Mahs Cc Ix (109) Unit -3

M. A. II SEMESTER PAPER NAME – INDIA’S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE (PRE GANDHIAN ERA) PAPER CODE- MAHS CC IX (109) UNIT -3 DR DEEPTI JAISWAL GUEST FACULTY DEPT OF HISTORY K.M.C. LANGUAGE UNIVERSITY Partition of Bengal (1905) Division of Bengal carried out by the British viceroy in India, Lord Curzon, despite strong Indian nationalist opposition. It began a transformation of the Indian National Congress from a middle-class pressure group into a nationwide mass movement. Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa had formed a single province of British India since 1765. By 1900 the province had grown too large to handle under a single administration. East Bengal, because of isolation and poor communications, had been neglected in favour of west Bengal and Bihar. Curzon chose one of several schemes for partition: to unite Assam, which had been a part of the province until 1874, with 15 districts of east Bengal and thus form a new province with a population of 31 million. The capital was Dacca (now Dhaka, Bangl.), and the people were mainly Muslim. The Hindus of west Bengal, who controlled most of Bengal’s commerce and professional and rural life, complained that the Bengali nation would be split in two, making them a minority in a province including the whole of Bihar and Orissa. They regarded the partition as an attempt to strangle nationalism in Bengal, where it was more developed than elsewhere. Agitation against the partition included mass meetings, rural unrest, and a swadeshi (native) movement to boycott the import of British goods. The partition was carried through despite the agitation, and the extreme opposition went underground to form a terrorist movement. In 1911, the year that the capital was shifted from Calcutta (now Kolkata) to Delhi, east and west Bengal were reunited; Assam again became a chief commissionership, while Bihar and Orissa were separated to form a new province. The aim was to combine appeasement of Bengali sentiment with administrative convenience. This end was achieved for a time, but the Bengali Muslims, having benefitted from partition, were angry and disappointed. This resentment remained throughout the rest of the British period. The final division of Bengal at the partitioning of the subcontinent in 1947, which split Bengal into India in the west and East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) in the east, was accompanied by intense violence. Swadeshi movement The Swadeshi movement, part of the Indian independence movement and the developing Indian nationalism, was an economic strategy aimed at removing the British Empire from power and improving economic conditions in India by following the principles of swadeshi which had some success. Strategies of the Swadeshi movement involved boycotting British products and the revival of domestic products and production processes B.C Bhole identifies five phases of the Swadeshi movement. 1850 to 1904: developed by leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji, Gokhale, Ranade, Tilak, G. V. Joshi and Bhaswat K. Nigoni. This was also known as First Swadeshi Movement. 1905 to 1917: Began in 1905, because of the partition of Bengal ordered by Lord Curzon. 1918 to 1947: Swadeshi thought shaped by Gandhi, accompanied by the rise of Indian industrialists. 1948 to 1991: Widespread curbs on international and inter-state trade. India became a bastion of obsolete technology during the licence-permit raj. 1991 onwards: liberalization privatisation and globalization. Foreign capital, foreign technology, and many foreign goods are not excluded and doctrine of export-led growth resulted in modern industrialism. The Swadeshi movement started with the partition of Bengal by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon in 1905 and continued up to 1911. It was the most successful of the pre-Gandhian movement. Its chief architects were Aurobindo Ghosh, Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Lala Lajpat Rai, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai, Babu Genu. Swadeshi, as a strategy, was a key focus of Mahatma Gandhi, who described it as the soul of Swaraj (self rule). It was strongest in Bengal and was also called the Vandemataram movement. The word Swadeshi derives from Sanskrit and is a sandhi or conjunction of two Sanskrit words. Swa means "self" or "own" and desh means country, so Swadesh would be "own country", and Swadeshi, the adjectival form, would mean "of one's own country". Introduction Credit to starting the Swadeshi movement goes to Baba Ram Singh Kuka of the Sikh Namdhari sect, whose revolutionary movements which heightened around 1871 and 1872. Naamdharis were instructed by Baba Ram Singh to only wear clothes made in the country and boycott foreign goods. The Namdharis resolved conflict in the people’s court and totally avoided British law and British courts. They also boycotted the educational system as Baba Ram Singh prohibited children from attending British School, amongst other forms and measures he employed. Swadeshi movement The proposal of the partition of Bengal became publicly known in 1905, followed by immediate and spontaneous protests all over Bengal. Lord Curzon asked Queen Victoria to partition Bengal in order to drive a wedge between the Hindus and Muslims. 