THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT

With the start of the Swadeshi Movement at the turn of the

century, the Indian national movement took a major leap

forward. Women, students and a large section of the urban and

rural population of Bengal and other parts of India became

actively involved in politics for the first time. The next half a

decade saw the emergence of almost all the major political trends

of the Indian national movement. From conservative moderation

to political extremism, from terrorism to incipient socialism, from

petitioning and public speeches to passive resistance and

boycott, all had their origins in the movement. The richness of

the movement was not confined to politics alone. The period saw

a breakthrough in Indian ã1 literature, music, science and

industry. Indian society, as a ‘hole, was experimenting and the

creativity of the people expanded in every direction.

The Swadeshi Movement had its genesis in the antipartition movement which was started to oppose the British

decision to partition Bengal There was no questioning the fact

that Bengal with a population of78 million (about a quarter of the

population of British India) had indeed become administratively

unwieldy. Equally there was no escaping the fact that the real

motive or partitioning Bengal was political. Indian nationalism

was gaining in strength and partition expected to weaken what

was perceived as the nerve centre of Indian nationalism at that

time. The attempt, at that time in the words of Lord Curzon, the

Viceroy (1899-1905) was to ‘dethrone Calcutta’ from its position

as the ‘centre from which the Congress Party is manipulated

throughout Bengal, and indeed which the Congress Party centre

of successful intrigue’ and ‘divide ,the Bengali speaking

population.’ Risley, the Home Secretary to the Government of

India, was more blunt. He said on 6 December 1904: ‘Bengal

united, is power, Bengal divided, will pull several different ways. That is what the Congress leaders feel: their apprehensions are

perfectly correct and they form one of the great merits of the

scheme...in this scheme... one of our main objects is to split up

and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule.’

Curzon reacted sharply to the almost instant furore that

was raised in Bengal over the partition proposals and wrote to

the Secretary of State. ‘If we are weak enough to yield to their

clamour now, we shall not be able to dismember or reduce

Bengal again: and you will be cementing and solidifying a force

already formidable and certain to be a source of increasing

trouble in the future’. The partition of the state intended to curb

Bengali influence by not only placing Bengalis under two

admininistrations but by reducing them to a minority in Bengal

itself as in the new proposal Bengal proper was to have seventeen

million Bengali and thirty-seven million Oriya and Hindi speaking

people! Also, the partition was meant to foster another kind of

division— this time on the basis of religion. The policy of

propping up Muslim communalists as a counter to the Congress

and the national movement, which was getting increasingly

crystallized in the last quarter of the 19th century. was to be

implemented once again. Curzon’s speech at Dacca, betrayed his

attempt to ‘woo the Muslims’ to support partition. With partition,

he argued, Dacca could become the capital of the new Muslim

majority province (with eighteen million Muslims and twelve

million Hindus) ‘which would Invest the Mohammedans in

Eastern Bengal with a unity which they have not enjoyed since

the days of the old Mussulman Viceroys and Kings.’ The Muslims

would thus get a ‘better deal’ and the eastern districts would be

freed of the ‘pernicious influence of Calcutta.’

And even Lord Minto, Curzon’s successor was critical of the

way in which partition was imposed disregarding public opinion

saw that it was good political strategy; Minto argued that ‘from a

political point of View alone, putting aside the administrative

difficulties of the old province, I believe partition to have been

very necessary . .‘

The Indian nationalists clearly saw the design behind the

partition and condemned it unanimously. The anti-partition and

Swadeshi Movement had begun. In December 1903, the partition proposals became publicly

known, immediate and spontaneous protest followed. The

strength of this protest can be gauged from the fact that in the

first two months following the announcement 500 protest

meetings were held in East Bengal alone, especially m Dacca,

Mymensingh and Chittagong. Nearly fifty thousand copies of

pamphlets giving a detailed critique of the partition proposals

were distributed all over Bengal. Surendranath Banerjea, Krishna

Kumar Mitra, Prithwishchandra Ray and other leaders launched

a powerful press campaign against the partition proposals

through journals and newspapers like the Bengalee, Hitabadi and

Sanjibani. Vast protest meetings were held in the town hail of

Calcutta in March 1904 and January 1905, and numerous

petitions (sixty-nine memoranda from the Dacca division alone),

some of them signed by as many as 70,000 people — a very large

number keeping n view the level of politicization in those days —

were sent to the Government of India and the Secretary of State.

