Tell about Swadeshi Movement ?

Bal Gandadhar Tilak encouraged Swadeshi and Boycott movement after the British government decided the partition of Bengal.

This decision to partition Bengal led to resentment among the Bengali intelligentsia who clearly saw through the British ploy of dividing Indians on communal lines.

Among the several forms of struggle thrown up by the movement, it was the boycott of foreign made goods that met with the greatest visible success at the practical and popular level.

Boycott and public burning of foreign cloth, picketing of shops selling foreign goods, all became common in remote corners of Bengal as well as in many important towns and cities throughout the country.

Corps of volunteers (samitis) were another form of mass mobilization widely used by the Swadeshi movement.

The Swadesh Bandhab Samiti set up by Ashwini Kumar Dutt, a school teacher, in Barisal was the most well-known volunteer organization of them all.

Lokmanya Tilak organized the Shivaji and Ganapati festivals in Western India (Maharashtra) to spread the message of the swadeshi and boycott movements among the masses.

The Swadeshi and boycott movements gave great emphasis upon ‘Atmasakti‘ or self-reliance in different fields as a means to re-assert national dignity.

This emphasis on self-reliance was most evident in the field of National Education.

The Bengal National College was founded with Aurobindo as its Principal.

Scores of national schools were established in a short period all over the country. In August 1906, the National Council of Education was established.

Self-reliance was also evident in the entrepreneurial zeal of Indians.

The period saw an explosion of Swadeshi textile mills, soap and match factories, tanneries, banks, insurance companies, shops etc.

While most of these Swadeshi enterprises were established and run owing to patriotic fervour than any real business interest ..

Were unable to survive for long, some others such as Acharya P.C. Ray’s Bengal Chemicals Factory, became successful and famous.

In the field of culture Rabindranth Tagore’s Amar Sonar Bangla, which he wrote in protest against the partition of Bengal, became a rallying point of the Swadeshi and boycott movements and later inspired the liberation struggle of Bangladesh.

The swadeshi and boycott movements caught the popular imagination and soon spread to other parts of the country.

Let us look at the areas/regions where the movement spread and the principal actors behind its spread.

The Swadeshi and boycott movements were the first movements of the 20th Century India that encouraged mass participation of a large section of the society in modern nationalist politics.

Women came out of their homes for the first time and joined processions and picketing of shops selling foreign made goods.

The Swadeshi and boycott movements also changed the character of the Indian National Congress (INC) from being driven largely by moderates to, now, the primary agenda being set by the ‘Extremists’ who gave the call of ‘Swaraj’ or self-rule at the 1906 Calcutta session of the Congress.

The ideas of non-cooperation and passive resistance, which Mahatma Gandhi applied successfully many years later, found their genesis in the Swadeshi and boycott movements of the early 20th Century.

The British had sown the seeds of communalism into the social fabric of India quite deep and the Swadeshi movement was not able..

Garner support of the Muslim masses, especially the Muslim peasantry which was in an inverse class relationship with the Hindu zamindars in large parts of Bengal.

By mid-1908, the mass character of the swadeshi and boycott movements had almost ended and government repression took its full force.