiri district on July 23, 1856. In 1867, his family migrated to Poona (now Pune) where he studied at the Deccan College and graduated from Elphinstone College, Bombay (now Mumbai). After studying law in Pune, he joined the faculty of the New English School that was inspired by the Jesuits. He also started, alongwith Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, the publications of two newspapers - Kesari (Marathi) and The Maratha (English). Before the advent of Tilak into Indian politics, there was no mass agitation or popular movement in the country. Even though the Indian National Congress (INC) had been founded in 1885, its leaders restricted themselves to organise sessions once in a year, passing resolutions petitioning the imperial government on various public concerns.

Tilak was the first national leader who declared that resolutions and constitutional methods would not work, and the only method that will awaken the government was mass agitations. As a first step, he inaugurated the Ganapati and Shivaji festivals to awaken the people to national pride and national self- respect. But he clarified years later in response to accusations of being a social reactionary: 'We desire to emphasise and preserve the national sentiment by giving due credit to all that is good in the old system but without detriment to progress and reform needed for our national uplift....TheShivaji festival and the Ganpati festival are in reality a means to keep up and maintain a proper pride in the doings of our ancestors, and it is a sheer misrepresentation...to stamp these movements as calculated only to strengthen orthodox prejudices.'

The Indian National Congress (INC) was founded in 1885 at Mumbai (then Bombay). It again met in Mumbai four years later, in 1889, under the Presidentship of Sir William Wedderburn. It was this session of the INC that Tilak attended for the first time alongwith Gopal Krishna Gokhale who was to later emerge as a front-rank leader of the Moderates opposed to Tilak, the future leader of the Extremists who were not averse to using extra constitutional methods to achieve their goal. Tilak, who first faced incarceration in 1882 for four months, suffered many years in jail, the longest term being for six years from 1908 to 1914. It was during this last term in Mandalay jail that he wrote his commentary on the Bhagwad Gita, ‘The Gita Rahaysa’. Earlier, in December 1907, the Congress split into two with the Moderates capturing the Party and forcing the Extremists (rechristened Nationalists) out of the Party. Though Tilak had taken an aggressive posture against Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta, he kept the doors open for compromise. He said that Congress should be open to all view points, but the Moderates were in no mood for reconciliation, especially Pherozeshah Mehta who was accused by the radicals (Extremists) of adopting a posture akin to the government of India. It took some years for the radicals to dominate the Congress. They could do so only after Tilak was released from jail in 1914.

After his long stint in jail, Tilak was a changed man. He moderated his views and founded the Home Rule League which was inaugurated at Belgaum on April 28, 1916. Since Tilak was convinced that 'no other party but the Congress could be the proper institution for the national struggle', he asked his followers, who had broken away from the INC at Surat seven years ago, to join the Home Rule League which had adopted the creed of the Congress. A few months earlier, Annie Besant (who later became INC President) had founded her own Home Rule League in November 1915. The year 1915 also saw the death of Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta, the two tallest leaders of the Moderates. Despite political differences, Tilak deeply mourned the death of these giants. Of Gokhale he said: 'This is the time for shedding tears, this diamond of India, this jewel of Maharashtra, this prince of workers is laid to eternal rest...Look at him and try to emulate him. Everyone of you should place his life as a model to be imitated.'

The most outstanding achievement of Lokmanya Tilak, which unfortunately is not so well known, was his contribution in working out the famous 1916 Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League which gave higher representation to Muslims in the Imperial Legislative Council and provincial legislatures in excess of their population percentage. Besides Tilak those who formulated the Lucknow Pact were Ambika Charan Mazumdar (then President INC), Surendranath Banerjee (former President INC), Annie Besant, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Mazharul Haque and Raja of Mahmudabad. Though Malaviya was opposed to the Pact, Tilak had his way as all other members supported him. According to CS Ranga Iyer, a leading journalist of the day, 'Tilak was the most religious, most learned in the Vedas and amongst the most Orthodox of the Hindus present there ...yet he would not listen to anything against the Pact. Lokmanya Tilak's attitude was the deciding factor in the Hindu - Muslim settlement.'

The great nationalist leader, perhaps the greatest before Gandhiji, died on August 1, 1920. Three decades later, unveiling Tilak's portrait in the Central Hall of Parliament, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru concluded his tribute to him thus:

It was not my privilege to come into close contact with Tilak. When he was at the height of his career, I was away in a far country, still a student. But even there, his voice and his story reached us and fired our imagination. We early grew up under that influence and were moulded by it. In a sense, India to the youth of that time was what had been presented by Tilak, through what he said and what he wrote, and, above all, what he suffered. That was the inheritance that Gandhiji had to start his vast moments with. If there had not been that moulding of the Indian people and India’s imagination and India’s youth by Lokmanya, it would not have been easy for the next step to be taken. Thus in this historical panorama, we can see one great man after another coming and performing acts of destiny and history which have cumulatively led to the achievement of India’s freedom. We meet here not only to unveil the picture of this great man, the Father of India’s Revolution, but to remember him and to be inspired by him.

Lokmanya Tilak continues to be a great inspiration even after he passed away over a century ago, leaving an everlasting imprint of his gigantic contribution in the independence movement.

(The writer is a columnist and ex. Secretary, AICC)