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.