Modern India Assignment

Submitted by: Vasudha Bachchan

Semester VI

Discuss the contribution of the Extremists to the Indian National Movement

with special reference to the Swadeshi Movement in Bengal.

Extremist politics was the brain-child of the critics of moderate politics of the day, and a
response to the failure of the latter (in the eyes of the former) to bring about any concrete
change in the British policy. The moderates had accepted the British rule in India and hoped to
make the best of it through petitioning and reforming the existing rule. Educated in British
policy and jurisprudence and firm in their loyalty towards the Raj, the moderates sought not to
replace the British government with self-rule, but only to find a worthy place within its system.
Amales Tripathi has aptly summarized the ineffectiveness of the Moderate way: “The Congress
could not be accused of keeping silent during the first fifteen years of its existence. Its critics
would accuse it rather of speaking too often and too much for too little.”1

The turn of the nineteenth century to the twentieth century saw a number of British policies
that further frustrated the intelligentsia of the nation. The Indian Councils Act of 1892
disappointed the Congress and the demands they had put forward. Moreover, existing rights of
the populace were under attack by the Raj – an act of 1898 made it illegal to excite negative
opinion towards the foreign government, in 1904, the Indian Official Secrets Amendment Act
restricted the freedom of press, landing Lokmanya Tilak and other newspaper editors in prison
for instigating anti-government sentiment amongst the masses. The attitude of Lord Curzon
towards the demands of reform put forward by the Congress further convinced people that
petitioning and protesting was not enough to acquire greater power in the political arena. Even
the moderate leader Gokhale complained that “the bureaucracy was growing frankly selfish
and openly hostile to national aspirations.”2

The economic thought of the extremists was not new. They played on the same themes as the
Moderates – the Home Charges that ‘bled’ India’s wealth and ‘drained’ its resources, free trade
that strangled Indian industry, the railway that ran for the benefit of the cotton industry and
proved to a burden on the Indian taxpayer, etc.3 Both groups blamed India’s poverty on the
British rule and believed that India’s economic growth would benefit all classes. The only
difference was that the extremists, instead of wanting to reform the British rule, wanted to
entirely eradicate it and create their own economic regeneration in India.

Therefore, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the political stage was set to welcome a
group of individuals who preached a new type of nationalism, characterized by the rejection of
British rule entirely and the announcement of the goal of self-rule. Growing under the
leadership of charismatic men such as Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Aurobindo Ghosh and Lala
Lajpat Rai, this ‘militant nationalism’ took root and encouraged the common masses to directly
participate in politics and the struggle for reform. ‘The mood of self-reliance and confidence

1 Amales Tripathi, The Extremist Challenge: India Between 1890 and 1910, first published
1967, p. 47.
2 Bipan Chandra, Modern India, first published 1971, p. 236.
3 Tripathi, The Extremist Challenge, p. 107.
in the heritage of the East was enormously strengthened by events abroad. The Boer War had
tarnished the image of British strength; the unexpected Japanese victory of 1904-5 blew up the
myth of European superiority and sent a thrill of pride through the whole of Asia.’4
Thus, the militant nationalist movement was on the verge, waiting for a tinder to ignite the
outburst. This ignition was provided by the Partition of Bengal, announced by Lord Curzon in
1905, hoping to curb the nationalist tide in Bengal. Following the news of this impending
partition, the masses of Bengal, moderate and extremists alike, announced the Anti-Partition
movement in August of 1905.

THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT IN BENGAL

Sumit Sarkar has classified the politics of the Swadeshi Movement of Bengal into four
categories of nationalists: the moderates; the so-called ‘constructive swadeshi’, who wanted
self-rule without inviting an immediate political clash; political extremists who used ‘extended
boycott’ or passive resistance; and the terrorists.5 However, despite of these classifications, the
existence of unity must not be ignored. Thus, all the different nationalist groups were against
the Partition and practiced the boycott for at least a while. The Swadeshi movement saw the
rise and fall of these group systems throughout its course, if at one hand, the initial stages were
characterized by passive resistance, the period after 1908 saw a rise in terrorist nationalism.
One commonality amongst these divergent groups was some form of demand for self-reliance
from the British rule.

According to Sarkar, the two Extremist trends of the Swadeshi movement were ‘passive
resistance’ and ‘terrorism’, both popular after the moderate trends considerably died down by
1905. The path of ‘passive resistance’ was characterized by a call for complete and
unadulterated swaraj or self-rule, and the way to achieve it was to practice extended boycott,
which turned into India’s first non-cooperation movement.6 Some extremist leaders and their
followers later turned to terrorism to achieve these goals of independence. What stands
common between them however, is an underlying symptom of a Hindu revivalist tone.

