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Bal Gangadhar Tilak

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Lokmanya Tilak was born at Chummakachu Lane (Ranjani Aaleea) in Chikhalgaon, Ratnagiri, Maharashtra to a Chitpavan Brahmin family. His father, Mr.Gangadhar Tilak was a famous schoolteacher and a Sanskrit scholar. Bal Gangadhar Tilak was a bright child and very good at mathematics. The problems the teacher gave to work our on paper, Bal would do them mentally and give the answer. He also had a sense of fairness and justice from very early age. He was very independent minded and did not falter at expressing his opinions. One day the teacher came to class and found peanut shells on the ground. “Who ate peanuts in the class and create this mess?” asked the teacher. No one came forward. “Well, if no one wants to come forward, the whole class …show more content…

Tilak wrote a scathing article in his newspaper and quoted Gita “no blame could be attached to anyone who killed an oppressor without any thought of reward”. Following this, on 22 June, Rand and another British officer Lt. Ayerst were shot and killed by the Chapekar brothers and their other associates. Tilak was charged with incitement to murder and sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment. When he emerged from prison, he was revered as a martyr and a national hero and adopted a new slogan, "Swaraj (Self-Rule) is my birth right and I shall have it" with which he roused a sleeping nation to action, making Indian people aware of their plight under a foreign rule. Eventually Tilak was jailed by the British for his “seditious” writings. This imprisonment did not dampen Tilak’s enthusiasm and the fire of patriotism kindled by him began to burn more and more fiercely. By that time he was the unquestioned leader of the Indians — the uncrowned king. Thus he was known as the Tilak Maharaj and his many admirers also named him Lokmanya, which means “admired by the people.” But it’s important to note that Lokmanya Tilak was not just a revolutionary, he was a great scholar as well. Besides his radical political activities, Tilak was very much interested in Indian history and culture. Because he was an Indian nationalist, Tilak was particularly interested in the ancient sacred literature — The Vedas — as the earliest document of the Aryan Hindus and the oldest writings in the

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