Kesari and Mahratta

Also called: Kesari · Topic: The National Movement: Gandhian Era · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 5 "Print Culture and the Modern World"; Class 12, Ch 3 "Mahatma Gandhi and the Nationalist Movement"

Meaning

Kesari (Marathi for "lion") was a Marathi newspaper, and Mahratta was its English partner. Both were started in Pune in 1881 by Bal Gangadhar Tilak, working with Gopal Ganesh Agarkar and Vishnushastri Chiplunkar. Under Tilak, the two papers became the main voice of militant (Extremist) nationalism in western India. They showed that a newspaper in an Indian language could take politics to people who did not read English, and they twice sent their editor to jail.

Explanation

Background: why the papers were started

• Early Indian nationalism was mostly for the educated few. It was led by lawyers, doctors and landowners who wrote and spoke in English. [3]
• Tilak, Agarkar and Chiplunkar wanted to reach ordinary Maharashtrians. They started two papers in January 1881:
• Kesari, in Marathi, for the common reader.

• Mahratta, in English, for educated Indians and for British officials.

• The same group also worked to spread modern education in Pune. This work later led to the Deccan Education Society.

• The founders soon split. Agarkar wanted social reform to come first. Tilak wanted political freedom to come first. Agarkar left and started his own reform paper, Sudharak. After that, Tilak ran Kesari and Mahratta himself.

Main features

• Two languages, one message. Kesari spoke to the masses in their own language. Mahratta made the same case in English.
• Sharp criticism of British rule. The papers attacked colonial policies directly. They did not follow the polite, petition-writing style of the Moderates (leaders who wanted steady, lawful pressure).
• Using culture to build politics. Through Kesari, Tilak promoted public Ganapati and Shivaji festivals from the 1890s. These festivals brought large crowds together for national feeling.
• Voice of "Lal, Bal and Pal". These papers carried the views of the militant group in Congress: Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal.

How the government struck back

• 1897: first sedition trial. Tilak was jailed for about 18 months for Kesari articles written during the plague years in Pune. Sedition means words that stir people up against the government.
• 1908: second trial. Tilak wrote in Kesari, with great sympathy, about revolutionaries who had been punished. He was sentenced to six years in jail at Mandalay in Burma.
• The arrest caused protests all over India.
• NCERT uses this case to show how the colonial state tried to control the Indian-language press.

Results and what came after

• Kesari proved that a local-language paper could turn readers into a political public.
• It helped make Swadeshi-era militant nationalism popular (Swadeshi means using Indian-made goods and boycotting British ones).
• Tilak's slogan, "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it", spread widely through his writings and speeches. Swaraj means self-rule.
• After Tilak died in 1920, Kesari kept publishing into the Gandhian years. Gandhi then reached the masses through his own papers.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: founded in 1881. Most active as a militant paper from the 1890s to 1920, before Gandhi became the main leader.
• Place: Pune (Poona) in the Bombay Presidency, the heart of Marathi-speaking western India.
• Key people:
• Bal Gangadhar Tilak: editor and the main voice of both papers.
• G.G. Agarkar: co-founder who later left over social reform.

• Vishnushastri Chiplunkar: co-founder and Marathi writer.

• How we know:

• The papers' own back issues.
• Court records of Tilak's 1897 and 1908 sedition trials.
• Colonial reports that watched the "native press".

• NCERT Class 10, Ch 5 Print Culture and the Modern World, which tells the 1908 Kesari story.

• Context in our notes: Gandhi returned in January 1915 to an India where Congress had two camps. Tilak, through Kesari, led the militant camp. [2]

Don't confuse with

• Sudharak: Agarkar's own paper, started after he left Kesari. Its main aim was social reform, not Tilak's politics-first agenda.
• Young India and Navajivan: these were Gandhi's papers of the Gandhian era. They were not Tilak's papers.
• Indian Opinion: Gandhi's paper in South Africa, not in Pune.
• Bengalee and Amrita Bazar Patrika: nationalist papers from Bengal. Kesari and Mahratta belong to Maharashtra (Pune).

Prelims Hooks

• Kesari = Marathi; Mahratta = English. Both were started in 1881 in Pune.
• Founders: Tilak, Agarkar and Chiplunkar. Trap: Gokhale was not a founder.
• 1908: Tilak was jailed for six years at Mandalay for writing with sympathy about revolutionaries in Kesari.
• Pairs: Kesari goes with Tilak; Sudharak goes with Agarkar; Young India goes with Gandhi; Indian Opinion goes with Gandhi in South Africa.
• "Lal, Bal and Pal" were the militant trio of the Swadeshi years. "Bal" is Tilak, the editor of Kesari.

Mains Points

• The press as a tool of mass politics.
• Kesari carried nationalism beyond the English-speaking elite of lawyers, doctors and landowners [3] to readers of Marathi.

• Gandhi later went much further in reaching the people. Kesari helped prepare the ground for him.

• Colonial control and Indian resistance.

• The 1897 and 1908 trials show that the British treated the Indian-language press as a danger.

• Each trial made Tilak more popular and turned the arrest of an editor into a cause for the whole country.

• The debate inside nationalism.

• The Tilak–Agarkar split asked whether India should seek political freedom first or social reform first.
• Gandhi later tried to do both together: he combined the swaraj struggle with work on caste, gender and Hindu–Muslim unity.

Related concepts

• Mahatma Gandhi
• Gandhi in South Africa
• Natal Indian Congress
• Indian Opinion
• Phoenix Settlement
• Tolstoy Farm
• Indian National Congress
• Moderates
• Extremists
• Lal Bal Pal

Read more

• Gandhi's arrival: South Africa, the India of 1915, the BHU announcement