Tilak, Bal Gangadhar  ( born July 23, 1856 , Ratnāgiri, India—died  Ratnagiri [India]—died Aug. 1, 1920 , Bombay [now Mumbai], India )  scholar, mathematician, philosopher, and militant nationalist who helped lay the foundation for India’s independence. He founded (1914) and served as president of the Indian Home Rule League and, in 1916, . In 1916 he concluded the Lucknow Pact with Mohammed Ali Jinnah, which provided for Hindu-Muslim unity in the struggle for independence.

Tilak was born into a cultured, middle-class, Brahman family. After taking earning his university degree, Tilak studied law but then decided to teach mathematics in a private school in Poona (now Pune (Poona), which was to become the centre of ). The school became the basis for his political career. He developed the school into a university college after founding the Deccan Education Society (1884), which aimed at educating the masses, especially in the English language. He then turned to the task of awakening the political consciousness of the people through two weekly newspapers: Kesari (“The Lion”), published in MarāṭhiMarathi, and The Mahratta, published in English. Through these newspapers Tilak became widely known for his bitter criticisms of British rule and also of those moderate nationalists who advocated social reforms along Western lines and political reforms along constitutional lines. He thought that social reform would only divert energy away from the political struggle for independence.

Tilak sought to widen the popularity of the nationalist movement (which at that time was largely confined to the upper classes) by introducing Hindu religious symbolism and by invoking popular traditions of the Marāṭhā Maratha struggle against Muslim rule. He thus organized two important festivals, Ganesh and Shivaji, in 1893 , and Shivaji1895, in 1895. Gaṇeśa (Ganesh) respectively. Ganesha is the elephant-headed god worshiped worshipped by all Hindus; Śivājī (. Shivaji), the first Hindu hero to fight against Muslim power in India, was the founder of the Marāṭhā Maratha state, which in the course of time overthrew Muslim power in India. But, though this symbolism made the nationalist movement more popular, it also made it more communal and thus alarmed the Muslims.


Tilak’s approach was strong fare for the moderate party in the Indian National Indian Congress, which believed in making “loyal” representations to the government for small reforms. Tilak aimed at Swarajya (Independence), not piecemeal reforms, and attempted to persuade the Congress to adopt his militant program. On this issue, he clashed with the moderates at the Surat session of the Congress in 1907. Taking advantage of the split in the nationalist forces, the government again prosecuted Tilak on a charge of sedition and inciting terrorism and deported him to Mandalay, Burma (Myanmar), to serve a sentence of six years’ imprisonment. In the Mandalay jail, Tilak settled down to write his magnum opus, the Bhagawadgita-Śrīmad Bhagavadgitā Rahasya (“Secret of the BhagavadgītāBhagavadgita”), an original exposition of the most sacred book of the Hindus. Tilak discarded the orthodox interpretation that the Bhagavadgītā Bhagavadgita taught the ideal of renunciation; in his view it taught selfless service to humanity.


By the time Tilak returned home in 1919 to attend the meeting of the Congress at Amritsar, he had mellowed sufficiently to oppose Gandhi’s policy of boycotting the elections to the legislative councils established as part of the Montagu–Chelmsford Montagu-Chelmsford reforms. Instead, Tikal Tilak advised the delegates to follow his policy of “responsive cooperation” in carrying out the reforms, which introduced a certain degree of Indian participation in regional government. But he died before he could give the new reforms a decisive direction. In their tributes, Mahatma Gandhi called him “the Maker of Modern India” India,” and Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, described him as “the Father of the Indian Revolution.”

The first authoritative biography in English published outside India is D.V. Thamankar, Lokamanya Tilak (1956); . S.L. Karandikar, Lokamanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak: The Hercules and Prometheus of Modern India (1957), is a chronological treatment. Other biographies include G.P. Pradhan, Lokamanya Tilak (1994); and Richard I. Cashman, The Myth of the Lokamanya: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra (1975).