Bengal Partition & swadeshi movement

Partition of Bengal and swadeshi movement  

Background

• Due to formation of congress in 1885 and rise in the activities of Extremists there was constant pressure on the British government

• In the beginning of 1900 Lord Curzon became viceroy of India it was during his time that 2 significant movements like Partition of Bengal and swadeshi movement took place

• Lord Curzon believed in the despotic imperialism which had been advocated by ideologues like Fitzjames Stephens and Lytton Strachey in the last decades of the nineteenth century.

• Curzon was responsible for the reconstitution of the Calcutta Corporation through the Calcutta Municipal Amendment Act of 1899, which reduced the number of elected representatives in it.

• The Indian Universities Act which was also endorsed by Curzon placed Calcutta University under complete government control.

• Furthermore, the Indian Official Secret Amendment Act of 1904 restricted the freedom of the press

Motive and Reasons behind Partition of Bengal

• The intention to safeguard the interests of Assam seemed to have been the most important consideration behind the policy decision on the part of the colonial state.

• In 1897, the Lusai Hills were transformed; Assam did not become a Lieutenant Governor’s province. When Lord Curzon arrived in India, he went on a tour to Assam in 1900.

• During his visit, the scheme was revised again and the European tea planters preferred a maritime outlet nearer than Calcutta to reduce their dependence on the Assam-Bengal railways.

• Curzon drew up a scheme in his Minute of Territorial Redistribution of India in May-June 1903, which was later published in the Risley Papers of December, 1903

• Curzon believed that the partition would destroy the dominance of the Bengali bhadralok who were land owners, moneylenders, professional and clerical classes, belonging mostly to the three upper castes of Brahmins, Ksatriyas and Vaidyas

• Religion Basis was also taken into consideration as The western Bengal was to be a Hindu majority area and the Eastern Bengal was to be a Muslim majority area and diving these areas accordingly

The partition

• The Curzonian scheme to partition Bengal took a concrete shape gradually from the time the Viceroy wrote his minute on Territorial Redistribution on 1 June, 1903

• On 19 July, 1905 the Government announced its decision to form the 2 new provinces

• 1^st was Bengal comprising of Western Bengal as well as the provinces of Bihar and Orissa.

• 2^nd was “Eastern Bengal and Assam", comprising the Chittagong, Dacca and Rajshahi divisions, Hill Tippera (Tripura), Malda and Assam. The province came into existence on 16 October, 1905, by breaking up Bengal and its 41.5 million Bengali speaking people

Consequences of Partition of Bengal

• The Indian National Congress objected to the move to divide the province along communal lines

• The partition succeeded in causing a communal schism in the country and even aided in the formation of the Muslim League in 1906

• Curzon’s reactionary policies stirred the Indian consciousness and provided impetus to the Indian nationalism.

• In the beginning it had the aim of securing the annulment of the partition, but it soon expanded into a more broad-based movement, known as the Swadeshi movement.

Swadeshi movement

Background

• The agitation against the partition had started in 1903, but became stronger and more organized after the scheme was finally announced and implemented as well in 1905.

• In the beginning it had the aim of securing the annulment of the partition, but it soon expanded into a more broad-based movement, known as the Swadeshi movement

• The moderates began to criticise the partition scheme ever since it was announced in 1903, they initially thought that the British would accept their arguments which they presented through petitions, prayers and public meetings. But, these efforts hardly succeeded, and in 1905, when the partition was announced, they were the first to devise a wider Swadeshi movement.

• The boycott suggestion first came from Krishnakumar Mitra's I Sanjivani on 3 July, 1905, and was later accepted by the prominent publicmen at the Town  Hall meeting of 7 August, 1905

• On July 17, 1905 Surendra Nath Banerjee in a meeting in Calcutta gave a call for the boycott of British goods and institutions. In another mass meeting held at the Calcutta Town Hall on august 7, a formal boycott resolution was passed, which marked the beginning of the Swadeshi movement

Details of this movement

Focus of the movement was to boycott British goods/products and focus on Swadeshi

The boycott of British products was followed by

• The advocacy of swadeshi or exhorting purchasers to buy indigenously produced goods as a patriotic duty,

• Charkha (the spinning wheel) came to typify the popular concern for the country's economic self-sufficiency,  

• The holding of swadeshi melas or fairs for selling handicrafts and other articles became a regular feature.

