Previous Year Question
What was the immediate cause for the launch of the Swadeshi Movement?
Correct Answer: A
Detailed Solution
(a) is correct.
The immediate cause of the Swadeshi Movement was Viceroy Lord Curzon’s decision to partition Bengal.
The British Government presented Bengal’s enormous size as the administrative justification for partition. The nationalists, however, regarded it as a policy of “divide and rule” intended to weaken Bengali unity and the emerging nationalist movement.
The partition proposal produced extensive meetings, petitions and demonstrations. When the Government ignored the opposition, the agitation moved beyond constitutional protest towards boycott and Swadeshi.
On 7 August 1905, a massive meeting at Calcutta Town Hall adopted a resolution to boycott British goods. This is regarded as the formal beginning of the Swadeshi and Boycott Movement.
The Partition of Bengal came into effect on 16 October 1905. The day was observed as a day of mourning. People fasted, organised processions and, following Rabindranath Tagore’s appeal, tied rakhis as a symbol of unity.
The principal programmes of the movement included:
Boycott of British and other foreign goods.
Promotion of Swadeshi goods and Indian industries.
Public burning of foreign cloth.
Establishment of national educational institutions.
Promotion of self-reliance and passive resistance.
Surendranath Banerjea, Bipin Chandra Pal, Aurobindo Ghose, Rabindranath Tagore and Ashwini Kumar Dutta played prominent roles in Bengal. Tilak carried the campaign to Maharashtra, Lala Lajpat Rai to Punjab and V.O. Chidambaram Pillai to the Madras region.
The Calcutta Congress Session of 1906 supported programmes connected with Swadeshi, boycott, national education and Swaraj.
The Partition of Bengal was annulled in 1911, but the Swadeshi Movement transformed Indian nationalism from politics dominated by petitions into a movement employing economic resistance and wider popular participation.
(b) is incorrect. Tilak was sentenced to 18 months’ rigorous imprisonment in a sedition case in 1897. This occurred before the launch of the Swadeshi Movement in 1905 and was not its immediate cause. It should not be confused with Tilak’s six-year Mandalay sentence imposed in 1908.
(c) is incorrect. The agitation against the Punjab Colonization Bill and government action against Lala Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh belonged to the Punjab agitation of 1907. It occurred about two years after the launch of the Swadeshi Movement.
(d) is incorrect. The Chapekar brothers were sentenced to death in connection with the assassination of Plague Commissioner W.C. Rand and Lieutenant Ayerst at Poona. These events belonged to the period 1897–99 and were not the immediate cause of the Swadeshi Movement.
Date clarity:
July 1905—The decision to partition Bengal was made public.
7 August 1905—Boycott Resolution at Calcutta Town Hall; formal launch of the movement.
16 October 1905—Partition of Bengal came into effect.
1911—Partition of Bengal was annulled.