Person1856 – 1920

Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Radical leader of the Indian National Congress who declared "Swaraj is my birthright" and led the movement against the partition of Bengal

In Poona he published the Marathi paper Kesari and the English paper Mahratta, criticizing British rule. He turned the Ganesh and Shivaji festivals into mass gatherings that awakened national feeling. Leader of the radicals against the Congress moderates, he was convicted of sedition in 1908 and spent six years in prison in Mandalay, Burma. In 1916 he founded the Home Rule League, and he was hailed as "Lokmanya", the leader esteemed by the people.

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1905 – 1911Partition of Bengal and the Swadeshi Movementleader
When Britain split Bengal, heartland of Indian nationalism, into Hindu- and Muslim-majority halves, the Indian National Congress answered with four resolutions: boycott, swadeshi, swaraj and national education.

People who appear alongside

Lord Curzon1859 – 1925
British statesman who, as Viceroy of India (1899–1905), ordered the partition of Bengal in 1905

Themes this person appears in

Imperialism and the Partition of the World1839 – 1914
From the Tanzimat to Sarajevo — seventy-five years in which the powers carved up West Asia, India, Southeast Asia, Africa and the Pacific, and the peoples there answered with reform and resistance