Assignment

Arunima Gahlot, Roll No. 1869

Q) Analyse the main trends the Swadeshi Mov. Do you agree with the
view that it ended in an anticlimax?
Boycott of British textiles was the driving force of
the Boycott movement, and the broad ‘socio-aesthetic complex’ of
boycott and swadeshi entailed ‘the
reconstitution of social taste from Manchester cloth to coarse cotton’
(Goswami

A) The Swadeshi movement developed in India as an integral part of Indian nationalism

in the early 20th C. The Swadeshi movement started with the partition of Bengal by the
Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon in 1905 and continued up to 1911. The Swadeshi
movement represented the first systematic campaign in colonial India to enlist the
masses within the elite structure and organization of institutional nationalism and was
the most successful of the pre-Gandhian movements.
Swadeshi as a concept has been defined aptly by Sumit Sarkar in its specifically
economic aspect as “ a sentiment closely associated with many phases of Indian
nationalism - that indigenous goods should be preferred by consumers even if they
were more expensive than or inferior in quality to their imported industries and that it
was the patriotic duty of men with capital to pioneer such industries even though profits
initially might be minimal or non – existent.”
ORIGIN OF SWADESHI MOVEMENT
The Swadeshi Movement was born out of the need for more effective resistance against
the partition plan of Bengal proposed in 1903 which was finally carried out on 16th
October 1905 by Lord Curzon. Historians say that till 1903, administrative concerns with
managing a large area governed proposals behind Partition. While Bengal was no doubt
an administratively unwieldy province extending from the Sutlej to Burma, Sumit Sarkar
shows that secret official minutes and public speeches of Lord Curzon reveal that post
1903 the Partition was guided by the sole aim of crushing the rising nationalist tide
amongst the politically active Bengalis as Bengal was a Congress stronghold.
The Partition plan proved that a strategy of “divide and rule” was being used, by
suggesting divisions along religious and linguistic lines. They divided the presidency into
largely Hindu western areas of Bengal that presently constitute the Indian states of
West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and Jharkhand; and the largely Muslim eastern areas of
East Bengal and Assam. Not on did they create religious divisions, but also succeeded
in restraining the Bengali influence in India’s freedom struggle by reducing the Bengalis
into a minority in the Hindu western areas of Bengal with around 37 million Oriya and
Hindi speaking people compared to 17 million Bengalis. After the proposal of partition
became public, spontaneous protests at different parts of Bengal started occurring.
Moderate antipartition movement changed character and now emerged as the
Swadeshi movement- led by the new leaders the “Extremists” with novel methods.
Sumit Sarkar and S. Bandhopadhyay trace the origins of the Swadeshi movement in
Bengal to factors apart from the initial spark of anti-partition. They say there was
escalating Bengali unity due to the cultural renaissance taking place there.
Developments like emergence of modern Bengali literature and art under the Tagore
family and popularity of print media had a massive influence on people’s intellect.
Calcutta was now a metropolis which united students and professionals from all districts
and early English education and Hindu revivalism fostered self-confidence. Secondly,
political disappointment with Moderate methods and achievements spurred Swadeshi in
order to try new methods. Economic grievances like overcrowding in liberal professions,
famines, epidemics, and rising prices were also a huge factor.
TRENDS
Sumit Sarkar identified four main trends in Bengal Swadeshi-(1) the Moderate Trend,(2)
Constructive Swadeshi, (3) Political Extremism and (4)Revolutionary Terrorism. All
trends more or less overlapped between 1905-08, yet one does see a movement from
one to the other.
1) The Moderate trend
It began in 1903 with the announcement of Partition proposals. Till July 1905,
‘Moderate’ methods of press campaigns, numerous meetings and petitions and
big conferences at the Calcutta Town Hall were used to oppose partition. The
inefficiency of such methods led to the adoption of new forms. Moderate,
Surendranath Banerjea gave a first time call for Boycott of British goods and
institutions at the Calcutta Town Hall on 7th August 1905. British crackdown on
student picketers with the Carlyle Circular in October led to Boycott of
educational institutions and organization of national schools. For the first time
Moderates tried to mobilise non-literate population and thus helped in labour
strikes and national education. However Moderates aims remained limited-to the
annulment of Partition and they only saw Boycott a step in that direction.
Moderates reverted to limited policies and called off the educational boycott by
Nov 1905, in hope for British reforms as liberal Morely(Sec of State) came to
power. Yet, Boycott and frustration with Moderates led to the growth of Non-
 political Constructive Swadeshi and Political Extremism alongside continuation of
Moderate politics.

