(born July 23, 1856, Ratnagiri, India—died Aug. 1, 1920, Bombay) Indian scholar and nationalist. Born to a middle-class Brahman family, Tilak taught mathematics and in 1884 founded the Deccan Education Society to help educate the masses.
Through two weekly newspapers, he voiced his criticisms of British rule in India, hoping to widen the popularity of the nationalist movement beyond the upper classes. In response to the Partition of Bengal (1905) he initiated a boycott of British goods and passive resistance, two forms of protest later adopted by Mohandas K. Gandhi. He left the Indian National Congress in 1907 when he was deported for sedition but rejoined in 1916, in time to sign a Hindu-Muslim accord with Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Though militant in his opposition to foreign rule, late in life Tilak advocated a measure of cooperation with the British in order to achieve reforms.
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