Even, the big zamindars who had hitherto been loyal to the Raj,

joined forces with the Congress leaders who were mostly

intellectuals and political workers drawn from journalism, law

and other liberal professions.

This was the phase, 1903 to mid-1905 when moderate

techniques of petitions, memoranda, speeches, public meetings

and press campaigns held full sway. The objective was to turn to

public opinion in India and England against the partition

proposals by preparing a foolproof case against them. The hope

was that this would yield sufficient pressure to prevent this

injustice from occurring.

The Government of India however remained unmoved.

Despite the widespread protest, voiced against the partition

proposals, the decision to partition Bengal was announced on 19

July 1905. It was obvious to the nationalists that their moderate

methods were not working and that a different kind of strategy as

needed. Within days of the government announcement numerous

spontaneous protest meetings were held in mofussil towns such as Dinajpur, Pabna, Faridpur, Tangail, Jessore, Dacca, Birbhum,

and Barisal. It was in these meetings that the pledge to boycott

foreign goods was first taken In Calcutta; students organized a

number of meetings against partition and for Swadeshi.

The formal proclamation of the Swadeshi Movement was,

made on the 7 August 1905, in meeting held at the Calcutta to

hall. The movement; hitherto sporadic and spontaneous, now

had a focus and a leadership that was coming together. At the 7

August meeting, the famous Boycott Resolution was passed.

Even Moderate leaders like Surendranath Banerjea toured the

country urging the boycott of Manchester cloth and Liverpool

salt. On September 1, the Government announced that partition

was to be effected on.[6 October’ 1905. The following weeks saw

protest meetings being held almost everyday all over Bengal;

some of these meetings, like the one in Barisal, drew crowds of

ten to twelve thousand. That the message of boycott went home is

evident from the fact that the value of British cloth sold in some

of the mofussil districts fell by five to fifteen times between

September 1904 and September 1905.

The day partition took effect — 16 October 1905 — was

declared a day of mourning throughout Bengal. People fasted and

no fires were lit at the cooking hearth. In Calcutta a hartal was

declared. People took out processions and band after band

walked barefoot, bathed in the Ganges in morning and then

paraded the streets singing

Bande Mataram

which,

almost spontaneously, became the theme song of the movement.

People tied rakhis on each other’s hands as a symbol of the unity

of the two halves of Bengal. Later in the day Anandamohan Bose

and Surendranath Banerjea addressed two huge mass meetings

which drew crowds of 50,000 to 75,000 people. These were,

perhaps, the largest mass meetings ever to be held under the

nationalist banner this far. Within a few hours of the meetings, a

sum of Rs. 50,000 was raised for the movement.

It was apparent that the character of the movement in terms

both its goals and social base had begun to expand rapidly. As

Abdul Rasul, President of Barisal Conference, April 1906, put it:

‘What we could not have accomplished in 50 or 100 years, the

great disaster, the partition of Bengal, has done for us in six months. Its fruits have been the great national movement known

as the Swadeshi movement.’

The message of Swadeshi and the boycott of foreign goods

soon spread to the rest of the country: Lokamanya Tilak took the

movement to different parts of India, especially Poona and

Bombay; Ajit Singh and Lala Lajpat Rai spread the Swadeshi

message in Punjab and other parts of northern India. Syed

Haidar Raza led the movement in Delhi; Rawalpindi, Kangra,

Jammu, Multan and Haridwar witnessed active participation in

the Swadeshi Movement; Chidambaram Pillai took the movement

to the Madras presidency, which was also galvanized by Bipin

Chandra Pal’s extensive lecture tour.

