Ethnicity, religion, and language: Locating nationalism and nation in the political thought of Bal Gangadhar Tilak

Abstract

Cultural nationalism is a variant of ethnic nationalism, and in Tilak's thoughts, there was a fusion of cultural, ethnic, and religious nationalism. Tilak endorsed the Indo-Aryan culture to proclaim the ethnic identity of Hindus for social assimilation, which was necessary to articulate a movement for political autonomy. He was a political pragmatist and shrewd strategist. He constantly shifted his stand on what represents India and lacked consistency in his ideas. His thoughts underwent paradigm shifts over the decades. His nationalist thoughts must be examined in three major timelines to understand them: from 1875 to 1890, 1891 to 1907, and 1914 to 1920. Tilak emphasised not only developing common characters for all Indian languages but eventually developing a common national language. The present paper tries to analyse the nationalist political narratives of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and how he employed resources such as ethnicity, religion, and language to construct the idea of nationalism and nationalism for colonized Indian society.