Rare would be an Indian home where the sandalwood-scented Cantharidine hair oil or Boroline the all-purpose antiseptic cream is not to be found. Generations have grown up using this ‘elixir of Cantharidis’ or squeezing the all-too-familiar green tube of Bo roline to soothe painful dry skin. Both these ‘superbrands’ of modern India exemplify the spirit of Swadeshi, the passion and power of anti-colonial struggles which began well before 1905 and continues till date.
The enterprise of Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (also referred to as ‘Roy’), which gave us Cantharidine hair oil among other products, was built on the founder’s belief that India’s progress could only be achieved by industrialization by its people and for its own people. Acharya set up the first chemical factory in India, with minimal resources, working from his home, to establish Bengal Chemical Works in 1892; by 1901 it was converted into Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works Ltd. On the one hand, Bengal Chemicals was challenging imperial monopolies and tariffs, at the same time, the Acharya was quality conscious and BCW products met British pharmacopoeia standards.
With eminent doctors like Dr R G Kar, Dr N R Sarkar, Dr S P Sarbadhikari and Dr A C Bose working for him and patronizing Bengal Chemicals, the Acharya’s commitment to modern science and science based industries was second to none. The mission to use indigenous technology for the needs of millions of common people proved to be a success: whether it was talcum powder, tooth paste, glycerine soap, carbolic soap, fire extinguishers or surgical and hospital Instruments. Furthermore, the enterprises were generating employment for Indians at all levels.
The origins of Swadeshi enterprise lie deep and are widely spread across the subcontinent: Prithwindra Mukherjee’s ‘The Intellectual Roots of India’s Freedom Struggle (1893- 1918)’ maps developments which began early in the 19th century. “More than a century before Gandhi’s historic march of 1930 demanding the right to manufacture salt on the coast of the Indian ocean, instead of buying it as a costly import from England, Raja Rammohun Roy denounced the abuses of the East India Company concerning salt trade in India: in Bengal alone, 125,000 manufacturers of salt (molunghi) had become victims of this severe monopoly of the English,” wrote Mukherjee, acknowledging Raja Rammohun’s contribution to making Indians realize the power of ‘boycott’ and the will to set up establishments for a new India.
Rammohun Roy had, directly and indirectly, inaugurated several English-medium high schools, to begin with the Hindu College (which became the prestigious Presidency College) since 1817. Whereas in Calcutta of 1828 the number of students in the English classes was hardly more than 1,400, HH Wilson the Sanskrit scholar-professor noted there were at least 6,000 students by 1836. Come to think of it, if there had been no Presidency College, there may not have been an Acharya PC Ray who studied there and later spent decades teaching Chemistry, publishing world-class treaties on mercurous nitrites, and most importantly, inspiring a generation of young scientists among whom were Meghnad Saha and Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, his students, who made stellar contributions to Indian science in the new Republic.
Well before 1905, wrote Prof Sumit Sarkar in ‘The Swadeshi Movement 1903-1908’, the spirit of self-help had started expressing itself through works. In 1867 Kishorilal Mukherji started the Sibpur Iron Works near Howrah, which was still in operation in the swadeshi period with over 110 workers in 1908. The economic ideology and fervour were unmistakable: Bholanath Chandra in his famous essay ~ ‘A Voice for the Commerce and Manufactures of India’, published in Mukherji’s Magazine between 1873 and 1876 appealed to his countrymen to consider industrialization as the ‘ocean to the rivers of all their thou – ghts’. He ended with a clear call for boycott to dethrone the King Cotton of Manchester. “It would be no crime for us to take the only but most effectual weapon of moral hostility:
Let us make use of this potent weapon by resolving to non consume the goods of England…” Besides Acharya PC Ray’s Bengal Chemicals in 1892-93, numerous efforts were made to promote Swadeshi sales through exhibitions and shops often started by political leaders. These included Rabindranath Tagore’s Swadeshi Bhandar in 1897, Jogeschandra Chaudhuri’s Indian Stores in 1901 and Sarala Debi’s Laksmir Bhandar in 1903; there was even a company started to exploit Rajmahal kaolin deposits for manufacture of porcelain in 1901. Jyotirin dranath Tagore lau – nched a major venture in 1884 with his Inland River Steam Navigation Service which sank a few years later; quite like the landlords and professionals who came together for the shortlived Bengal National Bank (1908). Calcutta saw a spate of insurance ventures, especially the National Insurance Company (1906) and the Hindustan Cooperative Insurance in 1907. From July 1905, reliance on self-help or atmasakti seemed to have become for a time the creed of the whole of Bengal, noted Prof Sarkar.