THE PATH OF ‘PASSIVE RESISTANCE’

The theory of passive resistance took its final form in the writings of Bipin Chandra and
Aurobindo during 1906-07. Pal declared in his writings, “Our method is passive resistance,
which means an organized determination to refuse to render any voluntary or honorary service
to the government” and urged his audiences to break the ‘maya’ of the British rule by refusing
to run its government.7 The objective of this boycott was to attract British attention towards
the grievances of the Bengalis regarding the Partition. If due to the boycott, English
manufacturers lost money, they would put pressure on the government to abandon the idea of
Partition. Moreover, through the Swadeshi movement, the nationalist leaders hoped to give the
indigenous industry the boost it needed to make the economy less dependent on English goods.
The boycott, therefore, ‘enabled them to draw attention to their grievance, it gave substance to

4 Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal – 1903-1908, first published 1973, p. 28.
5 Ibid., p. 33.
6 Ibid., p. 63.
7 Ibid., p. 68-69.
their socio-economic theories, and it gave them an opportunity to demonstrate their political
strength.’8

This method of resistance however, required a high degree of mass participation, which the
extremist leaders in Bengal were not entirely successful in amassing as they were distracted by
the infighting within the Congress. They also failed to form a coherent leadership – Bipin
Chandra Pal had little organizational talent, and the barrister leaders were young and not very
well known.9
One unique characteristic that grew out of this boycott movement was the formation of
‘samitis’ or local volunteer groups who banded together and participated in the Swadeshi
fervor. These samitis are often seen as the precursor to the revolutionary terrorism that occurred
during the later duration of the movement in Bengal. Sumit Sarkar however, argues that until
1908, these samitis were engaged mainly in physical and moral training of members; social
work during famines, epidemics and religious festivals; and spreading the Swadeshi message
through patriotic songs, art, and lectures.10

Sumit Sarkar further refers to extremism being described as the ‘darkest superstitions of
Hinduism and…extreme ideas of Western democracy.’11 The extremists proclaimed the caste
system as the true socialist model around which to build a new democracy for India, as it would
keep alive a sense of duty in every class. Moreover, there were instances of gatherings in
temples, consisting of people who swore against ‘bideshi’ goods altogether. Orthodox
Hinduism provided the bandwagon on which the upper-cast Hindus challenged foreign goods,
and even went as far as to force lower classes to stop use of any foreign materials.12

THE SHIFT TO TERROR

The Bengali Extremists waited for the masses to rise in passive resistance to the British rule,
but when they failed to see this desired outcome, some young and passionate groups turned to
terror activities, in hopes that through terror, ‘it would be easy to bring the ideas of revolution
home to the common people.’13

Even though historians today refer to this movement as terrorism, the participants would have
no doubt considered themselves ‘revolutionaries’. Even now, the terror is a glorified memory
in Bengal – a bunch of passionate freedom fighters rising to the occasion by assassinating
oppressive officials, traitors and spies, ‘swadeshi dacoities’ to raise funds for revolution and a
few armed coups.14 These tactics however, differed greatly from the armed uprisings in France,
where the masses took action and fought back against their oppressors or from China, where
peasant groups used guerilla tactics to capture parts of the countryside. This ‘revolutionary’
movement in Bengal was restricted to a few young heroes, and never grew into a massive
movement of the people.

8 Gordon Johnson, Partition, Agitation and Congress: Bengal 1904-1908, Modern Asian
Studies, Volume 7, No. 3, 1973, p. 533-588.
9 Sarkar, Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, p. 69-70.
10 Ibid., p. 71-72.
11 Ibid., p. 73-74.
12 Ibid., p. 74.
13 Tripathi, The Extremist Challenge, p. 117.
14 Sarkar, Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, p. 76.
However, it cannot be ignored that terrorism provided a great help to our national movement –
giving ideals of martyrs and revolutionaries to the public, and planting in their hearts a desire
to achieve what these heroes could not – complete swaraj. But to historians such as Sumit
Sarkar, the terrorism set an entire generation of educated youths decisively on the path of elite
action and prevented the masses of the Indian nation from becoming an active participant of
the political struggle.

CONCLUSION

Whatever its consequences, the Swadeshi movement was in fact, a turning point for the
nationalists in India struggling for freedom. It not only brought forward the ideologies of the
Extremists, who challenged the bureaucratic ways of the Moderates, but also introduced the
idea of complete independence from British rule. It cannot be ignored that the highly orthodox
Hindu character of the movement instigated the Muslim minority to develop feelings of
frustration against the upper-caste Hindu extremists, who often forced the Muslim peasants to
buy expensive Swadeshi products. This frustration was eventually used by the British to fuel
the two communities into riots against each other, which subsequently proved to be a reason
that the Swadeshi movement subsided. The ideal of complete independence was abandoned by
the Extremists as well, at least as an immediately achievable goal. This ideal would now come
up when the Congress demands it in the 1930s.