As announced in 1954 in my biography of Dr. Ambedkar, I am presenting with great pleasure the life of Lokamanya Tilak. In his lifetime Tilak was a subject of bitter and long controversies. Now that the dust raised by those controversies has settled down and almost all the actors in the scene have departed this life, the time has arrived to study the life of this great man and to look at the events concerning his life, with an objective and dispassionate view.

I have tried in my usual way to keep the hero of the biography at the central place and have used history as the background against the picture. In conformity with the trends of modern biography I have selected out of the wealth of material only the most authentic information and facts, taking every care that the biography is not swollen with long, dull and unilluminating passages. And without violating the chronology of Tilak's life I have portrayed the evolution of his mind, the progress of his career and the impact of events and personalities on his mind. While thus fully delineating the development of his character and personality, I have also dealt with the various contributions he made in different fields of politics, journalism, philosophy and the national struggle for freedom. In short, this biography depicts all the lights and shades which mingled in the grand composition that the Lokamanya was.

Recently a few biographies have been published to commemorate the birth-centenary of Lokamanya Tilak. It is, however, felt that they are the refurbished versions of the older ones and have, as usual, subordinated the personality of Tilak to history. Besides, their perspective differs from mine. Most of them have, in their zeal to make Tilak and Gandhi appear alike, strained to shape Tilak in such a way as to fit him in Gandhian mood and methods. This is surely a great injustice to Tilak. It is history that Tilak, whose sole aim was to win back independence, cared more for the ends than for the means whereas Gandhi strove more after the purity than for the ends. That is why Tilak never condemned the revolutionaries using physical force against the British regime.

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