2) Constructive Swadeshi
It rejected the self-demeaning Moderate politics, in favour of self-reliance or
atmashakti through the setting up of Swadeshi industries, National schools and
village level constructive programmes. Expressions of such were found in the
business ventures of P. Roy or N. Sircar and in the Dawn Society and the
journal- ‘Dawn’ of Satishchandra Mukherji influencing the national education
movement. Satishchandra Mukherjee drew upon Engels to underscore the
horrors of the Industrial Revolution and valorized handicrafts as the Indian
alternative to large-scale industry.
In terms of village programmes, by 1907 a 1000 village Samitis or national
volunteer organizations were reported in Bengal. Such non-political Constructive
programmes often used Hindu revivalism as a tool of unity- as seen in
Rabindranath Tagore’s Hindu Samaj proposal, though Tagore rejected Hindu
revivalism after 1906. However Hindu revivalism was used in a bigger way under
political Extremism by some leaders.

3) Political Extremism
Sekhar Bandopadhyay describes Swadeshi movement as the “best expression of
extremist politics.” Political extremism emerged around 1906 as young political
extremists like Aurobindo Ghosh, Bipin Chandra Pal and Brahmobandhab
Upadhyay were unhappy with the slow and peaceful development advocated by
Constructive Swadeshi.
They argued that freedom was essential to national regeneration and thus called
for a struggle for Swaraj, in their journals. The main difference with the
Moderates was in new political methods they advocated like- organized boycott
that extended beyond British goods to British education, justice and executive
administration and ultimately civil disobedience of unjust laws, social boycott of
loyalists and recourse to armed struggle if British repression escalated. Older
methods like modern industries, national school etc. were meant to continue
also. Thus Sarkar says that they anticipated future political programme of
Gandhianism minus the dogma of nonviolence.

One of their main aims was mass political mobilization. To achieve this, they built
up an impressive chain of district organizations or samitis and provided political
leadership to labour unrest.

Sarkar notes another trend in the Swadeshi movement that cut across all
differences in political methods- that is Hindu Revivalism. While some leaders
embraced this in a major way as a short cut to political mass mobilization others
rejected it out right recognizing its divisive nature. Moderate proponents included
 Surendranath Banerjee advocating Swadeshi vows in temples, national
education plan with revivalist content etc., Extremists like Aurobindo Ghosh,
Bipin Pal etc. insisted on Shivaji Utsav taking the cue from Tilak in Maharashtra.
Yet others like Brahmo edited journals like Sanjivani, post 1907 Radindranath
Tagore and Krishnakumar Mitra’s Anti Circular Society etc. denounced such
religious patriotism as divisive.
This revivalist discourse sought to invoke an imagined golden past and used
symbols from a retrospectively reconstructed history to arouse nationalist
passions. As per Bandopadhyay, this was also a response to the gendered
discourse of colonialism that had established a connection between masculinity
and political domination, stereotyping the colonised society as "effeminate" and
therefore unfit to rule. This created a psychological compulsion for the latter to try
to recover their virility in Kshatriyahood in an imagined Aryan past, in order to
establish the legitimacy of their right to rule.

4) Revolutionary Terrorism
Sarkar says by 1907 the mass movement aim of the Political Extremists was
being challenged from within their ranks, by men who called for elite action
terrorism or Revolutionary Terrorism.
He says that by 1908 the methods of Political extremists - Gandhian constructive
work and mass Satyagraha proved very short lived. One saw a return to
Moderate politics and the growth of Revolutionary Terrorism. A common
explanation for this decline in the Swadeshi movement post 1908 has been
British repression. However the total number of people tried during Swadeshi
movement till 1909 were a minute-115, with short sentences of 6months-2yrs
and two cases of firing on non Swadeshi demonstrators.

Thus he analyses the achievements main methods/trends of the movement and

each one’s internal limitation that resulted in its decline/ anticlimax. These
methods were not exclusive to one group-Moderates, constructive Swadeshi
men or political extremists though revolutionary terrorism was used mainly by
radical political extremists. The strength and internal limitations of the principal
components of this 1905-08 movement that need to be looked at closely are:
boycott & Swadeshi, national education, labour unions, samitis and mass contact
methods.

