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Congress, Swadeshi and the Split - Part 1
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The second half of the 19th century witnessed the full flowering of national political consciousness, and the growth of an organized national movement in India. In December 1885 was born the Indian National Congress under whose leadership Indians waged a prolonged and courageous struggle for independence from oppressive foreign rule, a struggle which India finally won on 15 August 1947.
1.1 Predecessors of the Indian National Congress
By the 1870s it was evident that Indian nationalism had gathered enough strength and momentum to appear as a major force on the political scene. The Indian National Congress, founded in December 1885, was the first organized expression of the Indian national movement on an all-India scale. It had, however, many predecessors.
Raja Rammohan Roy was the first Indian leader to start an agitation for political reforms in India. Many public associations were started in different parts of India after 1836. All these associations were dominated by wealthy and aristocratic elements - called in those days 'prominent persons' - and were provincial or local in character. They worked for reform of administration, association of Indians with the administration, and spread of education, and sent long petitions to the British Parliament, putting forward Indian demands.
The period after 1858 witnessed a gradual widening of the gulf between the educated Indians and the British Indian administration (due to obvious wariness of Britishers for their Indian ‘subjects’ post the 1857 revolt). As the educated Indians studied the character of British rule and its consequences for India, they became more and more critical of British policies in India. The discontent gradually found expression in political activity. The existing associations no longer satisfied the politically conscious Indians.
In 1866, Dadabhai Naoroji organized the East India Association in London to discuss the Indian question and to influence British public men to promote Indian welfare. Later he organized branches of the Association in prominent Indian cities. Born in 1825, Dadabhai devoted his entire life to the national movement and soon came to be known as the 'Grand Old Man of India'. He was also India's first economic thinker. In his writings on economics he showed that the basic cause of India's poverty lay in the British exploitation of India and the drain of its wealth. Dadabhai was honoured by being thrice elected president of the Indian National Congress. In fact he was the first of the long line of popular nationalist leaders of India whose very name stirred the hearts of the people.
The most important of the pre-Congress nationalist organizations was the Indian Association of Calcutta. The younger nationalists of Bengal had been gradually getting discontented with the conservation and pro-landlord policies of the British India Association. They wanted sustained political agitation on issues of wider public interest. They found a leader in Surendranath Banerjee who was a brilliant writer and orator.
He was unjustly turned out of the Indian Civil Service (ICS) as his superiors could not tolerate the presence of an independent-minded Indian in the ranks of this service. He began his public career in 1875 by delivering brilliant addresses on nationalist topics to the students of Calcutta. Led by Surendranath and Ananda Mohan Bose, the younger nationalists of Bengal founded the Indian Association in July 1876. The Indian Association set before itself the aims of creating strong public opinion in the country on political questions and the unification of the Indian people on a common political programme. In order to attract large numbers of people to its banner, it fixed a low membership fee for the poorer classes. Many branches of the Association were opened in the towns and villages of Bengal and also in many towns outside Bengal.
The younger elements were also active in other parts of India. Justice Ranade and others organised the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha in the 1870s. M. Viraraghavachari, G. Subramaniya Iyer, Ananda Charlu and others formed the Madras Mahajan Sabha in 1884. Pherozeshah Mehta, K.T. Telang, Badruddin Tyabji and others formed the Bombay Presidency Association in 1885.
The time was now ripe for the formation of an all-India political organisation of the nationalists who felt the need to unite politically against the common enemy - foreign rule and exploitation. The existing organisations had served a useful purpose but they were narrow in their scope and functioning. They dealt mostly with local questions and their membership and leadership were confined to a few people belonging to a single city or province. Even the Indian Association had not succeeded in becoming an all India body.
2.0 THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS
Many Indians had been planning to form an all-India organization of nationalist political workers. But the credit for giving the idea concrete and final shape goes to A.O. Hume, a retired English Civil Servant. He got in touch with prominent Indian leaders - and organized with their cooperation - the first session of the Indian National Congress at Bombay in
December 1885. It was presided over by W.C. Bannerjee and attended by 72 delegates. The aims of the National Congress were declared to be the promotion of friendly relations between nationalist political workers from different parts of the country; development and consolidation of the feeling of national unity irrespective of caste, religion or province, formulation of popular demands and their presentation before the Government, and most important of all, the training and organization of public opinion in the country. It has been said that Hume's main purpose in encouraging the foundation of the Congress was to provide a 'safety valve' or a safe outlet to the growing discontent among the educated Indians. He wanted to prevent the union of a discontented nationalist intelligentsia with a discontented peasantry.
