Context:

India is celebrating the 168th Birth Anniversary of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak on 23 July 2024.

Tilak and his contribution to the freedom struggle

• He was born on 23 July 1856 at Ratnagiri in Maharashtra his father Gangadhar Ramchandra Tilak, was a Sanskrit scholar.
• He with Gopal Ganesh Agarkar founded the New English School at Pune in 1876.
• In 1881 he started two weeklies, 'Maratha' in English and 'Kesari in Marathi. 
• He was one of the founders of the Deccan Education Society (later named as Fergusson College) in Pune in 1885.
• He joined the Indian National Congress (INC) Party in 1890.
• Lokmanya Tilak, along with Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai, emerged as the leader of extremism ideology during the freedom struggle.

He was tried thrice for sedition by the British authorities: - 

• In 1897, Bal Gangadhar Tilak was charged with sedition for his views in Kesari, his Marathi-language newspaper.
• Later, he was arrested in 1908 on the charge of sedition and sentenced to a six-year imprisonment in the Mandalay jail in Burma.
• In 1916, for the third time for his lectures on self-rule.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak established the Home Rule League in April 1916 at the Bombay Provincial Congress.

• Annie Beasant also launched a Home Rule League at that time.
• Tilak operated in Maharashtra (excluding Bombay City), Karnataka, Berar, and the Central Provinces; Beasant worked in the rest of India.
• He was one of the strongest advocates of ‘self-rule’ (Swaraj). His famous slogan: “Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!”
• He came out with a four-point program of Swadeshi, boycott, national education, and Swarajya.
• He died on 1^st August 1920, from Heart Attack in Bombay at Sardar Griha.

Sedition Law

• • Sedition is punishable under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code. 
• • Throughout British rule, this clause was used to persecute national independence activists.
• • Currently, the SC has barred the state and central governments from bringing sedition charges against anyone under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code.
• • The order will remain in effect until the Centre re-examine this provision.

Tilak’s Books

• Geeta Rahsaya (1915)
• The Arctic Homes in the Vedas (1903)