Lokmanya Tilak was on the side the extremists in the Congress party and his disagreement with the pacifists were so sharp that the Congress Meet at Surat (1907) got aborted and the extremists did not attend any of the Congress meets till 1916. Tilak attacked the Congress and the government alike for their policy of violence. And the government replied by arresting him for his vitriolic writings and punished with a fine of 1000 rupees and exile for six years. The working class of Bombay protested against the order by striking work and the police fired at the protesters and killed 15 of them. Tilak was sent to the Mandalay prison in Burma. It was during this period in prison that Tilak wrote out his famous book, the Secret of the Gita.

Balagangadhara Tilak did not agree with Gandhi in the question of supporting the war efforts of Britain. While Gandhi was for the support, forgetting all about the past, Tilak opposed it saying that if the people’s demand was not met, no question of any support to Britain.  Though he was elected President of the Congress in 1918, he was not able to assume the chair as he was traveling to London to file a suit of defamation against an English author whose passages against him in his book ’Indian Unrest’. He lost the case. And he died in 1920.