History of India 1

HISTORY

Subject : History
(For under graduate student)

Paper No. : Paper - IV

History of Modern India

Topic No. & Title : Topic - 7

Nationalism

Unit No. & Title : Unit- 5

Swadeshi Movement

Lecture No. & Title : Lecture - 2

The Impact of Swadeshi
Movement

SUMMARY

The outbreak of revolutionary violence remained one of

the major consequences of militant nationalism of the
Swadeshi age. The use of Hindu imagery by the
revolutionaries and the irritation that was caused by the
attempts of the samitis to enforce the boycott of British
goods became an important source of estrangement
between the bhadralok revolutionaries in the samiti
History of India 2

movement and the ordinary rural folks in Bengal,

especially in the eastern districts where a large majority
among the peasants were Muslims. The swadeshi era
experienced the earliest attempt by the nationalist leaders
to try their hands at mass politics in the urban areas by
setting up trade unions. The leadership in this labour
movement came from swadeshi leaders like Ashwini
Coomer Banerjee and Prabhat Kusum Ray Chaudhury. The
Swadeshi Movement remained predominantly a Bengali
affair, but it sent its ripples to other provinces like the
Punjab and Maharashtra, where the extremists had a
powerful presence. The revolutionary movement took the
form of assassination of tyrannical officials and traitors,
swadeshi dacoities and abortive military conspiracies.
Such activities however, failed to create the conditions for
a mass uprising. Despite the great heroism which naturally
evoked tremendous admiration, the absence of a genuine
mass uprising ultimately failed to unsettle British rule.
Despite these limitations, the revolutionary movement
constituted one of the more important legacies of the
swadeshi age, and remained the inspiration behind the
History of India 3

several phases of resurgence of revolutionary movement

in the subsequent decades.