IGNOU HISTORY NOTES : Modern India - PARTITION OF BENGAL AND THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT

IGNOU HISTORY Study Notes for IAS, UPSC Exams

Modern India 1857-1964

PARTITION OF BENGAL AND THE SWADESHI MOVEMENT

Structure
11.0 Objectives
11.1 Introduction
11.2 The Plan for the Partition of Bengal
11.3 The Motive Behind the Plan
11.4 The Partition
11.5 The Miscalculation of the Government
11.6 Boycott, Swadeshi and National Education
11.7 The Samitis and the Political Trends
11.8 The Concept of Mass Movement: Workers and Peasants11.8.1 Workers
11.8.2 Peasants
11.9 The Communal Tangle
11.10 The Rise of Revolutionary Terrorism
11.11 LetUs SumUp
11.12 Key Words
11.13 Answers to Check Your Progress Exercises

11. OBJECTIVES

This unit attempts to place before you the factors which prompted the British to partition Bengal in 1905. It also gives an account of the intense nationalist reaction the move evoked and spells out the changes Swadeshi movement brought about in the content and forms of the Indian struggle for freedom. After reading this unit you will be able to:

explain the background in which the Indian nationalists and the British authorities confronted each other,
identify the motives behind the scheme for partitioning Bengal, I discuss how the Swadeshi movement grew, and what political trends and techniques it I developed,
appreciate the strength of the movement, as well as the difficulties it encountered, and finally,
make an over-all assessment of the historic phenomenon.]

11. INTRODUCTION

The enthusiasm of the articulate representatives of the educated middle class-the newly acclaimed leaders of Indian Societydppears to have considerably diminished by the close of the 19th century.

Personalities like Gladstone in Britain and Lord Ripon in India, who realised the importance of the educated Indians and sympathised with their aspirations, were no longer at the helm of affairs. Instead, men who distrusted them without exception, and who disliked any relaxation of Britain's imperialist hold over India, were in charge of the governance of India. The authorities tended to ignore the Indian opinions and turned a blind eye to acts of racial arrogance by the officials. They even tried to undermine those nominal concessions which had grudgingly been conceded to Indians from time to time in the earlier period. The hostility of the Raj was becoming apparent even to the earlier nationalists. Many of them had realised by 1900 the futility of their petitioning and praying to the Government. Their very modest demands for jobs in the Indian Civil Service and some reforms in the Legislative Councils had practically been disregarded. Their appeal for a just British rule in India in place of the prevailing "un-British" misrule fell on deaf ears. Their demands for constitutional concessions that had repeatedly been made from the Indian National Congressplatform for about two decades produced only the paltry reforms of 1892. The situation was Modern India 1857 - 1964 considerably worsened in the early years of the 20th century due to the presence in India of a Viceroy like Lord Curzon, who wanted to treat the Congress as an "unclean thing", reject all itd leaders' pleas with "frigid indifference" and consider the Civil Service as one "specifically reserved for Europeans". Like all staunch imperialists, Curzon was an unqdalified racist, proclaiming that "the highest ideal of truth is to a large extent a Western conceptu and speaking of Indians in his benevolent moods in tones "one normally reserves for pet animals". (S. Gopal, British Policy in India, 1858-1905, Cambridge, 1965, p. 227). Alarmed and ruffled by the Curzonian presence as the earlier nationalists were, they were not so dispirited as to swallow every humiliation or to lie ignominiously low. They had grown in stature in the eyes of their own people, learnt from their social reformers and ideologue to have faith in themselves and acquired sufficient amount of self-respect to ask for civilized treatment and natural justice. A confrontation between Curzon and the educated middle class nationalists, therefore, was bound to take place. It eventually did in Bengal- where the Indian intelligentsia was most assertive and where Curzon was at his offensive worst.

Curzon was the first to start his attack in Bengal. As early as 1899 he reduced the number of elected members in the Calcutta Corporation. This measure was intended primarily to satisfy the European business interests in the city, who often complained of delays in the grant of licences and similar other facilities. The consideration behind the action was obvious, and its undemocratic nature was un-mistakable. The Calcutta citizens felt deeply offended and wronged. However, before they could digest this wrong, Curzon launched an assault on the autonomous character of Calcutta University - the pride of the educated sections in Bengal. Armed with the recommendations of Indian Universities Commission, whose sole Indian member (Gurudas Banerji) disagreed wholly with others, Curzon passed the Universities Act (1904). The objective used as a pretext was "to raise the standard of educ~tion.al1 round". The act cut down the number of elected senate members (mostly Indians) and transferred the ultimate power of affiliating colleges and schools, as well as giving them grants-in-aid, to the Government officials. This piece of legislation left the outraged members of the educated middle class in no doubt about the Viceroy's determination to hurt them and break their spirit in every conceivable way. They naturally had to prepare themselves mentally for the worst, and think in terms of offering resistance. The worst, as it turned out, came rather quickly and dramatically in July 1905 when Curzon announced the partition of Bengal.