The air was full of swadeshi schemes ~ textile mills and improved handlooms, river transport concerns, match and soap factories, earthenware, potteries and tanneries: the fruits of this upsurge were being documented and hailed as a new dawn. Rabindranath Tagore remarked in the Town Hall address of August 1905: “The country today accepts as eternal truths what only yesterday it did not even think worth listening to.” In retrospect, wrote Prof Sarkar, it is Rabin – dranath Tagore rather than the professional politicians who stands out as the most vivid and remarkable personality of those 1905 days ~ participating in the rough and tumble of politics as never before.
At the Indian History Congress 2010-2011, Dr Sampa Ghosh focused on Karmaveer Ala Mohan Dass, a lesser-known Swadeshi entrepreneur. “In his autobiography Aamar Jeeban, Ala Mohan admitted that he had a great passion for doing something for his country. Unlike Tata or Birla, he did not have large capital for investment, but despite limitations he was able to venture into industries like jute, cotton, heavy machinery, drug, banking etc. Amongst his achievements, special mention is deserved for India Machinery Company, one of the earliest indigenous machine-making industries of the country,” said the historian from Viveka nanda Mahavidyalaya, University of Burdwan.
Ala Mohan’s roller-coaster ride as trader, retail merchant, industrialist is a remarkable saga of determination and grit: Howrah Chemical Works and Bengal Weighing Scales were established in 1920s. Dr Ghosh said, “Ala Mohan set up Ala Mohan Brothers, a managing agency firm for import-export of jute and allied machinery. He started to work in a jute mill with the objective of setting up a jute factory. In 1937, with a capital of Rs 16 lakh, he founded Bharat Jute Mills at Dasnagar, Howrah, using machinery manufactured by his own company.
Ala Mohan had been discouraged by a Marwari jute-mill proprietor; however, to maintain the dignity of his own Bengali community, he set up the mill to be managed by a Bengali and with the capital and labour of Bengalis. He was the first Bengali to go in for such a venture.” When Acharya PC Ray inaugurated the mill, he bestowed Ala Mohan the honorific of ‘Kara mvir’. Around the same time Ala Mohan established the India Machinery Company amalgamating Bengal Weighing Scales, Paul’s Engineering Wor – ks and Atlas Weighbridge Company. It was the first Indian company to manufacture a wagon bridge with weighing capacity of 400 MT. The company had nearly 2,000 workers at a time on its employment roll, usually about 700 workers in each shift.
The micro-history of Swadeshi enterprises cannot be complete without GD Pharmaceuticals, its promoter Gour Mohun Dutta and the life-line that they provided with Boroline, an all-purpose antiseptic cream. Dutta had been an importer of foreign goods before joining the Swadeshi movement. Like Ala Mohan, he was discouraged but he followed his heart to compete with foreign products, and Boroline was born in 1929. While stand-up comedians today often make audiences chuckle over ‘Boro-line’ as a must-have cream for Bengali families, the name Boroline is scientifically derived from boro (short for boric acid) and ‘oline’ from the Latin oleum (transl. ‘oil’). Since inception it was packed in distinctive green coloured slim tubes and the ‘elephant’ logo symbolized stren – gth, prosperity and a homage to Lord Ganesha.
“Bongo jiboner ongo” remains a memorable jingle written by Rituparno Ghosh, implying that the cream was an integral part of Bengali life. From ‘Les écrits bengalis de Sri Aurobindo’ (The Bangla writings of Sri Aurobindo), there’s a summing up tribute to Rammohun Roy from the sage who said, “Indian people owe a triple impetus to the renaissance thus initiated by Rammohun:
(a) awakening the critical and intellectual faculty that was temporarily eclipsed; (b) transmitting the desire of a new creation;
(c) orienting India’s new awareness towards new conditions, new ideals, the imperious necessity to understand, assimilate and conquer them.
” Sri Auro bindo noted that the new nationalist spirit turned towards the culture of its past, seizing once more its significance; but, at the same time, it examined this in the context of modern knowledge and ideas. That’s where the Swadeshi spirit still dwells.
(The writer is a researcher author on history and heritage issues, and a former deputy curator of Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya)
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