The 'safety valve' theory is, however, a small part of the truth and is totally inadequate and misleading. More than anything else, the National Congress represented the urge of the politically conscious Indians to set up a national organization to work for their political and economic advancement. We have already seen above that a national movement was already growing in the country as a result of the working of powerful forces. No one man or group of men can be given credit for creating this movement. Even Hume's motives were mixed ones. He was also moved by motives nobler than those of the 'safety valve'. He possessed a sincere love for India and its poor cultivators. In any case, the Indian leaders, who cooperated with Hume in starting this National Congress, were patriotic men of high character who willingly accepted Hume's help as they did not want to cause official hostility towards their efforts at so early a stage of political activity. They hoped that a retired civil servant's active presence would allay official suspicions. If Hume wanted to use the Congress as a 'safety valve', the early Congress leaders hoped to use him as a 'lightning conductor'.
Thus with the foundation of the National Congress in 1885, the struggle for India's freedom from foreign rule was launched in a small but organized manner. The national movement was to grow and the country and its people were to know no rest till freedom was won. The Congress itself was to serve from the beginning not as a party but as a movement. In 1886 delegates to the Congress, numbering 436, were elected by different local organizations and groups. Hereafter, the National Congress met every year in December, in a different part of the country each time. The number of its delegates soon increased to thousands. Its delegates consisted mostly of lawyers, journalists, traders, industrialists, teachers and landlords. In 1890, Kadambini Ganguli, the first woman graduate of Calcutta University, addressed the Congress session. This was symbolic of the fact that India's struggle for freedom would raise Indian women from the degraded position to which they had been reduced for several centuries.
The Indian National Congress was not the only channel through which the stream of nationalism flowed. Provincial conferences, provincial and local associations, and nationalist newspapers were the other prominent organs of the growing nationalist movement. The Press, in particular, was a powerful factor in developing nationalist opinion and the nationalist movement. Of course, most of the newspapers of the period were not carried on as business ventures but were consciously started as organs of nationalist activity. Some of the great presidents of the National Congress during its early years were Dadabhai Naoroji, Badruddin Tyabji, Pherozeshah Mehta, P. Ananda Charlu, Surendranath Banerjee, Romesh Chandra Dutt, Ananda Mohan Bose and Gopal Krishna Gokhale. Other prominent leaders of the Congress and the national movement during this period were Mahadev Govind Ranade, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the Brothers Sisir Kumar and Motilal Ghose, Madan Mohan Malaviya, G. Subramaniya Iyer, C.Vijayaraghava Chariar and Dinshaw E. Wacha.
2.1 The programme and activities of the early nationalists
Early nationalist leadership believed that a direct struggle for the political emancipation of the country was not yet on the agenda of history. What indeed was on the agenda, was the arousal of a national feeling, consolidation of this feeling, the bringing of a large number of the Indian people into the vortex of nationalist politics, and their training in politics and political agitation. The first important task in this respect was the creation of public interest in political questions and the organization of public opinion in the country. Secondly, popular demands had to be formulated on a country-wide basis so that the emerging public opinion might have an all-India focus. Most important of all, national unity had to be created, in the first instance, among the politically conscious Indians and political workers and leaders. The early national leaders were fully aware of the fact that India had just entered the process of becoming a nation - in other words, India was a nation-in-the-making. Indian nationhood had to be carefully promoted. Indians had to be carefully welded into a nation. Politically conscious Indians had to constantly work for the development and consolidation of the feeling of national unity irrespective of region, caste or religion. The economic and political demands of the early nationalists were formulated with a view to unifying the Indian people on the basis of a common economic and political programme.
3.0 CRITICAL REVIEW OF ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM
Perhaps the most important part of the early nationalists' political work was their economic critique of imperialism. They took note of all the three forms of contemporary colonial economic exploitation, namely, through trade, industry and finance. They clearly grasped that the essence of British economic imperialism lay in the subordination of the Indian economy to the British economy. They vehemently opposed the British attempt to develop in India the basic characteristics of a colonial economy, namely, the transformation of India into a supplier of raw materials, a market for British manufactures, and a field of investment for foreign capital. They organized a powerful agitation against nearly all important official economic policies based on this colonial structure.
