The new spirit in India

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

FOOTNOTES:

[36] See Introduction, p. [10] ff, and for the history of Eastern Bengal see Mr. Bradley Birt’s “Romance of an Eastern Capital,” i.e. Dacca.

[37] See Introduction, p. [12].

[38] See Introduction, p. [7] ff.

[39] Sir Harvey Adamson’s speech at St. Andrew’s Dinner in Calcutta, 1907.

[40] Proceedings of the Home Department, Simla, October 2, 1905.

CHAPTER X
Swadeshi and the Volunteers

The Partition led to Swadeshi. Of course, there was nothing new in an attempt to encourage Indian industries. For thirty years past the true friends of India, like Sir William Wedderburn, had been insisting that the solution of her economic miseries lay partly in diverting some portion of her agricultural population to the industrial work for which she used to be celebrated till England stamped on her manufactures and determined to use her only as a farm for raw material and a market for Lancashire. Artistic people had also attempted to realize the same object, for it did not require a politician’s eye to perceive the immense superiority of Indian fabrics in point of beauty. But the true Swadeshi movement dates from the year of the Partition. I believe it was first suggested by Mr. Krishna Kumar Mitra in his paper Sanjibani, when he declared that India’s one sure means of drawing England’s attention to the Partition and other wrongs was the boycott of British goods. The movement, however, did not become public till a great meeting held in Calcutta Town Hall on August 7, 1905, to protest against the Partition. A form of oath was then drawn up by Mr. Surendra Nath Banerjea, Principal of Ripon College, Editor of the Bengali, and probably the most prominent leader of the Congress party in Bengal, and the oath ran as follows:—

“I hereby pledge myself to abstain from the purchase of all English-made goods for at least a year from this date. So help me God.”

Thus a movement which had been entirely economic for some twenty years suddenly became political, and the boycott was added to Swadeshi. The growth of the new phase was rapid. It spread like a gospel through both provinces of Bengal. Within a few months the reports of our Commissioners were full of it.

“The Swadeshi movement has contributed largely to the development of the cotton cloth industry in all the districts of this division,” writes the Commissioner of Burdwan in Western Bengal (1906-7), “except Bankura, where the inclination of the people to use country-made things is not pronounced and consequently the sale of Manchester goods has not much decreased.”

In the Indian Trade Journal (July 25, 1907), published by the Government, the Magistrate of Hooghly is quoted:—

“It appears that while formerly the weavers had to take advances from the middlemen, they are now very much better off, and, if anything, the middlemen are sometimes indebted to them.... There cannot be any doubt that, on account of the Swadeshi movement, the weavers as a class, who are a stay-at-home people, have distinctly advanced. Fly-shuttle looms arc being largely used, and the people are said to appreciate them.”

In the Report on the Land Revenue Administration of the Lower Provinces (1906-7) we read—

“It is reported that on account of the demand for country-made cloths, weavers working with the fly-shuttle can make as much as Rs 20 (£1 6s. 8d.) a month” (about double the average earnings of the class) “and that the demand for their services is daily increasing ... some prospect of improvement in their material condition is held out by the present Swadeshi movement, in so far as it may induce the younger generation to devote themselves to a technical rather than a literary profession.”

In the “Report on the Administration of Eastern Bengal, 1905-6,” we find that eleven factories had been added in the year to the seventy-one already existing, the foreign imports showed a decrease of 16 per cent., and “Liverpool” salt had declined by 6000 tons. It has been the same with “imported liquors,” though apparently the great decrease in them does not mean a decline in drinking, but an increase in “country” or Swadeshi spirits. The Collector of Dacca, a strong opponent of Swadeshi, or at all events of the boycott, remarked in his Report for 1906-7—

“Even the public women of Dacca and Narainganj took the so-called Swadeshi vow and joined the general movement against the use of foreign articles. People formerly addicted to imported liquor took to country spirit.”[41]

