This Quote Means: On Tilak’s birth anniversary, a look at ‘Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it’

It was in this unstinting pursuit of swaraj (self-governance, or freedom from foreign rule) that Tilak uttered his famous line: “Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it”.

Quotes by historical and political figures are a key part of the syllabus for the UPSC CSE paper.

Tilak’s stand on ‘swaraj’

Tilak was born on July 23, 1856. A lawyer, scholar, and journalist (he ran the newspaper Kesari in Marathi and Maratha in English), Tilak joined the Indian National Congress in 1890. Initially, his stance was not very different from that of the Congress, of demanding reforms and more rights for Indians, but not necessarily a total revolution.

AK Bhagwat and GP Pradhan write in their Lokmanya Tilak – A Biography, that though Tilak “used strong language in condemning governmental oppression or injustice he does not seem to have gone beyond the moderate demand of a few constitutional rights. In general, his articles [in Kesari and Maratha] lend support to the Congress demands from 1885 to 1895.”

In one crucial respect, Tilak was different from the Congress even in this period. As Bhagwat and Pradhan write, “Where the leaders of the Congress spoke in the high-flown 19th century English, imitating Burke and Macaulay, Tilak translated these thoughts in the homely idiom of the people.”

However, soon, Tilak grew impatient with the Congress’s moderate approach of prayers and petitions for a more just British rule. Along with Lala Lajpat Rai and Bipin Chandra Pal, Tilak became part of the Lal Bal Pal troika, which advocated complete freedom from the British as the goal, and the pursuit of unconstitutional means, including violence, to attain that goal. The chasm between the moderates and the extremists widened, and the Congress eventually split in 1907.

However, Tilak’s famous quote on Swaraj came in 1916, the year he rejoined the Congress after his conviction and imprisonment in a sedition case.

‘Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it’

Tilak was released from a six-year prison term in Mandalay in 1914, and plunged back into political life. By 1916, he had rejoined the Congress, signed the Lucknow Pact with Muhammad Ali Jinnah to find a way for Hindus and Muslims to work together, and founded the All India Home Rule League with GS Khaparde and Annie Besant. It was in 1916, in Belgaum in Karnataka, that Tilak is believed to have uttered his famous words of Swaraj being a birthright.

Tilak’s statement came in a milieu where many had come to believe that Indians, divided along caste and communal lines, were perhaps better off being governed by someone else. Apologists for the empire cited the progress made under the British — advent of the railways, more legal rights to oppressed classes, etc. — as proof that the British rule was in fact beneficial for India.

Tilak’s statement is a simple but complete counter of such sentiments: he says swaraj, or the right to govern oneself, is fundamental and he as an Indian was born with it. Indians didn’t have to prove they were capable of ruling themselves, or that they would govern themselves better than the British. Freedom was simply an inalienable birthright, and every Indian was entitled to that right.

Similar ideas had been laid down in The Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789 in France, which said freedom was a “natural and inalienable” right of every man, and that “The aim of every political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of Man”.

Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had referred to this statement by Tilak in a speech on July 23, 2007, when commemorative coins featuring Tilak were released on his 151st birth anniversary. “Tilak’s clarion call came as a breath of fresh air for our people and a nation’s straining at the leash of subjugation. It summoned from the depths of their hearts unprecedented energy and courage to stand up to the might of the British rule… The Swaraj that Tilak conceived and wanted to achieve was meant to liberate us, both from the yoke of foreign rule and from the exploitative social traditions indigenous to our country… His vision and his desire to achieve Swaraj through the mobilisation of common people constituted a turning point in our struggle for independence,” Singh said.

PM Narendra Modi also invoked this remark in 2018. Speaking in his Mann ki Baat programme around Tilak’s birth anniversary, PM Modi said, “Lokmanya Tilak evoked self-confidence among our countrymen and gave the slogan ‘Swaraj is our birthright and I shall have it’. Today is the time to say that good governance is our birthright and we will have it.”