500 meetings were held in East Bengal alone. 50,000 copies of pamphlets with a detailed critique of partition were distributed. This phase is marked by moderate techniques of protest such as petitions, public meetings, press campaigns, etc. to turn public opinion in India as well as in Britain against nothing else. This movement also involved the boycott of British products. Western clothes were thrown onto bonfires and shops selling foreign goods were picketed. To let the British know how unhappy the Indians were at the partition of Bengal, leaders of the anti-partition movement decided to use only Indian goods and to boycott British goods. People gathered at the crossroads and burnt the imported clothes that they had. People picketed the shops selling foreign goods, and imported sugar was boycotted. People also resolved to use things made only in India and this was called the Swadeshi movement. The Swadeshi movement had genesis in the anti-partition movement which started to oppose the British decision to partition Bengal. There was no questioning the fact that Bengal with a population of 70 million had indeed become administratively unwieldy. Equally, there was no escaping the fact that the real motive for partitioning Bengal was political, as Indian nationalism was gaining in strength. The partition was expected to weaken what was perceived as the nerve center of Indian nationalism. Though affected in 1905, the partition proposals had come onto the public domain as early as 1903. Therefore, since 1903, the ground for the launch of the Swadeshi movement had been prepared. In the official note, Risley, the Home Secretary to the Government of India said, "Bengal united is power; Bengal divided will pull the national movement in several different ways". The partition of the state intended to curb Bengali influence by not only placing Bengalis under two administrations but by reducing them to a minority in Bengal itself. In the new proposal, Bengal proper was to have 17 million Bengali and 37 million Oriya and Hindi speaking people. Also, the partition was meant to foster another kind of division—this time based on religion, i.e. between the Muslims and the Hindus. The Indian Nationalists saw the design behind the partition and condemned it unanimously. The anti-partition and Swadeshi movement had begun. The nature of the Swadeshi movement The Bengalis adopted the boycott movement as the last resort after they had exhausted the armory of constitutional agitation known to them, namely vocal protests, appeals, petitions, and Conferences to coerce the British to concede the unanimous national demand. The original conception of Boycott was mainly an economic one. It had two distinct, but allied purposes in view. The first was to bring pressure upon the British public by the pecuniary loss they would suffer by the boycott of British goods, particularly the Manchester cotton goods for which Bengal provided the richest market in India. Secondly, it was regarded as essential for the revival of an indigenous industry which being at its infant stage could never grow in the face of free competition with foreign countries that had a highly developed industry. As the Boycott, the Swadeshi as a purely economic measure for the growth of the Indian Industry was not an altogether novel idea in India. It was preached by several eminent personalities in the 19th century, Gopal Hari Deshmukh, better known as Lokahitawadi of Bombay, Arya Samaj founder Dayanand Saraswati and Bholanath Chandra of Calcutta. But the seeds sown by them did not germinate till the soil was rendered fertile by the grim resolve of a united people, exasperated beyond measure; to forge the twin weapons of Boycott and Swadeshi in order to undo the great wrong which was inflicted upon them by an arrogant Government, callous to the voice of the people. Later on, the economic boycott receded into the background with time and it developed into an idea of non-cooperation with the British in every field and the object aimed at was a political regeneration of the country with the distant goal of absolute freedom looming large before the eyes of the more advanced section. Similarly, Swadeshi completely outgrew the original conception of promoting the Indian industry. The economic boycott and Swadeshi In the economic sense, Swadeshi would represent both a positive and a negative element. These have been discussed as under:- The positive element of economic swadeshi was the regeneration of indigenous goods. The boycott of foreign goods led to the increase in demand for indigenous goods especially clothes that felt short of supply. The mill-owners of Bombay and Ahmadabad came to its rescue. The Boycott movement in Bengal supplied a momentum and driving force to the cotton mills in India and the opportunity thus presented was exploited by the mill-owners.

Load more