• Chemicals, Bange Lakshmi Cotton Mills, Mohini Mills and National Tannery were started. Various soap, match box and tobacco manufacturing establishments and oil mills, as well as financial activities, like the swadeshi banks, insurance and steam navigation companies also took off the ground under the impetus generated by the movement

• Boycott of schools and colleges forced the leaders of the Swadeshi movement to think in terms of running a parallel system of education in Bengal

  Educational institutes

• Some of the educational institutes came into existence like Bengal Technical Institute (which was started on 25 July, 1906, and which later turned into the College of Engineering and Technology, Jadavpur-the nucleus of the present day Jadavpur University), the Bengal National College and School (which was set up on 15 August, 1906 with Aurobindo Ghosh as its Principal) and a number of national, primary and secondary schools in the districts

  Newspapers

• Newspapers like the Bengalee, the Hitabadi, the Sanjibani, Indian Mirror, and Ananda Bazar Patrika carried Moderate arguments and ideas.

• People like Tilak in Maharashtra and Lala Lajpat Rai in Punjab were working towards building ‘atmasakti’ since the 1890s. But it acquired a new lease of life within the movement, and Rabindranath Tagore and a quiet school teacher from Barisal, Aswini Kumar Dutta, were crucial proponents of this form of agitation that stressed patient reform and growth before concerted political action was undertaken.

  The samitis during swadeshi movement

• A large number of national volunteer bodies or samitis sprang up in Calcutta and the districts

• Some of the distinguished among them were the Dawn Society (named after the famous journal of the time-Dawn), the Anti-Circular Society (formed initially to protest against the "Carlyle Circular"), the Swadeshdhandhav, the Brati, the Anushilan, the Suhrid and the Sadhena samitis

 These samitis encouraged artistic and literary work like

    1.They encouraged folk singers and artistes (notably persons like Mukunda Das, Bhusan Das and Mufizuddin Bayati) to perform on the swadeshi themes in local dialects

    2.Literary stalwarts like Rabindranath Tagore, Rajanikanta Sen, Dwijendralal Roy, Girindramohini Dasi, Sayed Abu Mohammed, or playwrights like Girishchandra Ghosh, Kshirodeprasad Vidyavinode and Amritalal Bose

Participation of different sections of the society

1.Workers

• Some of the swadeshi activists (notably Aswini Coomar Banerji, Prabhat Kusum Roychoudhury, Althanasius Apurba Kumar Ghosh and Premtosh Bose) did, however, try to organise workers in Bengal, and direct their economic grievances into political channels

• There was large strikes in jute mills and railway workshops

• A  strike in the Government owned presses resulted in the formation of the first real labour union, namely the Printers' Union in October 1905

2.Peasants

• This movement lacked in peasants’ participation

• To the bulk of the impoverished kisans, their patriotic calls remained vague, distant and even abstractly rhetorical.

• The reason was the lack of genuine interest among these leaders in improving the agrarian situation, or in formulating concrete programmes for the betterment of the peasant masses

3.Muslim participation

• This movement did not have large participation of Muslims

• Muslim League was formed  in October, 1906 nder the leadership of Nawab Salimullah of Dacca, to protect the "separate" interests of the Muslims

• Besides this Some distinguished Muslim publicmen took up leading roles in the agitation (such as Liakat Hussain, Abdul Hakim,Ghiynavi, Abdul Rasul, Maniruzzaman, Ismail Hussain Siraji, Abul Husiain )

• The stridently Hinduised exhortations of the nationalist organs like Bunde Muturum, Sandhya and nuhshllkri, the uncritical glorification of Hindu past, the nostaligia for thi lost Hindu rashtra (nation), the practice of taking a pledge of swudeshi (for not using British goods) before a Hindu deity etc. Abstained the Muslims from participating in this movement

Impact of swadeshi movement

1.Development of idea of mass participation

2.For the first time, women came out of their homes and joined processions and picketing of foreign-made goods shops.