Such facts prove how widely the movement prevails among the common people. It is necessarily a woman’s movement, because women wear most of the cotton and do most of the housekeeping. They are the thrifty sex, because they and the children are generally the first to suffer from want. If they sacrifice cheapness to political conviction, it shows the conviction is strong; and though now the coarse hand-woven sari or woman’s garment of the greater part of India (at two to three shillings a pair) is almost as cheap as Manchester stuff, and much more durable, the sacrifice has been something. I will add only two further proofs of the movement’s strength. In reviewing the English exports in cotton piece-goods for May, 1907, the Times remarked: “India took less by 42,492,500 yards;”[42] and sitting by her mother, a child of Eastern Bengal was heard to ask, “Mother, is this an English or a Swadeshi mosquito?” “Swadeshi,” the mother answered. “Then I won’t kill it,” said the child.

Such was the movement which I had found speeding up the eighty or ninety cotton mills in Bombay, because, work as they might, they could not keep pace with the demand from Bengal. It is true that English manufacturers were said to be adopting the simple device of stamping their Manchester stuff with the Swadeshi mark, but I did not discover how far their deceit was successful.

The movement was spreading to all kinds of merchandise besides cotton. In Calcutta they had started a Swadeshi match-factory, in Dacca soap-works and tanneries. In all Indian towns you will now find Swadeshi shops where you may buy native biscuits, cigarettes, scents, toys, woollens, boots, and all manner of things formerly imported. Nearly all the trade advertisements in Indian papers are now Swadeshi. The officials whom I consulted, from the Governor of Bombay and the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal downwards, professed sympathy and admiration for the Swadeshi movement. It would be almost impossible for them to do anything else, considering the economic salvation it may bring to India if it is maintained. Their interest in this economic development is quite genuine, and I am told that, though under official management, the Swadeshi stalls from Eastern Bengal during the Calcutta Congress of 1906 were the success of the exhibition. But the officials are in a very difficult position. With all their love for India, they do not like to stand by and see British trade ruined, neither does the word “boycott” delight the official mind.

The Indians themselves have made an attempt to separate Swadeshi from boycott, and again to separate the economic boycott from the political boycott. At the Calcutta Congress (December, 1906) two resolutions were adopted that were to have a critical influence on the stormy Congress in Surat a year later. They ran—

“(1) Having regard to the fact that the people of this country have little or no voice in the administration and that their representations to the Government do not receive due consideration, this Congress is of opinion that the boycott movement inaugurated in Bengal by way of protest against the Partition of that province was and is legitimate.

“(2) This Congress accords its most cordial support to the Swadeshi movement and calls upon the people of the country to labour for its success by making earnest and sustained efforts to promote the growth of indigenous industries and to stimulate the production of indigenous articles by giving them preference over imported commodities, even at some sacrifice.”

The first resolution sanctioned the political boycott, and was passed after much controversy, and mainly to avoid an open rupture under the presidency of the veteran Mr. Dadabhai Naoroji; for, unless the resolution had been admitted, the Extremists would have left the Congress. The second resolution was for the encouragement of economic Swadeshi, and was accepted almost without question.

It appears very doubtful whether the Swadeshi movement could have been carried on without a boycott of foreign goods; and as to political boycott, the Swadeshi remained an impotent and æsthetic concern till the political movement gave it driving power. Swadeshi is now so strong that it would probably hold its own even if all political grievances were removed. But its true origin was political, and hitherto it has been impossible to separate it from its political motive—the protest against the Partition of Bengal.

In any case, it was the political motive which spread the Swadeshi vow like a beacon light through Eastern Bengal. In towns and villages young men formed themselves into associations to preach Swadeshi and the boycott. Shops that continued the sale of foreign goods were surrounded by youths who implored customers for the sake of their country to depart without purchasing. Boys threw themselves prostrate in supplication before the customer’s feet. This form of picketing was never violent, and I think it was not often prosecuted. It is true the officials regarded it with disfavour, and at Barisal Sir Bampfylde Fuller personally compelled the leading men of the town to withdraw a Swadeshi appeal they were issuing to the villages (November 16, 1905), and through the District Magistrate and Police he broke up a Provincial Conference which was being held in the same town (April 15, 1906). But in some places the boycott took the form of destroying British goods, especially “Liverpool salt,” and the goods were not always paid for first, though usually they were. In one case, four youths destroyed foreign sugar, valued at is 1s. 2d., and were sentenced to three and four months’ imprisonment, with heavy fines. As is usual when political offences are savagely punished, the victims triumphed as heroes in the popular mind.

