KOCHI: In Tilak: The Empire’s Biggest Enemy, (Penguin Vintage) journalist Vaibhav Purandare offers a detailed and engaging biography of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the trailblazer who ignited the Indian freedom movement. Often overshadowed by later leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Tilak became a central figure in India’s struggle for independence. His famous proclamation, “Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it”, signalled the rise of a more assertive nationalism and earned him the title of “the father of Indian unrest” from The Times of London, making him the British Raj’s most feared adversary.
Purandare has written on Maharashtrian icons—from Shivaji to Bal Thackeray to Sachin Tendulkar. In Tilak, He traces the leader’s journey from his early years in Konkan to his influential efforts to mobilise the Indian masses, using festivals, education, and fiery journalism to unite the people. In addressing the gaps in modern historical narratives, which often overlook Tilak’s contributions, Purandare draws on rare archival material, including British records, to highlight the deep concern of the colonial powers over Tilak’s growing influence.
Excerpts from an interview:
What inspired the book’s title and how does it reflect Tilak’s historical role?
Tilak was the tallest leader of India’s freedom movement in the pre-Mahatma Gandhi era. Before his arrival on the political scene, the Indian National Congress and its leaders described British rule as ‘divine providence’, showed faith in what they called the fairness and justice of that rule and spoke the language of ‘prayers’ and ‘petitions’. Tilak introduced the language of ‘rights’, a language known to us in the 21st century but either unknown to or forgotten by the subjugated Indian population of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
His statement — ‘Swaraj is my birthright and I will have it’ — was revolutionary for that reason. He roused the Indian people into action against British rule, and the Raj hated him for that and described him as its Number One enemy. That’s where the title comes from, and that’s exactly what Tilak was.
How did Tilak’s upbringing in Konkan shape his activism and political ideology?
More than the physical Konkan, it was the ‘Konkanastha’ or Chitpavan Brahmin identity of Tilak that was a source of worry for the British, and rightly so. The British believed that the Chitpavan Brahmins of Maharashtra were least enthusiastic in joining the British East India Company’s schools and administration in the first half of the 19th century; also, many of them such as Nana Saheb were key leaders of the 1857 war of Independence. Tilak’s political ideology came from his growing-up years, his deep reading of global history and current affairs, and the sense of Indianness that he had right from childhood because of his early reading of old Sanskrit texts, and of Hindu and Buddhist philosophy.
How did his relationship with Gandhi evolve?
In Gandhi, whom Tilak met on the former’s return from South Africa, Tilak saw someone who did mass politics in much the same way as he himself did – involving the people, carrying out public agitations and campaigns, using religions idioms to communicate with the masses and speaking directly to the masses instead of talking down to them.
How did Tilak’s sedition trials affect his political strategy and public image?
The British made Tilak the prime target of the sedition law, booking him thrice under it. It made Tilak a hero in the eyes of the Indian people as it became clear to them that the sedition law was being used to silence Tilak because he was the most effective articulator of Indian aspirations. Tilak led his own defence in the 1908 trial, converting the dock into a public platform for airing Indian sentiments and arguments against the British Raj.
What were Tilak’s major contributions to Indian culture and education?
Tilak started four institutions in his first decade in public life – a school, a college, and two newspapers, the Kesari and the Mahratta. His school, the New English School, worked against the de-nationalisation of Indian students and to Indianise education in that era of colonial imposition.
Tilak’s three books – the Orion, which was a study of the antiquity of the Vedas, the Arctic Home in the Vedas, which was an inquiry into where the Aryans came from, and the Gita Rahasya, which offered a radical interpretation of the Gita as the advocate of relentless action even after the achieving of personal enlightenment, are key contributions to the debate over India’s past, though they have seen several contestations over the previous century and more, just as they had seen during Tilak’s own lifetime.
He started the Ganesh festival for Hindu consolidation in the wake of the 1893 communal riots in Gujarat and Mumbai, but he was not anti-Muslim and soon he transformed the festival into one which the Indian people as a whole could use to circumvent the British ban on public gatherings.
How did writing about Tilak differ from your previous works?
By the time I had finished writing the book, I was myself amazed by how central the man was – and has been – to India’s political and cultural life, and how neglected a historical personality he has been since independence – regardless of whether people like him or prefer Gokhale and the Moderates or anyone else, for that matter.
You can like Tilak or not like him, but to ignore him is to keep ourselves in the dark about what happened in India in a critical phase of its struggle for political emancipation.