The early nationalists complained of India's growing poverty and economic backwardness and the failure of modern industry and agriculture to grow; and they put the blame on British economic exploitation of India. Thus, Dadabhai Naoroji declared as early as 1881 that the British rule was "an everlasting, increasing, and every day increasing foreign invasion" that was "utterly, though gradually, destroying the country". The nationalists criticized the official economic policies for bringing about the ruin of India's traditional handicraft industries and for obstructing the development of modern industries. Most of them opposed the large-scale investment of foreign capital in the Indian railways, plantations and industries on the ground that it would lead to the suppression of Indian capitalists and the further strengthening or the British hold on India's economy and polity.
They believed that the employment of foreign capital posed a serious economic and political danger not only to the present generation but also to the generations to come. The chief remedy they suggested for the removal of India's poverty was the rapid development of modern industries. They wanted the Government to promote modern industries through tariff protection and direct government aid. They popularized the idea of Swadeshi or the use of Indian goods, and the boycott of British goods as a means of promoting Indian industries. For example, students in Poona and in other towns of Maharashtra publicly burnt foreign clothes in 1896 as part of the larger Swadeshi campaign.
The nationalists complained that India's wealth was being drained to England, and demanded that this drain be stopped. They carried on persistent agitation for the reduction of land revenue in order to lighten the, burden of taxation on the peasant. Some of them also criticized the semi feudal agrarian relations that the British sought to maintain. The nationalists also agitated for improvement in the conditions of work of the plantation laborers. They declared high taxation to be one of the causes of India's poverty and demanded the abolition of the salt tax and reduction of land revenue. They condemned the high military-expenditure of the Government of India and demanded its reduction. As time passed more and more nationalists came to the conclusion that economic exploitation and impoverishment of the country and the perpetuation of its economic backwardness by foreign imperialism more than outweighed some of the beneficial aspects of the alien rule.
Thus, regarding the benefits of security of life and property, Dadabhai Naoroji remarked: "The romance is that there is security of life and property in India; the reality is that there is no such thing. There is security of life and property in one sense or way - i.e., the people are secure from any violence from each other or from Native despots ... But from England's own grasp there is no security of property at all and, as a consequence, no security for life. India's property is not secure. What is secure, and well secure, is that England is perfectly safe and secure, and does so with perfect security, to carry away from India, and to eat up in India, her property at the present rate of £30,000,000 or £40,000,000 a year... I therefore venture to submit that India does not enjoy security of her property and life... To millions in India life is simply 'half-feeding', or starvation, or famine and disease."
With regard to law and order, Dadabhai said: “There is an Indian saying: 'Pray strike on the back, but don't strike on the belly'. Under the native despots the people keep and enjoy what they produce, though at times they suffer some violence on the back. Under the British Indian despot, the man is at peace, there is no violence; his substance is drained away, unseen, peaceably and subtly - he starves in peace and perishes in peace, with law and order!”
Nationalist agitation on economic issues led to the growth of an all-India opinion that the British rule was based on the exploitation of India, was leading to India's impoverishment and was producing economic backwardness and underdevelopment. These disadvantages far outweighed any indirect advantages that might have followed the British rule.
4.0 METHODS OF POLITICAL WORK OF EARLY NATIONALIST LEADERS
The Indian national movement up to 1905 was dominated by leaders who have often been described as moderate nationalists or ‘Moderates’. The political methods of the Moderates can be summed up briefly as constitutional agitation within the four walls of the law, and slow, orderly political progress. They believed that if public opinion was created and organized and popular demands presented to the authorities through petitions, meetings, resolutions and speeches, the authorities would concede these demands gradually and step by step.
Their political work had, therefore, a two-pronged direction. Firstly, to build up a strong public opinion in India to arouse the political consciousness and national spirit of the people, and to educate and unite them on political questions. Basically, even the resolutions and petitions of the National Congress were directed towards this goal. Though ostensibly their memorials and petitions were addressed to the Government, their real aim was to educate the Indian people. For example, when in 1891 the young Gokhale expressed disappointment at the two-line reply of the Government to a carefully proposed memorial by the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, Justice Ranade replied: "You don't realise our place in the history of our country. These memorials are nominally addressed to Government. In reality they are addressed to the people, so that they may learn how to think in these matters. This work must be done for many years, without expecting any other results, because politics of this kind is altogether new in this land."