But when I was in Eastern Bengal, the time for that kind of boycott had passed. Even the remotest villages knew the principle of Swadeshi then, and the chief importance of the preaching movement among the young men was the stimulus it gave to the so-called “Volunteers.” In the previous summer (1907), the phrase “National Volunteers” had roused alarm among sensationalists at home; but it was unknown in Eastern Bengal, and I believe it to have been the sole invention of a correspondent in Calcutta, who had at that time set himself to make the flesh of the British public creep. The Volunteers were originally organized in the ’eighties to act as stewards at the National Indian Congress, but under the enthusiasm of the Swadeshi and national movement, they have developed along many other lines. I met them first in Orissa, relieving the distress from famine and flood there, though Eastern Bengal was still their proper sphere. In Barisal, the centre of the Bakerganj district, which was then the only part of India proclaimed under the Seditious Meetings Act, I first met one of the “captains,” a mere boy, who explained to me the peculiar mixture of politics and philanthropy in their duties. In the Barisal Braja Mohun Institution, whose Principal, Mr. Aswini Kumar Dutt, is a notable Nationalist, the students had formed a society of Volunteers called “The Little Brothers of the Poor,” for nursing among the villages, especially in the commonest and most deadly plagues of cholera and small-pox. The Oxford Brethren, who have a strong settlement in that unruly place and, I think, the only beautiful Anglican church in India, spoke of the movement as not unworthy of its famous name, though they themselves refused to take any part in the political controversies around them.

A Temple Tank.

A Temple of Shiva.

[Face p. 186.

But the work of the Volunteers is not chiefly a matter of nursing and poor relief. In Calcutta and other cities they arrange public meetings and organize the course of the immense pilgrimages. At fairs and the great festivals when Hindu women come from all over the country to bathe in the sacred rivers, they act as their protectors against the rowdy class of Mohammedans, who regard women as their natural prey. When the Mohammedans, after the Partition, were induced to believe that the Government would connive at any violence on their part against the Hindu inhabitants, the Volunteers attempted a defence of their homes and temples. They were generally beaten, but they are doing their best to stiffen their courage and the fighting qualities we all admire. Ever since Macaulay’s time the Anglo-Indians have wasted much of their lives in sneering at Indians, and especially at Bengalis, for effeminacy and unwarlike habit. By athletics, gymnastics, by football with bare feet, and lathi-play with the bamboo singlestick, the Volunteers are now seeking to wipe off the disgrace, and Anglo-Indians suspect sedition. They cannot have it both ways, and, for myself, I admire the Indian determination to obtain bodily strength. For, without being advocates of war at any price, we all know what moral force an argument gains when we feel that, if sweet reasonableness fails, we could, if we liked, knock the adversary down and break his bones!

Of course, some one has to pay for Swadeshi, and it is not always the British merchant who suffers for Lord Curzon’s error. Late one night, as I sat on a river steamer after two crowded days in a strongly Swadeshi town, five or six dark forms were dimly seen to gather round me with gestures of secrecy and peril. In other countries I should have thought them assassins thirsting for blood, but they were only Hindu merchants with an interest in Manchester piece-goods. Of these they had a large store, I have forgotten how many thousand pounds’ worth, laid up in their warehouses; and, in consequence, they were shunned by their kind. Barbers would not shave them, milkmen would not bring them milk, friends would not come to their daughters’ marriages, acquaintances would not say good-morning. Such treatment was distressing and inconvenient. Would I please use my influence with the Home Government, and set everything right again? They refused to throw in their lot with the Swadeshi movement; their goods were too valuable to be sacrificed, and they preferred to stand and die as martyrs in the cause of British commerce. I had no doubt their statement was true, but what hope could I hold out to them?—I, who had no influence with the Home Government, and, if I had been an Indian, would have done my utmost to dissuade my countrymen from buying any foreign goods at all till grievances had been redressed.