Swadeshi Movement was the movement of disdaining/boycotting of Western Thoughts, English Education System , Job, School , Clothes and Titles. It was also the movement of re-accepting and Rethinking of local and nationalist ideas and indigenous goods.But it all started from great Bengal divide.
So What Is The Bengal Divide ?
All this things started from Bengal which was a big Indian state & govern and managed by the British. a famous Indian Leader Gopal Krishna Gokhle once said about the Bengal and Bengali people –
”what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow.”
– Gopal K Gokhle
this is true in this accept that the centre of nationalist thinking and progressive nationalism, Bengal was playing its role by literature ,knowledge and its people. the root cause behind it that the Bengal was the centre of all the nationalist thoughts where from congress (INC) was managed and operated in all over the India.So British was decided to divide the Bengal ,which have a lot of means because they are dividing Bengal by telling that it is a big state for govern, but they actually want to divide the growing nationalist movement .
They want to divide the Bengal in Hindi-Oriya speaking Bengal like Bihar and Orissa. and they also want to divide of the basis of religion by encouraging the Muslim Fundamentalism. so that Bengal partition was a well-formed and a well decorated plan.
so in 1903 people was informed about the partition of Bengal, people start reacting against it & from 1903 to mid 1905 a lot of big public gathering , public speaking and public debate happened, during this all the press release happened was against the government.
In 19 July 1905 government announced for the Bengal divide. and then every one realised that nothing will happen by giving petition and applications so they decided to take a new path of boycott movement which was all about boycotting the foreign goods and making the movement more successful . in august 1905 a boycott resolution was passed in Calcutta which was extremely important.
from 16 Oct 1905 , the day when Bengal divide became effective , people decided to make it as a black day and a lot of strike happen in all over the country and in Calcutta also. people started collecting money for making the movement more strong because they was not accepting the great divide and that was the cause why Bengal was restructured in 1911. from 1905 the movement of boycotting the foreign goods like clothes from Manchester and salt from Liverpool boycotted and start accepting the indigenous goods and products . this all known as Swadeshi movement. In 1905 chairman of congress Gopal k Gokhle give call for Swaraj (means self-government) in Varanasi Session of Indian National Congress.
Effects of Swadeshi movement on Indian society.
In 1906 Dadabhai Naoroji , also known as the Grand Old Man of India given a speech in his Calcutta session where he actually derive the means of swaraj, and he said in his speech that congress have an aim to make a government in India like in Britain and its other colonies,which sound so obvious because movement was actually very successful.
Now here was another discussion was going on between congress that what is the best way to continue this movement , some leaders(like Gopal K Gokhale ) was arguing about a peaceful & petition type of movement and some(like Bal Gangadhar Tilak ) was arguing about making this movement revolutionary & extremists , from here signs of divide being felt in congress also which take place in 1907. Now extremists way of congress is becoming stronger because of rage and indignation in the people.
The more successful way of this boycott movement was the boycotting of foreign goods specially clothes. one more cause was behind this was Indian textile industry was collapsed due to foreign clothes. they was burning foreign clothes and foreign good in all over the Bengal and other Indian state like Madras and Bombay presidency and the whole thinking behind that was if no one buy and use foreign goods so British have to go from India, which is not quite logical because at this movement British have a very good holding and they disperse the agitator by using an iron hand. and using iron hand make it more and more extremist.
The leaders of Swaraj and boycott movement want to make people more independent and more reliable for future and they given a battle cry to every Indian to be Self Reliable and Self Powered. it give a move to the normal Indian to come in the first row for Swaraj by using Volunteer origination like Swadesh Bandhav Samiti in Bengal. the leaders of national movement also started the institutions for technical and art education which can make contact of nationalist thinking in next generation.
we can say that it was the real start of the nationalist movement of India, and it was so special because first time in the history of national movement the farmers and women’s participation happened in this large volume. this movement also effected the Indian society and its intellectual category to restart thinking about orientalist art and culture of India.
So What Went Wrong and why Indian Muslims was chopped out ?
The big failure of this movement was that they had failed to mainstream the indian muslims. because this was the time where Agricultural Muslims was not came in contact with the nationalist thinking in place of that they was moving to pan Islamic thinking as Britishers also want, this make the whole national movement weaken. one more thing about this when the swaraj movement was at its prosperity the Indian Muslim League was founded , 30 December 1906 at Dacca (Dakha).Which threw off the whole Muslims from swaraj and boycott movement. one more cause was that the circumstances and the leadership of this movement was somehow connected with Hinduism and Britishers had managed to convince Indian Muslims that it is not in your favour of Muslims in both religious & in beneficial way and the fundamentalist power were very successful to represent it as a very falsely appearing movement which was the cause of major riots in Calcutta & dacca.
Result of its Impact on future ?
We can’t say that this movement had failed because this movement introduced nationalism to whom who was totally conversant with nationalism , swaraj created a new ground for future movement because this movement was a Source of Inspiration for the next generation and its political thinking. and we can say the swaraj and boycott aandolan Lived, and died of his age & also plotted a ground for violent revolutionary movement for whom ,Who were without leadership at that time.
And big thing this was a Suffering experience for British government in Bengal and all over the India, because Britishers was the cause of the going on riots in Bengal.
GAbbaR ManiFesTO : A Blog By Dushyant Nath 
