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 6_s._ 8_d._) 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 1_s._
2_d._, 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.
[Illustration: A TEMPLE TANK.]
[Illustration: 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] See “Swadeshi-cum-Boycott,” by Hemendra Prasad Ghose; _The
Indian Review_, April, 1908.
[42] Quoted in the above article.