01-08-2025
Knowledge Nugget: Why Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Non-Cooperation Movement matter for UPSC prep
Take a look at the essential concepts, terms, quotes, or phenomena every day and brush up on your knowledge. Here's your knowledge nugget on Bal Gangadhar Tilak and the Non-Cooperation Movement.
(Relevance: UPSC has asked questions on important historical personalities, especially related to India's freedom struggle. You can check UPSC Mains special on questions asked on India's freedom struggle. In 2025, UPSC Prelims had two questions directly on Non-Cooperative Movement, making both the topic crucial for your exam.)
Bal Gangadhar Tilak, popularly known as Lokmanya Tilak, died on August 1, 1920. This year marked the 105th death anniversary. He was born on July 23, 1856, at Ratnagiri, Maharashtra. Mahatma Gandhi has called him 'the Maker of Modern India', and Jawaharlal Nehru described him as 'the Father of the Indian Revolution'.
1. A lawyer, scholar, and journalist, Tilak joined the Indian National Congress in 1890. Initially, his stance was not very different from that of the Congress, of demanding reforms and more rights for Indians, but not necessarily a total revolution.
2. Gayatri Pagdi, in her book 'Lokmanya Tilak- The First National Leader', has called him the first national leader who transcended provinces, communities, and languages to establish himself in the hearts of millions.
3. Tilak has authored several influential works. In 1881, Tilak, along with G G Agarkar, founded the newspapers 'Kesari' (in Marathi) and 'Mahratta' in English, and used them to spread nationalist resistance against British rule. He has also written Geeta Rahasya,Orion, The Arctic Home of the Vedas and many more.
4. Tilak was in firm conviction that the autonomy of the Hindu society should not be disturbed by the Colonial government's regulation. He officially opposed the Age of Consent Bill which sought to increase the age of consent from ten to twelve for young girls.
5. In 1893, he started the new tradition of worshipping Ganpati as a community festival where patriotic songs would be sung and nationalist ideas would be propagated. Through his writings, fiery speeches, and organisational nous, Tilak encouraged and advocated bringing the Ganesh festival into the public sphere.
6. To further the cause of nationalist resistance, Tilak started the Shivaji festival in 1896. The aim was to inspire nationalist ideas among young Maharashtrians. That same year, he organised a campaign in Maharashtra to boycott foreign cloth to protest the imposition of an excise duty on cotton.
7. For this, he has been criticised for giving the freedom struggle a communal shade and for his conservative stand on women's emancipation and caste reforms. But in the words of Gandhi, 'No man preached the gospel of Swaraj with the consistency and the insistence of Lokmanya'.
8. Along with Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal, Tilak became part of the Lal Bal Pal troika, which advocated complete freedom from the British as the goal, and the pursuit of unconstitutional means, including violence, to attain that goal.
9. The chasm between the moderates and the extremists widened, and the Congress eventually split in 1907. 'When the moderates believed that politics need not enter the issue of swadeshi, Tilak told them that swadeshi and nationalism could not be separated from each other', wrote Pagdi.
The Lokmanya was tried for sedition three times and was imprisoned twice.
1. In 1897, he was charged with sedition for 'exciting and attempting to excite feelings of disaffection to Government by the publication of certain articles…in (his newspaper) the Kesari in its issue of the 15th June 1897'. He was sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment. He was represented by DD Davar.
2. In April 1908, the teenage revolutionaries Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki accidentally killed two European women in Muzaffarpur in a bomb attack targeting the British magistrate Douglas Kingsford. Chaki shot himself before he could be arrested; Bose was arrested and hanged.
3. Tilak published a strong defence of the revolutionaries in Kesari and was promptly arrested on charges of sedition. He was represented by MA Jinnah. But his application for bail was rejected and he was sentenced to six years. Interestingly, Justice DD Davar, who was the judge in this case, had represented him in his first trial in 1897.
4. In July of the same year (1908), Tilak was accused of 'bringing into hatred and contempt, and exciting disloyalty and feelings of enmity toward His Majesty and the Government ' through his writings in Kesari. Tilak refused a lawyer and chose to plead his own case. During his defence, he vociferously attacked the charge of sedition.
5. Tilak was released from a six-year prison term in Mandalay in 1914, and plunged back into political life. By 1916, he had rejoined the Congress, signed the Lucknow Pact with Muhammad Ali Jinnah to find a way for Hindus and Muslims to work together.
6. He founded the All India Home Rule League with GS Khaparde and Annie Besant. It was in 1916, in Belgaum in Karnataka, that Tilak is believed to have uttered his famous words of Swaraj being a birthright.
1. On August 1, 1920, Mahatma Gandhi launched the Non-Cooperation (Asahayog) Movement against the government. Its aims were to force further concessions from the British government by organizing the boycotting of the legislative councils, courts and schools, and other symbolic acts. It was the first mass movement organized nationwide during India's struggle for freedom.
2. The non-violent movement, inspired by Gandhi's satyagraha campaign, degenerated into violence and was called off by Gandhi himself in February 1922 after the murder of a number of policemen by a mob at Chauri Chaura in the United Provinces.
3. In his An Autobiography, first published in 1936, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote how he and other leaders of the national movement, then in prison, had heard 'to our amazement and consternation, that Gandhiji had stopped the aggressive aspects of our struggle, that he had suspended civil resistance…when we seemed to be consolidating our position'.
4. This made them 'angry', Nehru wrote, 'but our disappointment and anger in prison could do little good to any one'. Other leaders like Motilal Nehru, C R Das, and Subhas Bose too, recorded their bewilderment at Gandhi's decision.
5. The Mahatma on his part, justified himself on grounds of his unshakeable faith in non-violence: 'I would suffer every humiliation, every torture, absolute ostracism and death itself to prevent the movement from becoming violent.'
(1) Bal Gangadhar Tilak was associated with: (UPSC CAPF 2015)
1. Poona Sarvajinik Sabha
2. The Age of Consent Bill
3. Gaurakshini Sabha
4. Atmiya Sabha
Select the correct answer using the code given below:
(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 1, 2 and 4
(c) 3 and 4
(d) 2 and 4 only
(2) Consider the following statements concerning the Non-Cooperation Movement: (UPSC CSE 2025)
I. The Congress declared the attainment of 'Swaraj' by all legitimate and peaceful means to be its objective.
II. It was to be implemented in stages, with civil disobedience and non-payment of taxes for the next stage only if 'Swaraj' did not come within a year and the Government resorted to repression.
Which of the above statements is/are correct?
(a) I only
(b) II only
(c) Both I and II
(d) Neither I nor II
(Sources: This Quote Means: On Tilak's birth anniversary, a look at 'Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it', Explained: What Tilak, Gandhi and Nehru said about IPC Section 124A, the law on sedition, How Bal Gangadhar Tilak made the worship of Lord Ganesh a grand community festival, Explained: Chauri Chaura, freedom struggle signpost from 100 years ago)
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