The Indian National Congress took up the Swadeshi call and

the Banaras Session, 1905, presided over by G.K. Gokhale,

supporter the Swadeshi and Boycott Movement for Bengal. The

militant nationalists led by Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lajpat Rai

and Aurobindo Ghosh were, however, in favour of extending the

movement to the rest of India and carrying it beyond the

programme of just Swadeshi and boycott to a full fledged political

mass struggle The aim was now Swaraj and the abrogation of

partition had become the ‘pettiest and narrowest of all political

objects” The Moderates, by and large, were not as yet willing to go

that far. In 1906, however, the Indian National Congress at its

Calcutta Session, presided over by Dadabhai Naoroji, took a

major step forward. Naoroji in his presidential address declared

that the goal of the Indian National Congress was ‘selfgovernment or Swaraj like that of the United Kingdom or the

Colonies.’ The differences between the Moderates and the

Extremists, especially regarding the pace of the movement and

the techniques of struggle to be adopted, came to a head in the

1907 Surat session of the Congress where the party split with

serious consequences for the Swadeshi Movement.

In Bengal, however, after 1905, the Extremists acquired a

dominant influence over the Swadeshi Movement. Several new

forms of mobilization and techniques of struggle now began to

emerge at the popular level. The trend of ‘mendicancy,’

petitioning and memorials was on the retreat. The militant nationalists put forward several fresh ideas at the theoretical,

propagandistic and programmatic plane. Political independence

was to be achieved by converting the movement into a mass

movement through the extension of boycott into a full-scale

movement of non-cooperation and passive resistance. The

technique of extended boycott’ was to include, apart from boycott

of foreign goods, boycott of government schools and colleges

courts, titles and government services and even the organization

of strikes. The aim was to ‘make the administration under

present conditions impossible by an organized refusal to do

anything which shall help either the British Commerce in the

exploitation of the country or British officialdom in the

administration of it.’ While some, with remarkable foresight, saw

the tremendous potential of large scale peaceful resistance--- . . .

the Chowkidar, the constable; the deputy and the munsif and the

clerk, not to speak of the sepoy all resign their respective

functions, feringhee rule in the country may come to an end in a

moment No powder and shot will be needed, no sepoys will have

to be trained... Others like Aurobindo Ghosh (with his growing

links with revolutionary terrorists) kept open the option of violent

resistance if British repression was stepped up.

Among the several forms of struggle thrown up by the

movement, it was the boycott of foreign goods which met with the

greatest visible success at the practical and popular level. Boycott

and public burning of foreign cloth, picketing of shops selling

foreign goods, all became common in remote corners of Bengal as

well as in many important towns and cities throughout the

country. Women refused to wear foreign bangles and use foreign

utensils, washermen refused to wash foreign clothes and even

priests declined offerings which contained foreign sugar.

The movement also innovated with considerable success

different forms of mass mobilization. Public meetings and

processions emerged as major methods of mass mobilization and

simultaneously as forms of popular expression. Numerous

meetings and processions organized at the district, taluqa and

village levels, in cities and towns, both testified to the depth of

Swadeshi sentiment and acted as vehicles for its further spread.

These forms were to retain their pre-eminence in later phases of

the national movement. Corps of volunteers (or samitis as they were called) were

another major form of mass mobilization widely used by the

Swadeshi Movement. The Swadesh Bandhab Samiti set up by

Ashwini Kumar Dutt, a school teacher, in Barisal was the most

well known volunteer organization of them all. Through the

activities of this Samiti, whose 159 branches reached out to the

remotest corners of the district, Dutt was able to generate an

unparalleled mass following among the predominantly Muslim

Peasantry of the region. The samitis took the Swadeshi message

to the villages through magic lantern lectures and Swadeshi

songs, gave physical and moral training to the members, did

social work during famines and epidemics, organized schools,

training in Swadeshi craft and arbitrtj011 courts. By August

1906 the Barisal Samiti reportedly settled 523 disputes through

eighty-nine arbitration committees. Though the samitis stuck

their deepest roots in Barisal, they had expanded to other parts

of Bengal as well. British officialdom was genuinely alarmed by

their activities, their growing popularity with the rural masses.

