Bal Gangadhar Tilak Quotes

Bal Gangadhar Tilak or Lokmanya Tilak was an Indian nationalist, teacher, social reformer, lawyer, and independence activist. The British colonial authorities called him, “The father of the Indian unrest.” Tilak started the Home Rule League and championed the cause of freedom from alien rule.

Tilak, the architect of new India, was an eyesore to the British. Tilak started his own newspaper, Kesari which is published even today. He published an article in his newspaper Kesari opposing Rand, the assistant collector of Pune’s brutal methods of stopping the spread of plague.

Later, Rand was killed and Tilak was charged with incitement to murder and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment. When he emerged from the prison he was a national hero and earned the title of “Lokmanya” which literally meant “Beloved leader of the People“.

The lion of India and the uncrowned king of the country raised the stirring slogan: “Swarajya is my birthright and I shall have it!”. He worked and died for the emancipation of his motherland and ultimately became the main cause for liberating India from foreign domination. Patriotism was his religion, and India, the goddess he worshipped.

Some of the well-known golden words of LokmanyaTilak

• “Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it”. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• Religion and practical life are not different. To take sanyas (renunciation) is not to abandon life. The real spirit is to make the country, your family, and work together instead of working only for your own. The step beyond is to serve humanity and the next step is to serve God. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• After all, our Killers are our …Brothers!!?? – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• If we trace the history of any nation backwards into the past, we come at last to a period of myths and traditions that eventually fade away into impenetrable darkness. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• The problem is not the lack of resources or capability, but the lack of will. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• Freedom is my birthright. I must have it. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• Our nation is like a tree of which the original trunk is swarajya and the branches are swadeshi and boycott. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• If God is put up with untouchability, I will not call him God. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• Life is all about a card game. Choosing the right cards is not in our hands. But playing well with the cards in hand determines our success. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• It may be providence’s will that the cause I represent may prosper more by my suffering than by my remaining free. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• To be successful, you need family and friends but, to be very successful, you need enemies and competitors. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• The geologist takes up the history of the earth at the point where the archaeologist leaves it and carries it further back into remote antiquity. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• Progress is implied in independence. Without self-government neither industrial progress is possible, nor the educational scheme will be useful to the nation. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak

• The most practical teaching of the Gita and one for which it is of abiding interest and value to the men of the world with whom life is a series of struggles is not to give way to any morbid sentimentality when duty demands sternness and the boldness to face terrible things. – Bal Gangadhar Tilak