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The Boycott and 'Swadeshi' Movement

While these discussions were in progress, the idea of what was afterwards called the 'Boycott Movement' was in the air, and thrust itself into prominence in our deliberations. Much has been written and said about its genesis. From whose fertile brain did it spring when did it first see the light? Both these questions it would be difficult to answer with anything like accuracy. When the public has been roused by any stirring event, its hidden springs touched, and its slumbering forces set in motion by some great calamity or by the passionate desire to work out a cherished ideal, promising to unfold a new chapter in a nation's history, the moral atmosphere becomes fruitful under the pressure of new ideas; for the mind of the whole community is at work and makes its contribution to the sum total of national thought.

In my younger days, I had read Macaulay's graphic account of the condition of English society on the eve of the Civil War between Charles I and his Parliament—how the coming struggle overshadowed all other considerations, how it penetrated the homes of England and became the subject of conversation round every fireplace, how it leavened thought and moulded aspirations. Something of the same absorbing interest was roused by Lord Curzon's Partition of Bengal. The whole community felt a concern about a matter affecting their province such as they had never experienced before. The community was writhing under a sense of surprise and indignation, accentuated by the farce of a conference at 'Belvedere', with its seeming deference to public opinion. It was in this state of the public mind that the idea of a boycott of British goods was publicly started—by whom I cannot say—by several, I think, at one and the same time. It first found expression at a public meeting in the district of Pabna, and it was repeated at public meetings held in other mofussil towns; and the successful boycott of American goods by the Chinese was proclaimed throughout Asia and reproduced in the Indian newspapers.

The feeling was further emphasized by the stirrings of an industrial movement that was beginning to fasten its hold on the