The Swadeshi period also saw the creative use of traditional

popular festivals and melas as a means of reaching out to the

masses. The Ganapati arid Shivaji festivals, popularized by Tilak,

became a medium for Swadeshi propaganda not only in Western

India but also in Bengal. Traditional folk theatre forms such as

jatras i.e. extensively used in disseminating the Swadeshi

message in an intelligible form to vast sections of the people,

many of whom were being introduced to modern political ideas

for the first time.

Another important aspect of the Swadeshi Movement was

the great emphasis given to self-reliance or ‘Atmasakti’ as a

necessary part of the struggle against the Government. Self

reliance in various fields meant the re-asserting of national

dignity,

honor

and

confidence. Further, self-help

and

constructive work at the village level was envisaged as a means of

bringing about the social and economic regeneration of the

villages and of reaching the rural masses. In actual terms this

meant social reform and campaigns against evils such as caste

oppression, early marriage, the dowry system, consumption of

alcohol, etc. One of the major planks of the programme of selfreliance was Swadeshi or national education. Taking a cue from

Tagore’s Shantiniketan, the Bengal National College was foundedwith Aurobindo as the principal. Scores of national schools

sprang up all over the country within a short period. In August

1906, the National Council of Education was established. The

Council, consisting of virtually all the distinguished persons of

the country at the time, defined its objectives in this way. . . ‘to

organize a system of Education Literary; Scientific and Technical

— on National lines and under National control from the primary

to the university level. The chief medium of instruction was to be

the vernacular to enable the widest possible reach. For technical

education, the Bengal Technical institute was set and funds were

raise to send students to Japan for advanced learning.

Self-reliance also meant an effort to set up Swadeshi or

indigenous enterprises. The period saw a mushrooming of

Swadeshi textile mills, soap and match factories; - tanneries,

banks, insurance companies, shops, etc. While many of these

enterprises, whose promoters were more endowed with patriotic

zeal than with business acumen were unable to survive for long,

some others such as Acharya P.C. Ray’s Bengal Chemicals

Factory, became successful and famous.

It was, perhaps, in the cultural sphere that the impact of

the Swadeshi Movement was most marked. The songs composed

at that time by Rabindranath Tagore, Rajani Kanta Sen,

Dwijendralal Ray, Mukunda Das, Syed Abu Mohammed, and

others later became the moving spirit for nationalists of all hues,

‘terrorists, Gandhian or Communists’ and are still popular.

Rabindranath’s Amar Sonar Bangla, written at that time, was to

later inspire the liberation struggle of Bangladesh and was

adopted as the national anthem of the country in 1971. The

Swadeshi influence could be seen in Bengali folk music popular

among Hindu and Muslim villagers (Palligeet and Jan Gàn) and it

evoked collections of India fairy tales such as, Thakurmar

Jhuli(Grandmother’s tales) written by Daksinaranjan Mitra

Majumdar which delights Bengai children to this day. In art, this

was the period when Abanindranath Tagore broke the

domination of Victorian naturalism over Indian art and sought

inspiration from the rich indigenous traditions of Mughal, Rajput

and Ajanta paintings. Nandalal Bose, who left a major imprint on

Indian art, was the first recipient of a scholarship offered by the

Indian Society of Oriental Art founded in 1907. In science,Jagdish Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Ray, and others

pioneered original research that was praised the world over.

In sum, the Swadeshi Movement with its multi-faceted

programme and activity was able to draw for the first time large

sections of society into active participation in modern nationalist

into the ambit of modern political ideas.

The social base of the national movements now extended to

include a certain zamindari section, the lower middle class in the

cities and small towns and school and college students on a

massive scale. Women came out of their homes for the first time

and joined processions and picketing. This period saw, again for

the first time, an attempt being made to give a political direction

to the economic grievances of the working class. Efforts were

Swadeshi leaders, some of whom were influenced by

International socialist currents such as those in Germany and

Russia, to organize strikes in foreign managed concerns such as

Eastern India Railway and Clive Jute Mills, etc.

