NCERT Class 8 - Our Pasts III • NCERT Class 12 - Themes in Indian History Part III, Chapter 13

Swadeshi and Revolutionary Nationalism

The Partition of Bengal in 1905 turned the national movement from petition to agitation. It produced the Swadeshi and Boycott movement, brought the Extremists to the front, and gave rise to a revolutionary stream that chose armed action.

Partition of Bengal and Swadeshi

• Lord Curzon announced the partition in 1905 and it took effect on 16 October 1905, dividing Bengal on lines that separated the Muslim-majority east from the west.
• The official reason was administrative convenience; the political purpose was widely understood to be weakening Bengali nationalism.
• The response was Swadeshi - use of Indian goods - and Boycott of British goods, courts, schools and titles.
• It produced practical results: Indian mills and handloom production, national schools and the Bengal National College, and Indian banks and insurance firms.
• Rabindranath Tagore composed songs for the movement and the day of partition was observed as a day of mourning, with people tying rakhis to express unity.
• Partition was annulled in 1911, when the capital was also shifted from Calcutta to Delhi.

Moderates and Extremists

• The trio of Lala Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal is remembered as Lal-Bal-Pal.
• Tilak's declaration that "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it" became the slogan of the new politics.
• The two groups split at the Surat session in 1907 and reunited only at Lucknow in 1916.
• The Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 enlarged the councils but introduced separate electorates for Muslims, a step with long consequences.

The revolutionaries

• Secret societies grew in Bengal, Maharashtra and Punjab - the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar were the largest.
• Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki attempted to kill a magistrate at Muzaffarpur in Bihar in 1908; Khudiram was hanged and became a household name.
• V. D. Savarkar organised Abhinav Bharat, and Madan Lal Dhingra acted in London.
• The Ghadar Party was founded in 1913 at San Francisco by Indians abroad, with Lala Hardayal and Sohan Singh Bhakna among its leaders, and planned a rising during the First World War.
• The Komagata Maru incident of 1914, in which a shipload of Indian passengers was turned away from Canada and fired on at Budge Budge, deepened anger.

Home Rule and the Lucknow Pact

• Two Home Rule Leagues were started in 1916 - by Tilak in April at Belgaum and by Annie Besant in September at Madras - demanding self-government within the empire.
• They built a political network in small towns and gave many later Congress workers their first experience.
• The Lucknow Pact of 1916 brought Congress and the Muslim League together on a joint scheme of reform, and also reunited the Moderates and Extremists.
• Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915 on the advice of his political mentor Gokhale, and spent his first year travelling and observing.