The new spirit in India

by Henry Woodd Nevinson

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.