Life And Times Of Lokamanya Tilak

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Bal Gangadhar Tilak, one of the trio of Lal-Bal-Pal, was a leader of masses and for the masses. His eminence in the Indian freedom struggle is well- known, he advocated the militancy in the approach of Congress towards government, rejected the policy of prayers and petition which the earlier leaders of the Congress were pursuing. On the one hand while he was fighting with the British government for Swaraj, giving the slogan "Swaraj is my birth- right and I shall have it", on the other he was a social reformer also, deeply involved in removing the social ills of the then Maharashtrian society. He founded the Maratha and Kesari two newspapers to publish his views and criticise the policy of the British government, he also started the Shivaji festivals and Ganpati festivals in Maharashtra to revitalize the society. This book originally written in Marathi, (shortly afterwards the death of Tilak) by N.C. Kelkar is the authentic biography of Lokmanya Balgangadhar Tilak. This book was translated into English by D.V. Divekar and first published in 1928. So this book portrays with comparative freshness the then prevalent situation and atmosphere of Indian politics, social life, the struggle within and the struggle outside, not in the past tense of historians, but the present tense of the biographer, who admirably draws the biographic picture of Tilak in a refined manner.

I am very much thankful to my friend and co-worker Mr. D. V. Divekar for having given an English garb to the first volume of the biography of the late Lokamanya Tilak which I wrote and published in Marathi in 1923. Ordinarily, one would like himself to translate his own book in a different language or to re-write it independently. But in this case I was busy with the preparation for completing this biography, which I have done this year by bringing out the companion volumes II & III of the Marathi work. And I am glad to announce that Mr. Divekar intends soon to follow up his present book with another, and a bigger one, in which the life-story of Lokamanya Tilak will be taken up and carried to the end.

It goes without saying that every language has got a genius of its own, and for that reason the original and the translation of any literary work must occasionally differ in the resulting sense and expression. But this is not so vital where a biography is concerned, which is written mostly in a historical spirit and a narrative form, as it may be in the case of literature whose literary form is its very essence. Moreover, I have satisfied myself that Mr. Divekar being very well acquainted with both Marathi and English, has done his best to make his English rendering of the original Marathi as faithful as possible, even considering the fact that he had necessarily to condense the original matter a good deal in places where there was too much of detail of a local character or mannerism or special allusion which might defy translation.

As I have said above, Mr. Divekar has in this book given an English garb to the original Marathi. The sartorial art is a difficult art in itself. And the difficulty increases when for a man of one nationality, a dress of a different nationality has got to be planned and fitted. But the difficulty in the present special case is, I think, tempered by the fact that in so far as Mr. Divekar has paid his attention more to the original purpose of dress, viz., comfort in use than outward ornamentation, the Indian reader, at any rate, would be prepared to approach his book from the same point of view. He would care less for the manner than the matter of expression. The reader would like only to go straight into the spirit of the translation for the sake of the biographical matter it may contain and would not stop on the way, like a fastidious idler, to look at and criticize and find fault with things simply to gratify his own literary egotism.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages