When a Congress session erupted in 1907, Gokhale shielded his chief rival
At Surat in 1907, India's nationalist movement split in chaos, with chairs broken and shoes thrown at the platform. As a crowd surged toward Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the leader of the radicals, his moderate opponent Gopal Krishna Gokhale stepped up beside him to protect him. Their rivalry was deep; so was their mutual respect.
Gokhale was born in 1866 in a village in Ratnagiri district, in a family that was poor but determined he would learn English. He graduated from Elphinstone College in 1884, among the first generations of Indians with a university education, and admired Western liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and Edmund Burke. The reformer Mahadev Govind Ranade treated him as a protege, and Gokhale joined the Indian National Congress in 1889.
Tilak's career mirrored his almost exactly: the same college, the same work as a mathematics professor, the same education society. Their methods diverged. Gokhale sought self-government through constitutional means and dialogue with the British; Tilak preached protest, boycott and agitation. The clash sharpened over the Age of Consent Bill of 1891 to 1892, which raised the age of consent from ten to twelve. Gokhale backed it to curb child marriage; Tilak objected not to reform itself but to British interference in Hindu custom, arguing Indians should reform themselves after independence. At Surat, the factions fought over the presidency and the Congress broke in two.
Gokhale served on the Bombay Legislative Council from 1899 and the Imperial Council from 1901, where his statistically detailed budget speeches stood out. He played a leading role in bringing about the Morley-Minto Reforms, an early step toward constitutional change. As Congress president in 1905 he founded the Servants of India Society, which trained volunteers to serve the country and ran mobile libraries, schools and night classes for factory workers; it survives today with a small membership. He also campaigned against sending Indian indentured labourers abroad, calling the contracts fundamentally unequal.
Often remembered as Mahatma Gandhi's political mentor, Gokhale died on 19 February 1915, reportedly wishing on his deathbed to see Congress reunited. Tilak, by then released from prison, wrote a glowing tribute to him in his newspaper Kesari.
Source: Gopal Krishna Gokhale
