Narayan Vaman Tilak (6 December 1861 – 9 May 1919) was a Marathi poet from the Konkan region of then Bombay Presidency in British India, and a famous convert to Christianity from Chitpavan Brahmin Community.
Narayan Tilak was born into a Kokanastha Hindu family on 6 December 1861 in the village of Karajhgaon in Ratnagiri District of Bombay Presidency.
Unlike many of his Chitpavan Hindu caste fellows, (such as Mahadev Govind Ranade, Lokmanya Tilak, Gopal Krishna Gokhale) who made a name in 19th century Maharashtra after going to college in Pune and after that to England for higher studies in economics, and law, for example, Narayan Tilak never left India's shores for his entire life.
Probably because Narayan saw the intolerable situation of his own beloved mother, who was killed by his overbearing and heartless father, as well as that of Narayan's older sister Sakhu who had been married off by his orthodox Hindu father as a mere child, the first burning issue for Tilak was that of women's distress and suffering under an ironclad and religiously sanctioned patriarchy.
Tilak, on the other hand, as a brahmin traumatized by his father's abusive treatment of his mother and himself, and as one who had delved deep into the treasure troves of Hindu religion, as well as of Marathi and Sanskrit literatures, seems to have been more moderate and liberal in his outlook, and considered religious and social reform as a promising way to emancipate women and "shudras" in Maharashtra.
But nobody anticipated that the talented Pandit Narayan Vaman Tilak, Hindu patriot and sudharak in his own right, might unthinkably take the dread step of conversion to Christianity.
With the tremendous urgency of conversion creating mounting pressure on him, and with his health beginning to show signs of deterioration, Narayan Vaman Tilak did the unthinkable.
He was already highly respected as a poet, teacher, published writer, fervent and enlightened Hindu patriot and social reformer, and a dynamic spiritual leader.
Edward Sackett Hume's strict western-style discipline, he moved to Ahmednagar, a major center of the American Marathi Mission, at the invitation of Rev.
After going through various phases of keeping her distance from her reunited husband and his "untouchable" people, she finally opted to be baptized along with her son in 1900 at Rahuri.
He wrote voluminously in prose and verse and, due to the Romantic stamp of his secular poetry, was deemed the "Christian Wordsworth of Maharashtra."
It is an excellent source to understand the lives and personalities of both Narayan Tilak and Laxmi both before and after their conversion to Christianity in the American Marathi Mission.
Laxmi described how he would disappear at night to watch and participate in Dashavatari plays in the neighboring village of Gangapur and return in the wee hours of the morning.
As a child, he was strongly influenced by the religiosity of his mother Jankibai and his maternal grandfather who sang to little Narayan the songs of the Saint-poets of Maharashtra such as Dnyaneshvar, Namdev, Eknath, Tukaram, and Ramdas.
Then he waited for her cremation rites at the sacred pilgrimage center of Tryambakeshwar, after which Nana left his father and his family for good.
He was sitting on the banks of the Godavari contemplating his next move, when a local boy befriended him and brought him to his mother Yesubai Mayle.
Without a fuss, the good woman welcomed her son's newfound homeless friend into her home and arranged for his food with local brahmin families as he went to study at Bhatjicha Math.
His budding talent for poetry and elocution soon earned him fame in his mid-teens as well as the nickname "Maharashtra-kokil" (the sweet singing cuckoo of Maharashtra).
He was not stable in holding on to a job too long because his temperament as a seeker impelled him to search for guidance and role models in gurus (spiritual teachers), of whom there were at least three.
(He himself wrote and published poems in Marathi and Sanskrit from his years in Nashik and won many prizes in Maharashtrian cities for elocution.)
Under the patronage of Appasaheb Buti, he edited for a short while a Marathi magazine named Rushi (ऋषि), which was aimed at interpretation and discussion of Hindu religious matters.
In 1893, Tilak was travelling by train from Nagpur to Rajnandgaon, a princely state ruled by a Hindu priest, and located within the then Central Provinces of India, in search of employment.
Lakshmibai's ordeal is a remarkable story, as she was separated from Tilak for over 4 years before rejoining him, making a radical break with caste, and then embracing discipleship to Jesus.
After about ten years as a Christian he began expressing his faith in local idioms, particularly the poetic style of the Varkari Hindu sampradaya of Maharashtra.
But Tilak was a critic of traditional Christianity, and for the last two years of his life moved beyond the church to focus on developing a new brotherhood (that he called an ashram[2]) of baptized and unbaptized disciples of Jesus.