Secondly, the early nationalists wanted to persuade the British Government and British public opinion to introduce reforms along directions laid down by the nationalists. The Moderate nationalists believed that the British people and Parliament wanted to be just to India but that they did not know the true state of affairs there. Therefore, next to educating Indian public opinion, the moderate nationalists worked to educate British public opinion. For this purpose, they carried on active propaganda in Britain. Deputations of leading Indians were sent to Britain to propagate the Indian view. In 1889, a British Committee of the Indian National Congress was founded. In 1890 this Committee started a journal called India. Dadabhai Naoroji spent a major part of his life and income in England in popularizing India's case among its people.
A student of the Indian national movement sometimes gets confused when he reads loud professions of loyalty to the British rule by prominent Moderate leaders. These professions do not at all mean that they were not genuine patriots or that they were cowardly men. They genuinely believed that the continuation of India's political connection with Britain was in the interests of India at that stage of history. They, therefore, planned not to expel the British but to transform the British rule to approximate to national rule. Later, when they took note of the evil of the British rule and the failure of the Government to accept nationalist demands for reform, many of them stopped talking of loyalty to the British rule and started demanding self-government for India. Moreover, many of them were Moderates because they felt that the time was not yet ripe to throw a direct challenge to the foreign rulers.
5.0 THE PARTITION OF BENGAL
The conditions for the emergence of militant nationalism had thus developed when in 1905 the partition of Bengal was announced and the Indian national movement entered its second stage.
On 20 July 1905, Lord Curzon issued an order dividing the province of Bengal into two parts: Eastern Bengal and Assam with a population of 31 million, and the rest of Bengal with a population of 54 million, of whom 18 million were Bengalis and 36 million Biharis and Oriyas. It was said that the existing province of Bengal was too big to be efficiently administered by a single provincial government. However, the officials who worked out the plan had also other political ends in view. They hoped to stem the rising tide of nationalism in Bengal, considered at the time to be the nerve centre of Indian nationalism. Risley, Home Secretary to the Government of India, wrote in an official note on 6 December 1904: “Bengal united is a power. Bengal divided will pull in several different ways. That is what the Congress leaders feel: their apprehensions are perfectly correct and they form one of the great merits of the scheme... One of our main objects is to split up and thereby to weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule.”
The Indian National Congress and the nationalists of Bengal firmly opposed the partition. Within Bengal, different sections of the population - zamindars, merchants, lawyers, students, the city poor, and even women - rose up in spontaneous opposition to the partition of their province.
The nationalists saw the act of partition as a challenge to Indian nationalism and not merely an administrative measure. They saw that it was a deliberate attempt to divide the Bengalis territorially and on religious grounds, for in the Eastern part Muslims would be in a big majority and in the Western part Hindus. Thus it would disrupt and weaken nationalism in Bengal. It would also be a big blow to the growth of Bengali language and culture. They pointed out that administrative efficiency could have been better secured by separating the Hindi-speaking Bihar and the Oriya speaking Orissa from the Bengali speaking part of the province. Moreover, the official step had been taken in utter disregard of public opinion. Thus the vehemence of Bengal's protest against the partition is explained by the fact that it was a blow to the sentiments of a very sensitive and courageous people.
5.1 The anti-partition movement
The Anti-Partition Movement was the work of the entire national leadership of Bengal and not of any one section of the movement. Its most prominent leaders at the initial stage were moderate leaders like Surendranath Banerjee and Krishna Kumar Mitra; militant and revolutionary nationalists took over in the later stages. In fact, both the moderate and militant nationalists co-operated with one another during the course of the movement.
The Anti-Partition Movement was initiated on 7 August 1905. On that day a massive demonstration against the partition was organised in the Town Hall in Calcutta. From this meeting delegates dispersed to spread the movement to the rest of the province.
The partition took effect on 16 October 1905. The leaders of the protest movement declared it to be a day of national mourning throughout Bengal. It was observed as a day of fasting. There was a hartal in Calcutta. People walked barefooted and bathed in the Ganga in the early morning hours. Rabindranath Tagore composed the national song, 'Amar Sonar Bangla', for the occasion which was sung by huge crowds parading the streets. This song was adopted as its national anthem by Bangladesh in 1971 after liberation. The streets of Calcutta were full of the cries of 'Bande Mataram' which overnight became the national song of Bengal and which was soon to become the theme song of the national movement. The ceremony of Raksha Bandhan was utilised in a new way. Hindus and Muslims tied the rakhi on one anothers wrists as a symbol of the unbreakable unity of the Bengalis and of the two halves of Bengal.
