He formed a close alliance with many Indian National Congress leaders including Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Ghose, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

At one stage in his political life he was called "the father of Indian unrest" by British author Sir Valentine Chirol.

The British Indian Army was brought in to deal with the emergency and strict measures were employed to curb the plague, including the allowance of forced entry into private houses, the examination of the house's occupants, evacuation to hospitals and quarantine camps, removing and destroying personal possessions, and preventing patients from entering or leaving the city.

Following this, on 22 June 1897, Commissioner Rand and another British officer, Lt. Ayerst were shot and killed by the Chapekar brothers and their other associates.

[20] Tilak opposed the moderate views of Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and was supported by fellow Indian nationalists Bipin Chandra Pal in Bengal and Lala Lajpat Rai in Punjab.

He was the first Congress leader to suggest that Hindi written in the Devanagari script be accepted as the sole national language of India.

The Bombay lawyer Muhammad Ali Jinnah appeared in Tilak's defence but he was sentenced to six years in prison in Burma in a controversial judgement.

There are higher powers that rule the destinies of men and nations; and I think, it may be the will of Providence that the cause I represent may be benefited more by my suffering than by my pen and tongue.Muhammad Ali Jinnah was his lawyer in the case.

He welcomed The Indian Councils Act, popularly known as Minto-Morley Reforms, which had been passed by British Parliament in May 1909, terming it as "a marked increase of confidence between the Rulers and the Ruled".

He was eager for reconciliation with Congress and had abandoned his demand for direct action and settled for agitations "strictly by constitutional means" – a line that had long been advocated by his rival Gokhale.

[34][additional citation(s) needed] Tilak reunited with his fellow nationalists and rejoined the Indian National Congress during the Lucknow pact 1916.

After years of trying to reunite the moderate and radical factions, he gave up and focused on the Home Rule League, which sought self-rule.

Tilak started his Home Rule League in Maharashtra, Central Provinces, and Karnataka and Berar region.

However, this conflicted with the mainstream exegesis of the text at the time which was dominated by renunciate views and the idea of acts purely for God.

[41] Tilak was strongly opposed to liberal trends emerging in Pune such as women's rights and social reforms against untouchability.

[42][43][44] Tilak vehemently opposed the establishment of the first Native girls High school (now called Huzurpaga) in Pune in 1885 and its curriculum using his newspapers, the Mahratta and Kesari.

[46] In the case of Deshasthas, Chitpawans and Karhades, he encouraged these three Maharashtrian Brahmin groups to give up "caste exclusiveness" and intermarry.

On 4 March 1887, Justice Farran, using interpretations of Hindu laws, ordered Rukhmabai to "go live with her husband or face six months of imprisonment".

He blamed the girl for having "defective female organs" and questioned how the husband could be "persecuted diabolically for doing a harmless act".

[11] Tilak refused to sign a petition for the abolition of untouchability in 1918, two years before his death, although he had spoken against it earlier in a meeting.

"[f]Shahu, the ruler of the princely state of Kolhapur, had several conflicts with Tilak as the latter agreed with the Brahmins decision of Puranic rituals for the Marathas that were intended for Shudras.

He commented: ‘If we can prove to the non-Brahmins, by example, that we are wholly on their side in their demands from the Government, I am sure that in times to come their agitation, now based on social inequality, will merge into our struggle.’‘If a God were to tolerate untouchability, I would not recognize him as God at all.’[60]Tilak started two weeklies, Kesari ("The Lion") in Marathi and Mahratta in English (sometimes referred as 'Maratha' in Academic Study Books) in 1880–1881 with Gopal Ganesh Agarkar as the first editor.

[citation needed] In 1894, Tilak transformed the household worshipping of Ganesha into a grand public event (Sarvajanik Ganeshotsav).

Students often would celebrate Hindu and national glory and address political issues; including patronage of Swadeshi goods.

[citation needed] The events like the Ganapati festival and Shiv Jayanti were used by Tilak to build a national spirit beyond the circle of the educated elite in opposition to colonial rule.

(This second title was published in French after L'Origine Polaire de la Tradition védique (the translation of Tilak's work The Arctic Home in the Vedas), but is in fact the introduction to it, as confirmed by the original English editions).

[73][74] Given his liberal and rational thoughts, Shridhar Tilak was subjected to a lot of harassment by conservatives in Maharashtra region of that period.

Later Dr. Ambedkar wrote – “If anyone who is worthy of the title Lokamanya, it is Shridharpant Tilak.”[77][78][79] Shridhar's son, Jayantrao Tilak (1921–2001) was editor of the Kesari newspaper for many years.

[86][87] The formal approval of the government of Burma was received for the construction of clafs-cum-lecture hall in the Mandalay prison as a memorial to Lokmanya Tilak.

Balmohan Vidyamandir, a prominent secondary school in the neighbourhood of Shivaji Park in Mumbai, is jointly named in honour of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Bal-Mohan).