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THE BOYCOTT AND 'SWADESHI' MOVEMENT
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ment a girl-patient of his, not more than six years old, cried out in her delirium that she would not take any foreign medicine.

How was it that every one was so moved? The visible and outward conditions do not suffice to explain it. But after all, the element of mystery, if there is any, vanishes before the gaze of the earnest student of history. The Swadeshi movement did not come into birth with the agitation for the reversal of the Partition of Bengal. It was synchronous with the national awakening which the political move- ment in Bengal had created. The human mind is not divided into watertight compartments, but is a living organism; and, when a new impulse is felt in one particular direction, it affects the whole organism and is manifest throughout the entire sphere of human activities. When the Congress movement was started in the early eighties of the last century it was, and is even now, a common enough remark among a certain class of writers, perhaps not friendly to Indian interests, that it would have been far better, and a more natural course, to have commenced with the vital problems of social reform than with political considerations, which might have been more usefully dealt with later on, after our social and domestic institutions had been placed on a better and more satis- factory footing. The whole course of our national evolution has belied this confident assertion. Social reform, industrial revival, moral and spiritual uplift, have all followed in the track of the great national awakening, which had its roots in the political activities of our leaders. Once again the truth was established, that all reforms are inter-linked and interdependent, and that they act and react upon one another, and strengthen one another by their mutual interaction. The activities of Iswar Chunder Vidyasagar helped Keshub Chunder Sen by enabling him to appeal to instincts and tendencies broadened by the spirit of reform. His work, in its turn, helped that of Kristo Das Pal and others; and the new school of politicians, fresh from their contact with the West, familiar with Western methods and imbued with the Western spirit, left the beaten track and extended the scope of their work by direct appeals to the educated community and even to the masses. The new ideals and the new methods moved the people, and imparted to them an impulse that bore fruit in the manifold activities of an awakened national life.

Industrial revival followed as a matter of course, and devoted men, instinct with the new spirit, applied themselves to the develop- ment of our indigenous industries. One of the earliest pioneers in