How two parallel Home Rule Leagues, led by Tilak and Annie Besant, pushed India's demand for self-government beyond the Congress's traditional support base.
Inspired by the Irish Home Rule movement, Bal Gangadhar Tilak launched the Indian Home Rule League at Pune in April 1916, focused on Maharashtra, Karnataka, the Central Provinces and Berar. Annie Besant, a British theosophist based in India, founded a parallel Home Rule League at Madras in September 1916, covering the rest of the country. Both organisations demanded self-government (Home Rule) for India within the British Empire — a step short of full independence, but a significant escalation from the Congress's earlier, more moderate petitioning.
The movement used newspapers (Besant's New India and Commonweal, Tilak's Kesari and Mahratta), public meetings, and local reading-room branches to build a genuinely mass base for the first time, reaching students, professionals and provincial townspeople rather than just the English-educated elite. Besant was interned by the British government in 1917 for her activities, which only intensified public support and led to her election as Congress President later that same year.
APPSC tests the founding dates, cities and regional divisions of Tilak's and Besant's Leagues, and the movement's place as a bridge between the Moderate-Extremist era and Gandhi's arrival on the national stage after 1919 — it directly set the stage for the mass movements covered in the Gandhian era.
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