Partition of Bengal and the Swadeshi Movement (Spectrum Digest, Ch 8)

The Partition of Bengal, 1905

• Lord Curzon announced the Partition of Bengal, effective 1905-10-16, dividing the large presidency into a western Bengal and a new eastern province of Eastern Bengal and Assam.
• The official reason was administrative convenience; the real aim was to weaken the centre of Indian nationalism by splitting Bengal on religious lines (a Muslim-majority east, a Hindu-majority west), a clear application of divide and rule.
• The reaction was immediate and intense. Bengal observed a day of mourning; the Swadeshi and Boycott movement was born.

The Swadeshi Movement (1905 to 1908)

The movement had two faces, swadeshi (use of Indian-made goods) and boycott (rejection of British goods and institutions).

• Methods: boycott of foreign (especially Manchester) cloth, picketing of shops, public bonfires of foreign cloth, promotion of Indian industries and swadeshi enterprises, national education (the Bengal National College under Aurobindo Ghosh, the National Council of Education, 1906), the use of folk songs and festivals, and the Rakhi tie-binding to symbolise unity on partition day.
• Leadership: the Extremists made it a programme of self-reliance and swaraj; figures included Aurobindo Ghosh, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and, in Bengal, Surendranath Banerjee and Bipin Chandra Pal. Rabindranath Tagore wrote Amar Sonar Bangla in this atmosphere.
• At Calcutta (1906) the Congress, under Dadabhai Naoroji, adopted the fourfold programme of swaraj, swadeshi, boycott and national education.

Significance and limits

• It was the first major mass agitation of the national movement and the first to use economic boycott as a political weapon, a method Gandhi would later perfect.
• It drew in students, women and sections of the urban middle class, and gave the movement its own songs, schools and symbols.
• Limits: it remained largely confined to Bengal and to the Hindu, educated, urban classes; it did not reach the peasantry or the Muslim masses on a large scale, and internal Moderate-Extremist friction (culminating in the Surat Split of 1907) sapped it. The movement faded after 1908 under repression.
• Annulment: the partition was annulled in 1911 (by King George V at the Delhi Durbar), and the capital was simultaneously shifted from Calcutta to Delhi (1911, effective 1912).

Aftermath: the founding of the Muslim League

The communal logic of the partition encouraged the formation of the All-India Muslim League at Dhaka in 1906 (Aga Khan, Nawab Salimullah of Dhaka), which sought separate political representation for Muslims and welcomed the separate electorates granted in 1909 (see moderates and extremists).

The security and human-rights angle

The Partition of Bengal is a textbook case of using administrative redrawing of boundaries as a counter-nationalist security measure, deliberately exploiting communal cleavages. The repression of the boycott (laws against seditious meetings, the curbing of student political activity, prosecutions of newspapers) again shows the colonial state treating peaceful political mobilisation as a public-order threat.

Common traps

• The Partition of Bengal was 1905 (Curzon) and was annulled in 1911.
• The capital shifted from Calcutta to Delhi in 1911, the same year as the annulment.
• The Muslim League was founded at Dhaka in 1906.
• Swadeshi's fourfold programme (swaraj, swadeshi, boycott, national education) was adopted at the Calcutta session, 1906.

Authored practice

1. The Partition of Bengal (1905) was annulled in which year? (a) 1908 (b) 1909 (c) 1911 (d) 1919. Answer: (c) 1911. Authored practice, not a verbatim PYQ.
2. The All-India Muslim League was founded in 1906 at: (Answer: Dhaka.) Authored practice, not a verbatim PYQ.