During his deportation to Mandalay in 1908 for allegedly publishing a…

Concept — In the colonial period a long term of imprisonment or deportation often became the setting in which a leader produced his major written work. Identifying such a work means matching three things that standard historical records fix together: the author, the place and years of the confinement, and the exact title of the text written there.

Application — Bal Gangadhar Tilak was convicted of sedition in July 1908 over articles carried by his Marathi weekly Kesari and was deported to Mandalay Jail in Burma, where he was held until 1914. During those six years he wrote his Marathi philosophical treatise Shrimad Bhagavad Gita Rahasya, known in short as Gita-Rahasya and subtitled Karma-Yoga-Shastra; it was published in 1915.

Why this title — Rahasya means the hidden essence. Tilak read the Bhagavad Gita as a call to Karma Yoga, that is to selfless duty-bound action rather than to renunciation, and that reading is the inner secret the title points to. The work is remembered as his principal contribution to Indian philosophical writing.

Cross-check the other titles

• Gita-Darshan: darshan means a philosophical vision or standpoint, and the phrase labels perspective-style expositions of the Gita, not the treatise written at Mandalay.

• Gita-Gyan: gyan means knowledge, and the phrase is a descriptive label for the teaching the Gita imparts.

• Gita-Sar: sar means the essence or gist, and the phrase is used for condensed summaries of the Gita.

Result — The 1915 publication date and the Karma-Yoga-Shastra subtitle both attach to Gita-Rahasya, which fixes it as the work written during the 1908 to 1914 Mandalay term.