1) In the ‘Boycott and Swadeshi’ movements which were essentially bourgeois

in character to Sarkar, the bourgeois support was lacking. Though there was
a substantial initial decline in exports of British manufactured goods like
cotton piece goods, cotton twist & yarn, salt, cigarettes, boots & shoes
between 1905 and 1906, it was mainly a conflict over trade terms between
Marwari traders and British manufacturers that led to a decline in Manchester
cloth sales, and once the dispute was settled, Marwaris returned to their
 comprador business. Most merchants and industrialists refused to
subordinate their profits to patriotism, and in fact some, like the Bombay mill
owners used the opportunity to hike up prices despite appeals from Bengal,
especially because the finer varieties of Manchester yarn and cloth could not
be produced locally. The sharpest decline was in the export of shoes or
cigarettes which had a market among the Indian middle class comprising of
clerks, pleaders etc.

The Swadeshi movement could bring about a revival of handloom, silk

weaving, and other traditional artisan crafts. However, a number of attempts
to promote modern industries were underway: students were sent abroad
using popularly raised funds; setting up of cotton mills, porcelain, chrome
tanning, soap, matches, cigarettes etc. The professional intelligentsia and a
few big zamindars provided most of the patronage and entrepreneurship.

The main limitation of Swadeshi enterprise was the lack of capital and role of
the Indian business community which found it easier to make money from
trade than investment in industry. It was an intelligentsia movement with
bourgeoisie aspirations but no bourgeois support. Thus, in the long term,
Swadeshi never seriously threatened British economic interests in Bengal.

2) National education was promoted during the Swadeshi movement to foster

self reliance and saw varied educational institutions being set up. These
included the Bengal Technical Institute for technical education, the Bengal
National College, with Aurobindo Ghosh as principal and scores of national
schools across the country. In 1906 the National Council of Education was
established to organize education on “national lines” with the advocacy of
vernacular education in most institutions. According to Sarkar the main
limitations of national education were – 1) its negligible job prospects which
failed to attract students 2) little focus on village level education. Ultimately
what survived were the Bengal National College, Bengal Technical Institute
and a dozen national schools in West Bengal. The National Education
Council ignored most district or village schools and, in the end, only certain
schools survived which basically became recruiting centers for
revolutionaries.

3) Labour/Industrial unrest in 1903-08 and the role of ‘professional agitators’ in

them have been referred to as a novel phenomenon. Usually rising price &
racial insults sparked off strikes in white-controlled enterprises, which now
found considerable “newspaper sympathy, occasional financial help, and
even aid in setting up trade unions.” In September 1905, 247 Bengali clerks of
Burn Company in Howrah walked out over new derogatory work regulations.
October 1905 saw a tram strike in Calcutta. Soon the first real labour union
 was set up on 21st October- the Printers Union. A Railway men’s Union
followed a strike by the clerks of East Indian Railway in July 1906. Between
1905 and 1908, jute strikes became very frequent affecting at various times
18 out of 37 mills.

The main problem was that contacts with the workers were inevitably often
through the babus(clerks) and sardars. Though the potentialities of the
‘Russian method’ of the political general strike were spoken about by some
extremist journals, they remained only interesting anticipation. There were no
real political strikes, plantation & mine labour remained unaffected, contacts
developed with the clerks mainly and interest in labour slumped almost
completely after the summer of 1908.

4) Samitis signified a ‘national volunteer’ movement. These were conceptualized

as open bodies engaging in various activities. Bipan Chandra says that
Samitis were used for mass mobilization. The main strength of the movement
was in East Bengal with a lot of variety within it- some were essentially
‘secular’ with its important Muslim associates (e.g. the Anti-Circular Society)
while some could have training and initiation vows steeped in Hinduism (e.g.
the Dacca Anushilan).

However, most of the open samitis disappeared in the face of first round of
oppression and became terroristic secret societies. Most disputes now were
between zamindari officials and Muslim tenants/sharecroppers, with the
former pressurizing the latter.
Another reason for their decline was that many village samitis didn’t develop
peasant membership but consisted mostly village ‘bhadralok’.