3.Idea of passive resistance gained its importance

4.The appointment of S.P. Sinha as the law member in the viceroy’s Executive Council was surely the result of the pressure generated by these activities

Rise of Revolutionary terrorism

• Inspite of having developed techniques of mass agitation, the Swadeshi movement never became a successful mass movement, and by 1908 young elite nationalists turned to revolutionary terrorism instead

• They undertook assassinations of colonial officials and ‘swadeshi dacoities’ to raise funds for their agitation

• Aurobindo and Charuchandra Dutta started the revolutionary weekly Yugantar in 1906

• Prafulla Chaki died and Khudiram Bose, a boy of 18, were hanged for their I attempt on the life of a notorious British Magistrate Kingford who escaped unhurt. It also / led in April 1908 to the discovery of a secret bomb manufacturing factory in the Manicktala 1 area of Calcutta

• In March, 1902, Dhaka Anushilan Samiti was founded by Satish Chandra Basu

Failure of the movement

• Ineffectiveness of the mass programme and alienation of the masses

• Gap between the elite and the masses

• Secular outlook of the movement was not maintained

• Ineffective coordination among leaders of this movement

Annulment of partition of Bengal

• On December 12, 1911, King George V announced at the Delhi Durbar that eastern Bengal would be absorbed into the Bengal Presidency & Lord Hardinge annulled the partition of Bengal in 1911.

• Districts where Bengali was spoken were reunited, while Assam, Bihar, and Orissa were divided

• The annulment of the partition of Bengal in 1911 was also to some measure dictated by the upsurge of popular pressure created by the revolutionary nationalist

• Bengal's Muslims were shocked because they had seen the Muslim majority East Bengal as a sign of the government's eagerness to protect Muslim interests

• The decision of the annulment of partition was also followed by the decision to transfer the capital from Calcutta to Delhi

Conflict between extremists and moderates

1.ideological conflicts

Moderates wanted that swadeshi movement is to be restricted in Bengal and were not that much hostile towards Britishers but extremists have opposite views about these points

Issue came up in Calcutta session of 1906 and in this session, Swaraj was first time discussed and extremists placed following proposals

-the demand of swaraj

-national education

-passive resistance

-continuation of swaraj movement   

Conflict in this session was avoided by choosing senior most leader i.e. Dada bhai Naoroji as its President

2.Personality Clash

• The controversy between the Moderates and the Extremists raged round the personality of Tilak and Gokhale

• The difference between Gokhale and Tilak may be traced back to an earlier period. There had been intense clash of personalities at Poona from the beginning of the nineties of the last century

3.Arundel commission of 1905

• This commission was appointed to review the partition of Bengal and both extremists and moderates were in opinion that this commission was because of their efforts only and this created differences among them

4.Surat spilt

• Surat split was not an immediate incident but it took place due to long term differences that developed between extremist group and moderate group

• Although extremist group wanted their leader in 1906 session of congress and placed some proposals but as senior leader dada bhai naorji was chosen as president at that time so issue was resolved for short period of time but this issue again come up in Surat session of the congress

• The annual session of the Congress in 1907 was originally proposed to be held in Nagpur.

• The moderate like Phirozshah Mehta didn’t want the influence of extremist leaders. Nagpur was the center of the extremism.

• So the venue was shifted to Surat. The congress was clearly split into two sections. Extremists wanted Lala Lajpat Rai as the president of the congress.

• However moderates chose Rasbihari Ghosh as the president. The extremists were dissatisfied with this and they strongly opposed it. Bal Gangadhar Tilak declared that the election of president was not according to the rules.

• Thus the Surat session clearly saw the division of the congress. It was the big blow to the nationalist movement. Though officially moderates controlled the congress the extremist leaders became popular with the masses.

• The Surat episode has been described by Dr. Annie Besant as the ‘saddest episode in the history of the Congress

• Dr. Rash Behari Ghosh presided over the Surat meeting.

• To suppress militant nationalists, the British used a divide and rule strategy.

• The extremists had to remain outside the fold of Congress till 1916, when as a result of the efforts of Dr. Annie Besant, there was a reunion between the moderates and the extremists