Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his recent visit to Varanasi, called on citizens to adopt the spirit of ‘Swadeshi’ and support locally-made products. He stressed that true service to the nation lies in promoting indigenous goods, especially amid “global economic uncertainties”.
The Prime Minister’s comments, made soon after the US announced harsh tariffs on exports from India and 70 other countries, assumes significance. It provides a bridge to the past, an occasion to learn lessons from the Swadeshi movement which began in 1905 in Bengal and then spread across the subcontinent. Swadeshi voices of legendary leaders and thinkers are worth pondering today. At the 22nd session of the Indian National Congress, held in Calcutta from 26-29 December 1906, Dadabhai Naoroji delivered the presidential address highlighting “Swadeshi is not a thing of to-day. It has existed in Bombay as far as I know for many years past. I am a freetrader and I am a Member in the Executive Committee of the Cobden Club for 20 years, and yet I say that Swadeshi is a forced necessity for India in its unnatural economic muddle.
As long as the economic condition remains unnatural and impoverishing, by the necessity of supplying every year some Rs. 20,00,00,000 for the salary, pensions etc. of the children of a foreign country at the expense and impoverishment of the children of India, to talk of applying economic laws to the condition of India is adding insult to injury. I ask any Englishman whether Englishmen would submit to this unnatural economic muddle of India for a single day in England, leave alone 150 years? No, never. No, Ladies and Gentlemen, England will never submit to it.” Dr Rash Behari Ghose, who succeeded Dadabhai as Congress president in 1907, said in a lengthy welcome address, “Swadeshi movement seems also to have given great offence to a certain section of the AngloIndian community. It seems that if you call the movement a boycott of foreign goods, you are a traitor to England.
But competition with Manchester is not yet treason in the Indian Statute Book. The Swadeshi movement is only a prelude to our determination to enter into the great brotherhood of the trading nations of the West…come with me to the exhibition on the other side of the street, a visit to it, I am sure, will fill the heart of every one of you with hope and gladness; for in Swadeshism you see the cradle of a new India. To speak of such a movement as disloyal is a lie and calumny. We love England with all her faults, but we love India more.” At the Industrial Conference, as part of 1906 Congress session, the Maharaja of Baroda Sayajirao Gaekwar III spoke on “the triumph of machinery as the triumph of our age…The rise of power-looms, for instance, has been stealing a march over the handloom workers, and the numbers employed in cotton weaving in India have declined by 23 per cent, even within the last decade…this textile industry itself which shows how, with intelligent adaptation to the improved methods our Indian industries can compete with the manufactures of Europe.
The Bombay mills give daily employment to about 1,70,000 factory operatives, while so many as 30,000 more are maintained by ginning presses. Some forty years ago we had only 13 cotton mills in all India. The number rose to 47 in 1876, to 95 in 1886, to 155 in 1895, and to 203 in 1904; and to-day the number of our cotton mills is still larger. We had less than 4,000 powerlooms forty years ago: the number was over 47,000 in 1904: We had less than 3,00,000 spindles 40 years ago: the number exceeded five million in 1904. These are insignificant figures compared with the huge cotton industry of Lancashire; but they show that we have made steady progress…New mills have been started in Ahmedabad and Bombay within the last two years, largely as a result of the present Swadeshi movement.” Sir Vitaldas Damodar Thackersey, prominent businessman of Bombay, delivering the presidential address to the Industrial Conference, said “Whatever Bengal might have done or failed to do, she has undoubtedly given an impetus to the Swadeshi idea.
All over the country today, among young and old, rich and poor, men and women, high caste and low caste, the word Swadeshi has become a household word, and the spirit of it too, we may hope, is well understood. We have got the Swadeshi idea firmly implanted in the national mind. We have now to consider what our programme should be for the near future. We cannot do every thing at once. Industries are not created in a day…let us focus on the agricultural industry. It behoves private landlords like the Zamindars of Bengal, who correspond to the landed aristocracy of England, to devote their time and resources towards developing their industry. If the Swadeshi spirit inspires these great landed magnates to introduce science and system into agriculture so as to make it yield the highest profit of which it is capable, then believe me you will be in sight of large manufactures, financed, controlled, and worked by our own countrymen.”
Through February 1907 Gopalkrishna Gokhale delivered addresses in Lucknow where he spoke about the economic condition of India and Swadeshi movement. “One of the most gratifying signs of the present times is the rapid growth of the Swadeshi sentiment all over the country during the last two years. Swadeshism at its highest is not merely an industrial movement, but that it affects the whole life of the nation, that Swadeshism at its highest is a deep, passionate, fervent, all embracing love of the motherland, and that this love seeks to show itself, not in one sphere of activity only, but in all: it invades the whole man, and it will not rest until it has raised the whole man. Now the first thing I want to say about this movement is that it has come here to stay. I think it safe to say that the Swadeshi movement is not going to be one of that kind, and my own personal conviction is that in this movement we shall ultimately find the true salvation of India…the true industrial regeneration of the country.”
Mrs Annie Besant, writing in the Central Hindu College magazine, said, “The point is the building up of the entire Indian nation, by the encouragement of national feeling, by maintaining the traditional dress, way of living and so on, by promoting Indian arts and manufactures, by giving preference to Indian products over foreign. Now this is a point which really goes to the very root of Indian revival. Do not undervalue the importance of sentiment, and do not try to do away with everything which differentiates India from other lands; rather strive to maintain the immemorial customs and follow the immemorial traditions… it is the bounden duty of every patriotic Indian to encourage Indian art, Indian manufactures and Indian labour; and not to go across the seas to bring here endless manufactured articles, but to give work to his own people.
Let all encourage Indian manufactures and arts, and all Indian-made goods in India. Indian art has gained a name all over the world because of its beauty and artistic finish, and why should men who have such art on their own soil, why should they go and buy the shoddy productions of Birmingham and Manchester?” In the Indian Review, Sister Nivedita of the Ramakrishna Vivekananda order, commented, “in the Swadeshi movement the Indian people. have found an opportunity to make themselves respected by the whole world. For the world respects that which shows that it is to be feared, and the one thing that is feared by all is strong, intelligent, and united action: We conquer a single elephant with ease. But where is the man who wou – ld attack a herd? The note of manliness and self-help is sounded throughout the Swadeshi movement. There is here no begging for help, no cringing for concessions. What India can do for herself, that she will do…And there is no reason why the movement should fail in India.” When Surat was hosting a Swadeshi conference in December 1907, Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, said, “it is hardly necessary to make any appeal to you in the cause of Swadeshi.
I consider it as a dispensation of Providence that the minds of our people have for some time past been more and more directed towards the Swadeshi Movement. Among all the factors which you think are calculated to improve the condition of the people and bring back prosperity to the people, the Swadeshi Movement is one of the highest importance. Patriotism needs it, humanity dictates it, and every possible consideration that you can have, will enforce the carrying out of the Swadeshi Movement in the most earnest spirit, not only now but for a long time to come.”
Through the thoughts, inspiring ideas and writings of these iconic personalities, voices of Swadeshi movement can still be heard, loud and clear
(The writer, a researcherauthor on history and heritage issues, is former deputy curator of Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya)