Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s death anniversary

Lahore, Friday, August 1, 1924

THIS day four years ago, Bal Gangadhar Tilak quit the scene of his earthly labours. From the point of view of the ordinary man with a limited vision, the time for his departure was singularly ill chosen. The nation, which he had done so much to build, was just beginning to pulsate with a new life. The National Congress of which he had always been a dominant figure and over which since the secession of the Moderates he had held an almost undisputed sway, was about to commit itself to a new policy and programme fraught with great possibilities of good and evil. Good if that policy and programme were inspired by wisdom, insight into things and far-sightedness, and evil if it lacked these essential qualities. The struggle for his country’s freedom, in which for two decades he had been the ablest and most valiant of all captains on the popular side, was about to reach its last and most intense stage. It was at such a time as this, when the unique gifts with which nature had endowed this eminent son of India and which he had himself done so much to develop and fashion for his great task were needed by his country as it had never needed them in the past, that a cruel fate decided to take him away. It is unprofitable, though by no means uninteresting, to speculate what might have happened if Tilak had been spared to his country and his people for some years more. Would he, too, like the lesser leaders, have surrendered his judgment and will to the great and mighty man who for the last four years has been the uncrowned king of nationalist India? Who can say? Remarks of a somewhat contradictory nature have been attributed to him in this respect.