Bal Gangadhar Tilak was born on this day (21 July) in Ratnagiri in the coastal belt of Maharashtra. He was popularly called the ‘Father of Indian Unrest’, because the British called him so, as he successfully created unrest those days against the British government. He was a great force of India’s freedom struggle.
The prefix ‘Lokmanya’ was used before his name because his leadership was readily and widely accepted by the people, not only of Maharashtra, but of the entire country.
Today, in our History text books, we read about three people — the trio— Lal, Bal, Pal and they were Lala Lajpat Rai from Punjab, Bal Gangadhar Tilak from Maharashtra and Bipin Chandra Pal from Bengal. They were very popular as they could create unrest against the British hegemony during British imperialistic rule in India, and it’s due to these people that we could see this Independence.
It’s our sacred duty to pay tribute to all our freedoms fighters, who sacrificed everything for the Motherland. And, Tilak was a leading light among the freedom fighters. He was a versatile and multifaceted genius.
Science as a Tool of Exploitation
Today Vijnana Bharati (Vibha) has come forward to pay tribute to Lokmanya Tilak not only as a great freedom fighter but for one big thing, which he had identified. He identified that the British invaded India by using science as a tool. Vibha is looking at this freedom struggle in a different manner by revisiting Swatantrata Andolan and re-studying the struggle.
A number of invaders attacked India, with the goal to demolish the identity of this country by using ideas, strategy and tools. In the medieval period, Bakhtiyar Khilji attacked the seat of our learning — Nalanda and demolished the entire university. His intention was to destroy the identity of India, so that the people would forget their own identity, lose self-esteem and become his slaves. But the Britishers were different from all the previous invaders, in terms of methods and tools.
The tool the British used against us was science. Dr Rajesh Kochar, a scientist and astrophysicist (unfortunately, he died six months ago), did a lot of studies on science in recent times, which was related to British advent in India till today. His research article titled — ‘Science utilised as a tool to consolidate colonial power in India’— tells us the real story of British invasion. Another author, Dr Asish Nandy in his article mentioned how British colonisers used a kind of ‘black magic’ that was developed on the theories and discussions of modern science to impress the minds of the natives. And, this is how the British used science as a weapon to subjugate India, to demolish our identity and jeopardise our uniqueness. Tilak could identify this design of British attack.
How British Demeaned India
Despite gaining independence and our people ruling the country, the dominion of Western Science still exists in this country. Even when we are completing 75 years of Swatantrata, we are not in a position to come out of that influence. We need to understand this fact.
Lokmanya Tilak was a great visionary who understood this. He was the one who put forward through his own life the example to counter scientific challenge of British people through science.
We all know several things about Tilak as a freedom fighter in many fields, different walks of life, but we really are not aware about his scientific endeavour to challenge British intellectual hegemony.
The British wanted to claim their superiority and they were abusing Indians as most inferior people on this planet. They said Indian knowledge is most regressive in nature. We all know how Britishers used to abuse and demean India — as snake charmers, and what not. They said that Indians lived, though they lived for long for eons together, but they were immersed in all kinds of blind faith.
They claimed that Indians and India had no connection with reason-based knowledge creation and wasn’t based on rational thinking. For claiming their superiority they used to say, “You are a dwarf in front of us. Your knowledge is so little compared to European knowledge, especially British knowledge.” They wanted to prove that with many examples.
One particular thing we should know: They said the Aryans invaded this country and they pushed back original Indians, and they became sole rulers of this country. So as Aryans came from outside, we (British) are also outsiders.
The British wanted to legitimise their rule over Indians by saying that we’re giving you great gifts, which are science and technology — a new and most useful knowledge for people.
To demean Indian knowledge, Macaulay made a statement that existing Sanskrit and Persian texts were of little use for ‘useful learning’. And useful knowledge is science … science is useful for life and that’s totally absent in India’s knowledge system. They made such statements to legitimise their stay and their rule in India. They wanted to give the message to Indians that they were here to uplift Indians and take them to new heights, so that Indians could progress further.
Western thought claims that this entire creation of universe took place 4004 years before the birth of Jesus Christ . It is clearly mentioned in all the texts of Western theology. That’s their claim. All of you are aware that modern science claims that Big Bang took place 13.8 billion years ago but despite that they continue to claim that creation of universe took place hardly 6000 years ago!
How Tilak Organised Indian Science
Tilak was a great mathematician and he wrote a book on Arithmetic, which is used in Maharashtra. He took up the challenge to prove that India was much ahead of European idea of creation. He wanted to prove the superiority of India and Indians against the British claim by using science. He was not just a Mathematician; he was a great astronomer too. He could reform almanacs those were present in those days in Maharashtra. In those days there were 60 almanacs. Tilak brought astrologers together and made a Parishad of Jyotishis (a council of astrologers). Thereafter he came out with a reformed new almanac by using science called Tilak Panchang..
As he was also a Sanskrit scholar, he studied Vedas focussing on position of astral bodies mentioned in Vedas; and based on those descriptions he endeavoured to calculate time at that particular time. On the basis of his calculations, he could actually calculate and proved through astronomy and mathematics — that this particular part of Rigveda was written 4,500 years before the birth of Christ. So, it was 5,000 years before the birth of Christ. He claimed that it was not a sudden outbreak of knowledge; there has to be some tradition of knowledge for that. He kept on investigating using science and mathematics as a tool and he could date the origin of our Vedas to 8000 years.
Tilak’s first book on science was published in 1892, titled The Orion(Murga Nakshatra). He could relate that vernal equinox was there when this particular constellation was there in the sky in that period. Consequently, he literally proved with all evidences that the particular verse in Rigveda was scripted in 4500 BC.
Even today, people are learning or trying to know many things by referring to that book.
The most famous article about this book The Orion, has been written by one of the greatest living scientists of India, Dr Jayant Vishnu Narlikar, and it’s available on Internet. Everyone should read this article to know how with great respect Narlikar described the efforts of Tilak.
Through another book with the same idea, Artic Home in Vedas, Tilak tried to prove, based on scientific evidences, that the Aryan race didn’t come from the western side and at that point of time the home of the Aryans was at the Artic region. The Aryans travelled to three different parts of the world from there — India, Persia and Greece. Tilak wanted to claim the superiority of Indians over the British. He was the first one to date many historical events on the basis of science and by using astronomical methods in the history of modern era. This great contribution was to prove the superiority of India over the British; to challenge the British hegemonic attitude.
British Loot of Indian Economy
Most versatile and multifaceted genius, Lokmanya Tilak proved how the British looted us. It has been scientifically being proved that while the British ruled this country for 190 years, they looted our country of $45 trillion. Government estimates that size of our economy by 2030 should be $5 trillion, which shows the British looted nine times to our national aspiration today.
By studying all these facts, Tilak opined that we should industrialise our country and he promoted the concept of Swadeshi. As one of the proponents of this concept, which was conceptualised by Lal-Bal-Pal, he said that we should achieve self-reliance in every walk of life, and economic domain of our country should be strengthened based on modern industry.
A big example is that of a glass factory, which we have before us at Talegaon near Pune. Incidentally, the UN has declared this year (2022) as the International Year of Glass and Ceramics.
Tilak envisaged how we can use science to make glass in our industry and encouraged people to go to Japan to learn how the Japanese, without taking any European help, developed their industry with their own science and technology.
The India House in Japan was under Govind Poddar from Maharashtra. He connected Indian youngsters who visited Japan those days, to learn from or work with different Japanese industries.
A fund was created in India those days — a crowd sourcing kind of idea. The objective was that people would contribute paisa in that fund to free India from the clutches of British rule.
That Paisa Fund, which a kind of weapon against the British rule, was utilised in building industries so that we could prevent import of goods from Britain. The first factory that was built from the capital of this Paisa Fund was the Paisa Fund Glass Factory, which exists even today at Talegaon. The aim was to make Indians self-reliant, with international links.
Scientist-Freedom Fighters
A great proponent of the Bhagavad Gita, Tilak wrote treatises on Gita called Gita Rahasya while he was in Mandalay jail for six years. It has been translated in 70 languages. He insisted on the theory of Karma in the Gita. His stress was on Karma Yoga in his treatises on Gita.
In the prelude to commentary on Gita, Tilak wrote extensively on science.
What is ‘field’ according Indian knowledge system? Lokmanya Tilak wrote extensively about field; how science evolved in India; what are the basis of science, what’s Panchamahabhuta, Sankhya Darshan (theory of evolution), etc. He made us understand how we should know Gita.
Freedom struggle was not just a political struggle or about politics alone; Tilak and other stalwarts like him used Indian knowledge system and science to claim India’s superiority against the British intellectual hegemony.
Vijnana Bharati has come forward and is trying to highlight and shed light on these aspects of great people like Lokmanya Tilak, who were patriots and visionaries as well for Swatantra Bharat.
We are still under the influence of western science and unless we come out of it, we won’t be able to progress in the right direction. The need of the hour is to regain the lost glory of our Indian science and this celebration of the 75th year of Swatantrata has given us an opportunity to revisit our freedom struggle, revisit great lives of our patriots and understand their great ideas about Independent India.
Generally, people don’t look up to these great leaders of freedom struggle like Lokmanya Tilak as scientists. They were scientists. So, let’s look at them with a different eye.
