Bal Gangadhar Tilak

The Story

Born in Ratnagiri in 1856, Tilak was a brilliant student who chose the path of public service. As a founder of the Deccan Education Society and of the newspapers Kesari and Maratha, he used journalism to reach the common man — and through the Ganapati and Shivaji festivals, he brought the masses into the nationalist movement.

He was the most radical of the early leaders: he declared that swaraj — self-rule — was Bhārat's birthright, and he was imprisoned in 1897 for sedition and again in 1908, when his fiery writings brought him six years in the Mandalay jail. There he wrote his famous commentary on the Gita, the Gita Rahasya, finding in Krishna's teaching the philosophy of action.

In his later years he founded the Home Rule League with Annie Besant, took the movement to the moderates and extremists alike, and — though a Congressman — his call for self-rule shaped Gandhi's own. He died in 1920, and the nation called him Lokmanya — the one the people hold in esteem.