5) Hindu-Muslim relations also begin to deteriorate successively in this period.

British divide-and-rule methods seemed all the more promising with
considerable success been achieved by swaying upper and middle class
‘Muslims’ against the Swadeshi movement by using the propaganda of giving
more jobs to the Muslims in the new province, signaling the development of
Muslim separatism. Elite politics of the Salimulla group and the Muslim
League (founded-Oct 1906) were simultaneous to the communal riots in East
Bengal in 1906, with most of the targets being the ‘Hindu’ zamindars and
mahajans, some of whom had started levying an ‘Iswar britti’ for maintaining
Hindu images.
Extremist propaganda donned aggressive Hindu colours veering towards
terrorism, and looking at Muslim rioters as no more than the hired agents of
the British especially after the 1907 riots.

6) There was a marked shift to terrorism. The first revolutionary groups started
round about 1902 in Midnapur and Calcutta (Anushilan Samiti) but were
 initially confined to physical & moral training of members, important only in
1907-08. Many abortive actions were attempted between 1906 and 1908 on
prominent British officials and judges. East Bengal saw the growth of a more
efficient variety of revolutionary terrorism (under the organization of Dacca
Anushilan), which was a direct consequence of the Swadeshi Bengal. The
movement took the forms of assassination of oppressive officials or traitors,
Swadeshi dacoities to raise funds, or military conspiracies with expectations
of help from enemies of Great Britain.
Nevertheless, British administration did not face any threat of collapse. The
intense religiosity of the early secret societies kept most Muslims aloof &
hostile while occasional emphasis on idealistic and impractical heroism over
effective programmes took away even more participation. Records show a
predominance of upper castes- the Brahman, Kayastha and Vaishya- in the
movement. Severe social limitations handicapped the revolutionary terrorism
movement with elite action tending to postpone efforts to draw the masses
into active political struggles, that would involve linking up national with socio-
economic issues through more radical programmes.
CONCLUSION
The Swadeshi Movement peaked around 1906 yet by 1908 most historians agree that it
petered out especially in its mass mobilization, Boycott and Swadeshi aspects. Sumit
Sarkar holds the various internal limitations of the primary aspects of Swadeshi
mentioned above as responsible for the anti climax of Swadeshi not being able to
develop into a larger mass movement post 1908.
To Bipin Chandra Pal, the movement was more a “spiritual movement” where
emancipation of Indian manhood & womanhood was the chief object, and not of
economic life or political freedom. He also believed that the movement lacked organized
leadership (despite having most features of Gandhian struggle later to come) due to
internal squabbles and especially the Surat Split-1907. Moreover, because Swadeshi
had spread outside Bengal to other areas like Punjab, Maharashtra, Madras yet these
regions were not prepared to adopt the new stage of politics. On top of that, the
Movement was unable to garner the support of mass of Muslims especially the
peasantry- while government policy was responsible for this, so was the use of Hindu
revivalism as a method of mass mobilization by certain Extremists.
These setbacks strengthened the Government and nine prominent Swadeshi leaders
from across India were arrested-Bengal-Ashwinikumar Dutt and KK Mitra, Maharashtra-
Tilak, Punjab- Ajit Singh and Lajpat Rai, Madras- Chidambram Pillai. Bipin Chandra Pal
and Aurobindo Ghosh retired from active politics.
Despite the movement ending in a political anti climax, Sumit Sarkar and Bipan
Chandra say it made some important contributions.
It led to various cultural achievements- numerous songs in vernacular were composed
which inspired later nationalists. In art Abindranath Tagore founded the Bengal school
of Painting shedding off Victorian art.
Revolutionary terrorism was the most substantial legacy of Swadeshi in Bengal which
inspired the youth for a generation after Swadeshi and contributed to the annulment of
Partition in 1911. For Chandra, the movement made a major contribution to the idea of
nationalism.
Social base of the movement was broadened-extending to zamindars, lower middle
class in cities/small towns and students. Chandra says even though Sarkar says
peasant participation was negligible, in areas like Barisal, Samitis did reached the
peasants and exposed them to new ideas, even if peasant demands weren’t
championed by leaders or peasant participation wasn’t high
It also led to several new techniques of political mass mobilization to be put into use
later and thus he saw it as ‘the first round of the nationalist popular struggle’.