While it is argued that the movement was unable to make

much headway in mobilizing the peasantry especially its lower

rungs except in certain areas, such as the district of Barisal,

there can be no gainsaying the fact that even if the movement

was able to mobilize the peasantry only in a limited area that

alone would count for a lot. This is so peasant participation in

the Swadeshi Movement marked the very beginnings of modem

mass politics in India. After all, even in the later, post-Swadeshi

movements, intense political mobilization and activity among the

peasantry largely remained concentrated in specific pockets.

Also, while it is true that during the Swadeshi phase the

peasantry was not organized .around peasant demands, and that

the peasants in most parts did not actively join in certain forms

of struggle such as, boycott or passive resistance, large sections

of the peasants, through meetings, jatras, constructive work, and

so on were exposed for the first time to modem nationalist ideas

and politics.

The main drawback of the Swadeshi Movement was that it

was not able to gamer the support of the mass of Muslims and especially of the Muslim peasantry. The British policy of

consciously attempting to use communalism to turn the Muslims

against the Swadeshi Movement was to a large extent responsible

for this. The Government was helped in its designs by the

peculiar situation obtaining in large pasts of Bengal where

Hindus and Muslims were divided along class lines with the

former being the landlords and the latter constituting the

peasantry. This was the period when the All India Muslim League

was set up with the active guidance and support of the

Government. More specifically, in Bengal, people like Nawab

Salimullah of Dacca were propped up so centres of opposition to

the Swadeshi Movement. Mullahs and maulvis were pressed into

service and, unsurprisingly, at the height of the Swadeshi

Movement communal riots broke out in Bengal.

Given this background, some of the forms of mobilization

adopted by the Swadeshi Movement had certain unintended

negative consequences. The use of traditional popular customs,

festivals and institutions for mobilizing the masses—a technique

used widely in most parts of world to generate mass movements,

especially in the initial stages —was misinterpreted and distorted

by communalists backed by the state. The communal forces saw

narrow religious identities in the traditional forms utilized by the

Swadeshi movements whereas in fact these forms generally

reflected common popular cultural traditions which had evolved

as a synthesis of different religious ‘prevalent among the people.

By mid-1908, the open movement with its popular mass

character had all but spent itself. This was due to several

reasons. First, the government, seeing the revolutionary potential

of the movement, came down with a heavy hand. Repression took

the form of controls and bans on public meetings, processions

and the press. Student participants were expelled from

Government schools and colleges, debarred from Government

service, fined and at times beaten up by the police. The case of

the 1906 Barisal Conference, where the police forcibly dispersed

the conference and brutally beat up a large number of the

participants, is a telling example of the government’s attitude and policy

With the subsiding of the mass movement, one era in the Indian

freedom struggle was over. It would be wrong, however, to see the

Swadeshi Movement as a failure. The movement made a major

contribution in taking the idea of nationalism, in a truly creative

fashion, to many sections of the people, hitherto untouched by it.

By doing so, it further eroded the hegemony of colonial ideas and

institutions. Swadeshi influence in the realm of culture and ideas

was crucial in this regard and has remained unparalleled in

Indian history, except, perhaps, for the cultural upsurge of the

I93Os this time under the influence of the Left.

Further, the movement evolved several new methods and

techniques of mass mobilization and mass action though it was

not able to put them all into practice successfully. Just as the

Moderates’ achievement in the realm of developing an economic

critique of colonialism is not minimized by the fact that they

could not themselves carry this critique to large masses of people,

similarly the achievement of the Extremists and the Swadeshi

Movement in evolving new methods of mass mobilization and

action is not diminished by the fact that they could not

themselves fully utilize these methods. The legacy they

bequeathed was one on which the later national movement was

to draw heavily.

Swadeshi Movement was only the first round in the national

popular struggle against colonialism. It was to borrow this

imagery used by Antonio Gramsci an important battle’ in the long

drawn out and complex ‘war of position’ for Indian independence. With the subsiding of the mass movement, one era in the Indian