Mumbai: The Tilak Smarak Mandir Trust, run by members of the Tilak family that has largely been steeped in the Congress ideology, has stirred a political controversy by deciding to confer its annual Lokmanya Tilak National Award on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The trust gives out the award every year on 1 August, the death anniversary of freedom fighter Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
The Pune unit of the Congress has questioned the trust’s decision to award PM Modi at a time when the party has been attempting to corner the Modi-led central government on issues such as the ethnic violence in Manipur and the alleged use of central probe agencies for political goals.
This has sparked an internal battle within the Congress, with the Tilak family and the party’s Maharashtra general secretary Rohit Tilak on one side, and the rank and file on the other.
Arvind Shinde, president of Congress’ Pune city unit, in a video statement Monday said the party along with other Opposition parties in Maharashtra, such as the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP, Sharad Pawar faction) and the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), will protest against Modi Tuesday.
“Before accepting the Lokmanya Tilak National Award, one should think about whether they have followed any of Tilak’s teachings,” he added. “I am appealing to the people of Pune. If you can sport a black flag on your house, do that, or tie a black balloon,” Shinde said.
“When Manipur needs the prime minister, his coming to accept an award in Pune doesn’t suit a PM at all. So, Pune city is not going to welcome you,” he added.
Tilak Smarak Mandir Trust’s “unanimous” decision to give the prestigious award to Modi has raised speculation about Rohit Tilak, the great-grandson of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, possibly looking at moving to the BJP, multiple Pune-based Congress leaders told ThePrint.
Speaking to ThePrint about the rumours, Rohit Tilak, who is vice-president of the Tilak Smarak Mandir Trust, said Monday: “There is no truth in all of this. And this award ceremony should especially not be linked with this kind of political speculation because the programme is non-political in nature.”
“In the past, we have awarded people from different political backgrounds as well as other eminent personalities,” he added.
Rohit Tilak also said Modi was the “unanimous choice” of the trustees this year for his call for an ‘atmanirbhar (self-reliant)’ country that was in line with Lokmanya Tilak’s ‘swadeshi’ philosophy, the government’s new National Education Policy, its pride in Indian cultural roots and so on. “These were all ideas that Lokmanya Tilak espoused,” he added.
The award ceremony will see political rivals sharing the stage.
PM Modi will share the dais with not just Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and Deputy CMs Devendra Fadnavis and Ajit Pawar, but also NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who has been invited as chief guest.
It will be the first time that Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar will be on the same stage since the latter rebelled earlier this month and joined the Shinde-Fadnavis government in Maharashtra with a clutch of NCP MLAs.
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Tilak family and its politics
The descendants of Bal Gangadhar Tilak were all aligned with the Congress philosophy until the BJP tapped Mukta Tilak, the great-granddaughter-in-law of Lokmanya Tilak, in the early 2000s, a Pune BJP leader who did not wish to be named told ThePrint.
Jayantrao Tilak, Lokmanya Tilak’s grandson, was earlier with the Hindu Mahasabha. But he joined the Congress in the 1950s and was a Rajya Sabha MP for 12 years and the chairperson of the state legislative council for 16 years, according to the website of Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth.
His son Deepak Tilak is the chancellor of Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, and is president and trustee of the Tilak Smarak Mandir Trust. He is also the chief trustee of the Kesari Maharatta Trust, which runs Kesari, a daily newspaper founded by Lokmanya Tilak in 1881.
Deepak Tilak’s son Rohit Tilak has unsuccessfully contested the Kasba Peth assembly poll as a Congress candidate on two occasions, in 2009 and 2014. He lost both elections to the BJP’s Girish Bapat.
Rohit Tilak faced a major controversy in 2017 when he was booked in a rape case based on the complaint of a 41-year-old woman, according to media reports.
The above-mentioned Pune BJP leader told ThePrint: “In the early 2000s, Gopinath Munde (late BJP stalwart) decided to tap the Tilak family and inducted Mukta Tilak into the party. She was given a lot of scope and posts to build an image that the Tilak family was with the BJP. Until then, the family was perceived to be completely aligned with the Congress.”
Mukta Tilak, who died in December last year after a long battle with cancer, was a four-time BJP corporator with her first stint starting in 2002. The party also made her mayor of the Pune Municipal Corporation in 2017 when the BJP came to power in the civic body.
In 2019, when the party picked Girish Bapat to contest the Lok Sabha polls, Mukta Tilak fought the Kasba Peth assembly election and won.
Mukta Tilak was married to Shailesh Tilak, nephew of Jayantrao Tilak.
A Pune-based Congress leader who did not wish to be named said: “Since last year, there have been strong talks in the political corridors of Pune that Rohit Tilak is trying to secure a political future for himself with the BJP, looking at the Congress’ slide in Pune.”
He added that, in 2022, many within the Congress were taken by surprise when the Tilak Smarak Mandir Trust invited the BJP’s Chandrakant Patil, who was at the time heading the party’s Maharashtra unit, as chief guest for the award ceremony.
Patil was not even the Pune district’s guardian minister at the time and was given the post only in September that year.
Leaders from both the Congress and the BJP said that talks of Rohit Tilak looking at the BJP as an avenue for himself got stronger after Mukta Tilak’s demise.
However, Rohit Tilak has denied such rumours. Even during the campaign for the Kasba Peth bypoll held earlier this year in light of Mukta Tilak’s death, he clarified that he was with the Congress.
Tilak Smarak Mandir Trust and its awards
The choice for the Lokmanya Tilak National Award has never run into controversy, except for last year when the invitation to the BJP’s Patil was talked about as an overture by Rohit Tilak to the BJP.
The award was instituted in 1983 by Jayantrao Tilak to honour personalities who have done exceptional work for the country.
The trustees of the Tilak Smarak Mandir Trust include Deepak Tilak and his family members — Rohit, Rohit’s wife and his sister — as well as Congress leader Sushil Kumar Shinde.
The trust has over the years awarded personalities such as former prime ministers Indira Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and former presidents such as Shankar Dayal Sharma and Pranab Mukherjee, other than industrialists, engineers and scientists.
Over the last five years, the trust has awarded scientist Tessy Thomas, industrialist Cyrus Poonawalla, educator and scientist Sonam Wangchuk, businessman Baba Kalyani, and former Indian Space Research Organisation chief K. Sivan.
Rohit Tilak told ThePrint that “decisions on whom to give the award are not taken on a whim and are the result of several months of discussions”, adding that the award ceremony is a “non-political dais.”
Congress leader Anant Gadgil, however, said the award goes against the very basis of the party’s campaign against the Modi government.
“The Congress’ stand is that the Modi government has not done any work. But, by giving him an award, you are praising his work and accepting that he has done good work. So, the party’s karyakartas (workers) are not happy,” he told ThePrint.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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