In the afternoon, there was a great demonstration when the veteran leader Ananda Mohan Bose laid the foundation of a Federation Hall to mark the indestructible unity of Bengal. He addressed a crowd of over 50,000.
5.2 The Swadeshi and Boycott
The Bengal leaders felt that mere demonstrations, public meetings and resolutions were not likely to have much effect on the rulers. More positive action that would reveal the intensity of popular feelings and exhibit them at their best was needed. The answer was “Swadeshi” and “Boycott”. Mass meetings were held all over Bengal where Swadeshi - or the use of Indian goods - and the boycott of British goods were proclaimed and pledged. In many places public burning of foreign cloth were organized and shops selling foreign cloth were picketed. The Swadeshi Movement was an immense success. According to Surendranath Banerjee: “Swadeshism during the days of its potency coloured the entire texture of our social and domestic life. Marriage presents that included foreign goods, the like of which could be manufactured at home, were returned. Priests would often decline to officiate at ceremonies where foreign articles were offered as oblations to the gods. Guests would refuse to participate in festivities where foreign salt or foreign sugar was used”.
An important aspect of the Swadeshi Movement was the emphasis placed on self-reliance or 'Atmashakti. Self-reliance meant assertion of national dignity, honor and self-confidence. In the economic field, it meant fostering indigenous industrial and other enterprises. Many textile mills, soap and match factories, handloom weaving concerns, national banks, and insurance companies were opened. Acharya P.C. Ray organized his famous Bengal Chemical Swadeshi Stores. Even the great poet Rabindranath Tagore helped to open a Swadeshi store.
The Swadeshi Movement had several cultural consequences. There was a flowering of nationalist poetry, prose and journalism. The patriotic songs written at the time by poets like Rabindranath Tagore, Rajani Kant Sen, Syed Abu Mohammed and Mukunda Das are sung in Bengal to this day. Another self-reliant, constructive activity undertaken at the time was that of National Education. National educational institutions where literary, technical, or physical education was imparted were opened by nationalists who regarded the existing system of education as denationalising and, in any case, inadequate. On 15 August 1906, a National Council of Education was set up. A National College with Aurobindo Ghose as Principal was started in Calcutta.
5.3 The role of students, women, Muslims, and the masses
A prominent part in the Swadeshi agitation was played by the students of Bengal. They practiced and propagated Swadeshi and took the lead in organizing picketing of shops selling foreign cloth. The government made every attempt to suppress the students. Orders were issued to penalize those schools and colleges whose students took an active part in the Swadeshi agitation; their grants-in-aid and other privileges were to be withdrawn, they were to be disaffiliated, their students were not to be permitted to compete for scholarships and were to be barred from all service under the government. Disciplinary action was taken against students found guilty of participating in the nationalist agitation. Many of them were fined, expelled from schools and colleges, arrested, and sometimes beaten by the police with lathis. The students, however, refused to be cowed down.
A remarkable aspect of the Swadeshi agitation was the active participation of women in the movement. The traditionally home-centred women of the urban middle classes joined processions and picketing. From then on they were to take an active part in the nationalist movement.
Many prominent Muslims joined the Swadeshi Movement including Abdul Rasul, the famous barrister, Liaquat Hussain, the popular agitator, and Guznavi, the businessman. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad joined one of the revolutionary terrorist groups. Many other middle and upper class Muslims, however, remained neutral or, led by the Nawab of Dhaka, (who was given a loan of Rs. 14 lakh by the Government of India), even supported Partition on the plea that East Bengal would have a Muslim majority. In this communal attitude, the Nawab of Dhaka and others were encouraged by the officials. In a speech at Dhaka, Lord Curzon declared that one of the reasons for the partition was "to invest the Mohammedans in Eastern Bengal with a unity which they have not enjoyed since the days of the old Mussalman Viceroys and Kings".
5.4 All-India aspect of the movement
The cry of Swadeshi and Swaraj was soon taken up by other provinces of India. Movements in support of Bengal's unity and boycott of foreign goods were organised in Bombay, Madras and northern India. The leading role in spreading the Swadeshi Movement to the rest of the country was played by Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak. He quickly saw that with the inauguration of this movement in Bengal, a new chapter in the history of Indian nationalism had opened. Here was a challenge and an opportunity to lead a popular struggle against the British Raj and to unite the entire country in one bond of common sympathy.
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