Revision summary
Tilak used Kesari (Marathi) and Mahratta (English) from 1881 as nationalist organisation. The 1897 Rand-plague trial and the 1908 Mandalay sentence made him the leading press prisoner. Section 124A was shown as a gag on political comment, not only on violence. Home Rule later carried the same papers into mass swaraj teaching. Press freedom for him was a political right, not a commercial privilege.
Model answer
Introduction
Bal Gangadhar Tilak treated the newspaper as a political school and a right against colonial gagging. His contribution to press freedom is Kesari and Mahratta, two sedition trials, and a public defence of comment on government as swaraj work.
Body
Papers as political instruments
- Tilak and associates launched Kesari in Marathi and Mahratta in English in 1881, so nationalist argument could reach both vernacular readers and the English-educated layer.
- Editorials on the plague measures, the Congress, and swaraj used the press as organisation, not only as news, which is why the state treated his papers as a political threat.
- He argued that a subject people must criticise officials in print; that claim is the core of his press-freedom struggle.
Sedition trials and the law
- After the 1897 killing of Pune plague officer Rand, Tilak’s Kesari articles led to a sedition conviction under Section 124A and eighteen months’ imprisonment; the case advertised that political comment could be punished as disaffection.
- In 1908, after the Muzaffarpur bomb, further Kesari writing brought a six-year sentence and deportation to Mandalay, making him the most famous press prisoner of the extremist phase.
- The trials turned 124A and the legacy of vernacular press controls into a national issue; Tilak’s courtroom and paper together taught that swaraj included the right to print opposition.
- Home Rule later used the same papers to popularise “Swaraj is my birthright,” so press freedom and mass politics remained one campaign.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD T[Tilak] --> K[Kesari Mahratta 1881] K --> S[Sedition 1897 1908] S --> L[Section 124A] K --> H[Home Rule swaraj]
Conclusion
Tilak’s contribution is the bilingual nationalist paper, the 1897 and 1908 sedition convictions that exposed Section 124A, and the teaching that comment on the Raj is a political right. Press freedom in his hands was not a trade demand but a method of swaraj.
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Did Tilak demand only commercial press liberty?
No. He treated the paper as a nationalist school and as the right to criticise officials, which is why sedition law was used against him.
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Were Kesari and Mahratta the same paper?
No. Kesari was Marathi and Mahratta English, launched together in 1881 to reach two reading publics.
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