E-Book - Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi – His Life & TimesWest is West, and if the twain cannot meet, they said, it is because East wasslave and West was master.In Toward Freedom, an autobiography, Jawaharlal Nehru writes that in 1907, atseventeen, when he had just gone to Cambridge from Harrow, he was anextremist. In fact, speaking of the Indian students, he says, 'Almost withoutexception we were Tilakites or Extremists.'Bal Gangadhar Tilak, known as 'Lokmanya' or 'Respected by the People', playeda key role in the development of the Indian independence movement and inGandhi's life.Tilak was a high-degree Brahman, a Chitpawan Brahman, from Poona in theland of the Marathas, the last Indian folk to be conquered by the British. TheMarathas are highlanders who many times in their history descended into thelowlands, notably into Gandhi's homeland Gujarat, to dominate the lessbellicose peoples of the plains. Once, these fighting Hindus captured MoslemDelhi; they remained foes of Islam.Tilak inaugurated an annual festival to celebrate King Shivaji (born 1627, died1680) who brought new triumphs to the Maratha empire. He wrote a mostscholarly commentary the Gita and defended every orthodox tenet and practiceof Hinduism, including child marriage. He branded as a puppet any Indian whoworked for the British. He exposed the emptiness of British concessions toIndian Home-Rule aspirations.Tilak's fierce imprecations, the British charged, stirred a young ChitpawanBrahman to assassinate a British official on June 27, 1897, the day of QueenVictoria's Diamond Jubilee, and Tilak was condemned to two years in prison.Liberated before the end of his term, he resumed his Hindu religious agitationwhich, while aimed at the British, did not, to say the least, improve relationsbetween Hindus and Moslems.Hindu passions continued to simmer. Indian nationalism found food in numerousevents at home and abroad; the hollowness of British reforms nurtured it and sodid the Japanese defeat of the Russians in the 1904-05 war (the first time awww.mkgandhi.org Page 195