domination by the Moghul empire. The
other festival was Ganesh Chaturthi,
which Tilak promoted as a visible way to
assert and celebrate a Hindu nationalist
identity during the time of British impe-
rial rule. Given British power, outright
rebellion was simply impossible, and
the British government heavily restricted
all forms of political dissent. The Ganesh
festival provided a way to circumvent
these restrictions because the British
had a long-standing policy of not inter-
fering with religious observances. Tilak
was imprisoned several times on the
charge of inciting political assassina-
tions, but he always returned directly to
the political fray. Aside from his political
agitation, his greatest intellectual work
is a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita,
a religious text, in which he stresses the
need for this-worldly activism to defeat
evil, including violence if necessary. See
also Moghul dynasty.
Time
For various articulations of time in tradi-
tional Hindu culture, see cosmic time,
calendar, and lunar month.
Tirruppavai
One of the two collections of poetry
composed by the poet-saint Andal
(9th c.), the other being the Nacciyar
Tirumoli. Andal was the only woman
among the Alvars, a group of twelve
poet-saints who lived in southern India
between the seventh and tenth cen-
turies. All of the Alvars were devotees
(bhakta) of the god Vishnu, and their
stress on passionate devotion (bhakti)
to a personal god, conveyed through
hymns sung in the Tamil language,
transformed and revitalized Hindu reli-
gious life. Andal’s chosen deity was
Ranganatha, the particular form of
Vishnu presiding at the temple of
Shrirangam, yet both collections of her
poetry are dedicated to Krishna, a dif-
ferent form of Vishnu.
This seeming divergence may reflect
her conviction that all manifestations of
Vishnu were the same or else may indi-
cate a difference between personal
devotion and literary expression.
Ranganatha was a specific form of
Vishnu presiding over a specific place—
which at the time was true for
most southern Indian temples—whereas
Krishna was a form of Vishnu for whom
there was already a large body
of literature, but who was not geograph-
ically limited. The contents of the
Tirruppavaiare poems of separation in
which Andal mourns the absence of
Krishna, using the language and images
of the forlorn lover, feverishly hoping for
Krishna’s return.Tirtha
(“crossing place”) The most general
name for any holy place. Just as a ford on
a riverbank provides a safe place to cross
from one side to the other, in the same
way a tirtha provides a way for one to
“cross over” from mundane life to a
sanctified one or, on an even greater
scale, to “cross over” from this ephemeral
and ever changing world to the
unchanging, blissful, final liberation of
the soul (moksha). Many tirthas are
actual places—and many of them are on
the shores of India’s sacred rivers, partic-
ularly the Ganges—and in its most col-
loquial meaning, the word tirtha
connotes a pilgrimage place. Yet the tra-
ditional pilgrimage literature is emphatic
that tirthas are not just restricted to
mere physical places: The word can also
refer to holy people (such as ascetics,
saints, gurus, and sages) as well as to
virtues such as charity, wisdom, com-
passion, and purityof heart.
A tirtha is first and foremost a place
or thing that gives one access to sanctity
and religious power, and in the case of
the physical places (rivers, mountains,
cities, temples, or images), this power is
accessible to all. Such holy places are
seen not only as giving easier access to
the divine but also as being areas where
religious merit is more readily and
bountifully obtained. When one surveys
the literature connected with certainTime