Morgan Rothacker
The Swadeshi Movement in India began in December 1905 in response to the Government’s decision to partition Bengal. It was created in attempt to rally with the anti-partition movement which was ultimately unsuccessful. The government claimed that they partitioned Bengal since it had a population of seventy-eight million people, about a quarter of the population of British India, and had become to big to be controlled. The partition began a transformation of the Indian National Congress from a “middle-class pressure group into a nationwide mass movement.”
Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa had formed a single province in British India since 1765, but by 1900 it was becoming too big to control. The British viceroy Lord Curzon chose to combine Assam with fifteen districts of the poor and isolated east Bengal and form a new province with a population of thirty one million, the majority of them Muslim. The districts were essentially divided on the basis of language and religion. Bengal proper was to have seventeen million Bengalis and thirty-seven million Hindi and Oriya speakers. The western half was to be a Hindu majority area with forty-two million out of a total fifty-four million, and the eastern half was to be a Muslim majority area with eighteen million out of a total thirty-one million.
Went Bengal’s Hindus claimed that the Bengali nation was being split up in two, making them a minority in the province that included Bihar and Orissa. They believed that the partition was an attempt to smother nationalism in Bengal where it was beginning to flourish. They began to rebel against the partition, holding mas meetings, executing rural unrest, and creating a Swadeshi, or native, movement that would boycott the import of British goods. Ultimately the partition was carried out, forcing the opposition to go underground and become a terrorist movement.
But the Swadeshi movement was more than just a boycott. It called for national education and independence. The National Council of Education established a national college and technical institution in Calcutta, and fifty-one national schools in Bengal. The goal of these schools was to go beyond the typical forms education to teach trades along with academics. The schools were strongly encouraged by the Calcutta Congress in 1906 which believed that “the time had arrived for organizing a national system of education.”
The Swadeshi, or self sufficient, movement continued up until around 1911 and was considered one of the most successful pre-Gandhian movements. Lead by individuals such as nationalist Aurobindo Ghosh, “Father of the Indian Unrest” Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, and Lala Lajpat Rai, the movement fought against the injustices thrust upon them by the Indian government and this made a major difference in the years to come.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/179408/education/47706/South-Asia#ref303427
http://www.historydiscussion.net/history-of-india/swadeshi-movement-in-india-indian-history/656
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/60754/partition-of-Bengal
World Lit 2014 