OVERVIEW OF BAL

GANGADHAR TILAK…..
BY: A.MEENAKSHI.YADAV
CLASS 10
 INTRODUCTION
 Bal Gangadhar Tilak  born as Keshav Gangadhar Tilak also
known as Lokmanya Tilak meaning "accepted by the people
(as their leader)", was an Indian nationalist, teacher, and an
independence activist.
 He was one third of the Lal Bal Pal trio.
  Tilak was the first leader of the Indian Independence
Movement.
 The British colonial authorities called him "The father of the
Indian unrest."
  Mahatma Gandhi called him "The Maker of Modern India“
and “Father of the Indian Revolution” by Jawaharlal Nehru.
 EARLY LIFE
Tilak was born on 23 July 1856 in Ratnagiri now in Maharashtra
state, India into a cultured middle-class Brahman family.
He did bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and Sanskrit in 1876
at Deccan College in Poona.
He married Satyabhamabai (Tapi bai) in 1871 when he was
sixteen, a few months before his father's death.  His family…
He then studied law, receiving his degree in 1879 from
the University of Bombay (now Mumbai). At that point,
however, he decided to teach mathematics in a private school in
Poona.
 Later, due to ideological differences with the colleagues in the
new school, he withdrew and became a journalist. Tilak actively
participated in public affairs.
His house at Ratnagiri…..
ACHEIVEMENTS
 Bal Gangadhar Tilak founded the Deccan Education
Society in 1884, to educate people especially in the
English language based on the believe that English is
a powerful force for liberal and democratic ideals.
 One of the founders of the Fergusson College Deccan Education Society
(1885) in Pune through the Deccan Education
Society.
 He joined the Indian National Congress (INC) in
1890 and started self-rule. He was the first
nationalist freedom fighter who brought the concept
of 'Swaraj’.
ACHEIVEMENTS
 Two important festivals were also organised by Bal
Gangadhar Tilak namely Ganesh in 1893 and
Shivaji in 1895.
 Ganesha because the God is headed by the
Ganesh festival during his times…
elephant and worshipped by all Hindus and Shivaji
because he was the first Hindu ruler who fought
against Muslim power in India and established the
Maratha Empire in the 17th century.
 He started the Swadeshi movement in India and
established Bombay Swadeshi Stores to promote
the national movement along with Jamshed Tata.

Bombay swadeshi stores

ROLE IN NATIONAL
MOVEMENT
 When Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, partitioned Bengal in 1905, Tilak strongly
supported the Bengali demand for the annulment of the partition and
advocated a boycott of British goods, which soon became a movement that
swept the nation. 
 In 1906, he set forth a program of passive resistance, known as the Tenets of
the New Party, with a motive to destroy the hypnotic influence of British rule
and prepare the people for sacrifice in order to gain independence.  Lord Curzon
 These political actions initiated by Tilak—the boycotting of goods and passive
resistance—were later adopted by Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi in his
program of nonviolent noncooperation with the British (satyagraha).
 Between 1908 and 1914, he spent 6 years in Mandalay Prison for defending the
actions of revolutionaries Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki Who to assassinate
the District Judge, Mr. Kingsford by throwing bombs at the carriage in which he
was supposed to travel.
ROLE IN NATIONAL
MOVEMENT
 In April 1916, Bal Gangadhar Tilak launched the Indian Home Rule League
at Belgaum with the rousing slogan “Swarajya is my birthright and I will
have it.”It worked in Maharashtra (except Bombay), the Central Provinces,
Karnataka and Berar.
 In 1916 he rejoined the Congress Party and signed the historic Lucknow
Pact, a Hindu-Muslim accord, with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the future
founder of Pakistan.
 Tilak visited England in 1918 as president of the Indian Home Rule League.
He realized that the Labour Party was a growing force in British politics, and Lucknow pact
he established firm relationships with its leaders.
 His foresight was justified: it was a Labour government that granted
independence to India in 1947. Tilak was one of the first to maintain that
Indians should cease to cooperate with foreign rule, but he always denied
that he had ever encouraged the use of violence.
LITERARY CONTRIBUTION
 He then turned to the task of awakening the political consciousness of the
people through two weekly newspapers that he owned and
edited: Kesari (“The Lion”), published in Marathi, and The Mahratta, published
in English.
 In the Mandalay jail, Tilak settled down to write,the Śrīmad Bhagavadgitā
Rahasya (“Secret of the Bhagavadgita”)—also known as Bhagavad Gita or Gita
Rahasya—an original exposition of the most-sacred book of the Hindus.
 Tilak discarded the orthodox interpretation that the Bhagavadgita  taught the
ideal of renunciation; in his view it taught selfless service to humanity.
 Earlier, in 1893, he had published The Orion; or, Researches into the Antiquity
of the Vedas, and, a decade later, The Arctic Home in the Vedas. Both works
were intended to promote Hindu culture as the successor to the Vedic
religion and his belief that its roots were in the so-called Aryans from the
north.