Tilak’s triumph

THIS day five years ago, Bal Gangadhar Tilak quitted the scene of his earthly labours amid a demonstration of national sorrow unprecedented in the annals of this country, whether in its volume or sincerity. There had been great political leaders before Tilak, both in his own part of the country and in other parts. Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta and Gopal Krishna Gokhale in Bombay, Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee and Anand Mohan Bose in Bengal, G Subramaniya Iyer and Ananda Charlu in Madras and Ajudhya Nath in the United Provinces were all devoted sons of the motherland who, like Tilak, had consecrated their lives to the service of their country and the cause of its political advancement. But the country that mourned their passing away from the field of their activities was a comparatively small country, consisting for the most part of educated politically minded Indians. The masses of the people knew them not. It was the chief distinction of Tilak that he was the first among his contemporaries to realise the supreme necessity of enlisting in the great battle in which he was engaged the sympathy and support of the common people; and consequently he was the first among India’s political leaders whose death was mourned not merely by tens of thousands of educated and comparatively well-placed people, but by hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of humbler people. And it is this very distinction, or rather what lay behind it, that is responsible for the fact that Tilak, though dead, is still the leader of the unfinished fight for his country’s constitutional independence.