Tilak, Bal Gangadhar

(1856–1920) Maharashtrian political
activist who was once characterized as
“the father of Indian unrest.” Unlike his
Maharashtrian contemporaries Ranade
and Gokhale, who stressed working
within existing institutions, Tilak never
compromised his conviction that the
British had no right to rule India. He
resigned from Gokhale’s reformist group
in 1890 and devoted himself to educating and organizing ordinary people in
Maharashtra. One vehicle for such
organizing comprised two newspapers,
one written in English and one in
Marathi. The other involved organizing
and promoting two new festivals. One
of these festivals was devoted to
the Maratha king Shivaji, a regional
hero who had spent his life fighting
697
Tilak, Bal Gangadhar
This ascetic’s tika markings indicate that he
belongs to the Ramanandi group.
domination by the Moghul empire. The
other festival was Ganesh Chaturthi,
which Tilak promoted as a visible way to
assert and celebrate a Hindu nationalist
identity during the time of British imperial rule. Given British power, outright
rebellion was simply impossible, and
the British government heavily restricted
all forms of political dissent. The Ganesh
festival provided a way to circumvent
these restrictions because the British
had a long-standing policy of not interfering with religious observances. Tilak
was imprisoned several times on the
charge of inciting political assassinations, but he always returned directly to
the political fray. Aside from his political
agitation, his greatest intellectual work
is a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita,
a religious text, in which he stresses the
need for this-worldly activism to defeat
evil, including violence if necessary. See
also Moghul dynasty.