Mumbai: In 1893, major Hindu-Muslim riots broke out, first in Prabhas Patan in Gujarat and later in Mumbai. The Hindus said they were attacked unprovoked by the Muslims, while the Muslims said the outrage was sparked by the work of various cow protection societies.
It was against this backdrop that Bal Gangadhar Tilak decided to organise the first public celebration of the Ganesh festival that year. It was to consolidate Hindus and bring about a Hindu assertion, according to a new biography on the freedom fighter titled Tilak: The Empire’s Biggest Enemy by author Vaibhav Purandare.
“These debates were very similar to the debates happening today,” Purandare said at a discussion on his book at the Asiatic Society’s Durbar Hall in Mumbai on 5 September. The discussion was moderated by journalist Madhavankutty Pillai.
Last month, a 19-year-old student in Haryana was killed by cow vigilantes on suspicion of being a cow smuggler. Then last week, an elderly man was assaulted on a train in Maharashtra for allegedly carrying beef. He had claimed that it was buffalo meat, which is not banned in the state.
Purandare drew a few more parallels between Tilak’s time and now. For one, the rampant use of the sedition law then and now. Tilak had to bear the brunt and was arrested on two occasions for alleged sedition. Second, the debates around caste, where Purandare explained how Tilak’s views and actions were very contradictory.
Tilak, Muslims and ‘Sarvajanik Ganesh Utsav’
It is widely believed that Tilak started the ‘Sarvajanik Ganesh Utsav’, the public celebration of the Ganpati festival, to mobilise people to assert their Indianness against foreign rule, against the British Raj. Purandare explained, that while Tilak’s ‘Sarvajanik Ganesh Utsavs’ eventually took this form, they started more as an expression of Hindu assertion against Muslims.
“After the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1893, Tilak openly sided with the Hindus and accused Muslims of starting and fomenting the violence. He differentiated himself from moderates such as Dinshaw Wacha, Pherozeshah Mehta and Dadabhai Naoroji,” Purandare said. “The moderates were about equivalence, they believed in living together in peace. Tilak said, he knew Muslims were at fault, but he also made it clear that he was not anti-Muslim.”
Over time, all castes and classes of people such as the Brahmins, Marathas, Vanis, Kolis and so on, started participating in the public celebrations and the British started getting concerned.
“Tilak was one to constantly think of scale…the ruthlessness of the Raj was getting evident and here Tilak was consolidating the Hindus,” Purandare said.
This is when Tilak realised that he could not alienate Muslims, and urged the community to start participating in the public Ganpati celebrations, and the Muslims did, he added.
The moderates had opposed Tilak’s plan to take the Ganpat festival, which was until then celebrated in individual households, out in public. Purandare added how Mahadev Govind Ranade had warned against bringing Ganpati to the streets. “It will get out of hand,” Ranade had said, as per Purandare.
“We have to agree that time has proven that Ranade was right. He said don’t bring Ganpati on the streets and we can see how that has ended up being today,” said the author, who has previously penned biographies on Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar and Maratha warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji.
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Tilak’s “lip service”
According to Purandare’s book, Tilak, a Chitpavan Brahmin, brought different castes together during the Indian freedom struggle under British rule.
His views on caste, however, were contradictory. He believed in the caste system and tried to justify it by saying it was merely a division of labour.
“But he would also oppose the idea of a section of people using Vedic mantras for religious rituals. He gradually started changing his views, but only to a certain extent. He did not open up in terms of action. He only paid lip service to the anti-caste movement and his papers such as Kesari did not reproduce any of his speeches about the need to eliminate caste,” Purandare said.
The author added that while Tilak brought in various castes in the Indian freedom movement, it was ironically the moderates and the “so-called” liberals who were taunting him.
“They called him a leader of the Telis (oil grinders) and the Tambolis (betel leaf sellers). They are in the so-called lower caste hierarchy. So, who was with Tilak? The mill workers of Mumbai, who were the Marathas, Ramoshis, Telis, and Tambolis. It is an interesting paradox that they accepted Tilak as their leader,” Purandare said.
“Gandhi was Tilak’s real successor”
Purandare argued that though MK Gandhi considered Gopal Krishna Gokhale as his political guru and was deeply influenced by his ideology, more similarities between Tilak and Gandhi made Gandhi his successor in the freedom struggle.
Tilak was direct in his communication with people and had the masses with him, just like Gandhi did. Tilak was also one of the pioneers of the boycott and the non-cooperation movement, the author said.
“It was as early as the 1890s that Tilak had told peasants not to pay taxes. By conscripting Ganpati and Shivaji in the national campaign, he brought Indian idols and ideals into the freedom movement and that’s exactly what Gandhi did later by bringing Lord Ram into the Indian freedom movement. These are tremendous similarities between Gandhi and Tilak,” Purandare said.
The author also threw light on some of the lesser-known facets of Tilak. The leader had two obsessions—mathematics and swimming. According to Purandare, Tilak had said that in a free India, he would have rather been a mathematics professor. His style of teaching was also quite different, Purandare said. He didn’t like writing on the blackboard. He would simply like to look down and talk.
In what is considered to be a very Chitpavan trait, Tilak had a placard outside his door that said, “Those who do not understand mathematics, may not enter.”
“In a way, I am glad that I have written this biography at a time when Tilak is not alive. Had he been alive, he would have surely denied me an interview on the grounds that I do not understand mathematics,” Purandare said as the audience chuckled.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)