Swadeshi

“ The vow of Swadeshi is a necessary vow. I suggest to you that we are departing from one of the sacred laws of our being when we leave our neighbour and go somewhere else to satisfy our wants. If a man comes from Bombay here and offers you wares, you are not justified in supporting the Bombay merchant or trader so long as you have got a merchant at your very door born and bred in Madras. That is my view of Swadeshi, In your village, so long as you have a village barber, you are bound to support the village barber to the exclusion of the finished barber that may come to you from Madras. ”

“ Chandranath Babu began to talk about Swadeshi. I thought I would let him go on with his monologues. There is nothing like letting an old man talk himself out. It makes him feel that he is winding up the world, forgetting all the while how far away the real world is from his wagging tongue. ”

“ The Daroga replied with great composure—"Don't excite yourself, Doctor Babu. Don't you see how times are? Granted, it is not disloyalty to eat country salt and wear Bombay cloth. Granted, this assault has nothing whatever to do with the Swadeshi movement. But they think it so. You cannot alter that fact. What's the use of beating your head against the wall?" ”

“ I hope that the men of Punjab will help Saraladevi in her self-imposed mission. They may harness her talents and her willingness in founding, Swadeshi Sabha and organasing Swadeshi propaganda on a sound basis. Both men and money are needed to make the work a success.
Swadeshi is more than reforms. There is much waste over reforms. There is none in Swadeshi. Every yard of yarn spun is so much labour well spent and so much wealth added to the national treasury. Every drop counts Swadeshi spells first production and then distribution. ”

“ It is clear that the purpose of Swadeshi is not served until the quantity of yarn and cloth produced is increased. The gain therefore is merely moral and not material. The people have begun to perceive the desirability of wearing only Swadeshi cloth if the real interest of the country is to be advanced.
But it is clear that we must take practical steps for meeting the growing demand for Swadeshi cloth. One way, no doubt, is to increase the mills. But it is obvious that capitalists do not need popular encouragement. They know that India needs much more cloth than is manufactured by our mills. ”

“ Swadeshi and the boycott were now merely an accompaniment to the deeper and more menacing trumpet-call of open revolt, but they helped "to keep the country awake" even where the true spirit of Swaraj had not yet been kindled. The mofussil was honeycombed with secret societies, whose daring dacoities served not only to collect the sinews of war, but to impress the timid and recalcitrant with the powerlessness of the State to protect them against the midnight raider. Truly the teachings of the Yugantar were bearing fruit, even to the laying down of life and the taking of life. ”

“ It necessitated that spinning should be introduced in every [68] house and Indians should be encouraged to weave their own clothes. Chitta Ranjan proceeded on a lecturing tour all over Bengal to preach Swadeshi to his countrymen and to make it clear to them that the salvation of India lay in hand-spinning and weaving. In course of one of his lectures he said:—
"At this commencement of a new era in the history of India, you must take the Swadeshi vow. I know Indians can do everything only if they wish it. Their fortitude is unique and determination firm. ”

“ And now for the last division of Swadeshi, much of the deep poverty of the masses is due to the ruinous departure from Swadeshi in the economic and industrial life. If not an article of commerce had been brought from outside India, she would be today a land flowing with milk and honey. But that was not to be. We were greedy and so was England. The connection between England and India was based clearly upon an error. But she does not remain in India in error. It is her declared policy that India is to be held in trust for her people. ”

“ Hinduism has become a conservative religion and, therefore, a mighty force because of the Swadeshi spirit underlying it. It is the most tolerant because it is non-proselytising, and it is as capable of expansion today as it has been found to be in the past. It has succeeded not in driving out, as I think it has been erroneously held, but in absorbing Buddhism. By reason of the Swadeshi spirit, a Hindu refuses to change his religion, not necessarily because he considers it to be the best, but because he knows that he can complement it by introducing reforms. ”

“ I think of Swadeshi not as a boycott movement undertaken by way of revenge. I conceive it as religious principle to be followed by all. I am no economist, but I have read some treatises which show that England could easily become a self-sustained country, growing all the produce she needs. This may be an utterly ridiculous proposition, and perhaps the best proof that it cannot be true, is that England is one of the largest importers in the world. But India cannot live for Lancashire or any other country before she is able to live for herself. ”

“ If India has not gone too far down the wrong road, it is by the true Swadeshi spirit of her women she may yet be saved. They, at any rate, don't reckon progress by counting factory chimneys or seats on councils. And every seed—good or bad—is sown first in the home. Get at the women, Arúna—the home ones—and tell them that. ”

“ If we follow the Swadeshi doctrine, it would be your duty and mine to find out neighbours who can supply our wants and to teach them to supply them where they do not know how to, assuming that there are neighbours who are in want of healthy occupation. Then every village of India will almost be a self-supporting and self-contained unit, exchanging only such necessary commodities with other villages where they are not locally producible. ”

“ In that of economics I should use only things that are produced by my immediate neighbours and serve those industries by making them efficient and complete where they might be found wanting. It is suggested that such Swadeshi, if reduced to practice, will lead to the millennium. And, as we do not abandon our pursuit after the millennium, because we do not expect quite to reach it within our times, so may we not abandon Swadeshi even though it may not be fully attained for generations to come. ”

“ It is not by any mere political programme, not by National Education alone, not by Swadeshi alone, not by [Pg 228] boycott, that this country can be saved. Swadeshi by itself might merely lead to a little more material prosperity, and you might forget the real thing you sought to do, in the glamour of wealth and in the desire to keep it safe. In other subject countries also there was material development.... When the hour of trial came, it was found that those nations which had been developing materially were not alive.... The forces of the country are other than visible forces. ”

“ Real Swadeshi, stimulated by British teaching and by British enterprise, was thus already in full swing when the Indian politician took up the cry and too often perverted it to criminal purposes, and, though he may have helped to rouse his sluggish fellow countrymen to healthy as well as to mischievous activity, it may be doubted whether any good he has done has not been more than counterbalanced by the injurious effect upon capital of a violent and often openly seditious agitation. ”

“ It has already undermined the digestive apparatus of hundreds of thousands of men and women and constitutes an additional tax upon their slender purses. Lord Hardinge can set the fashion for Swadeshi, and almost the whole of India forswear foreign goods. There is a verse [Pg 17] in the Bhagavad Gita, which, freely rendered, means, masses follow the classes. It is easy to undo the evil if the thinking portion of the community were to take the Swadeshi vow even though it may, for a time, cause considerable inconvenience. I hate legislative interference, in any department of life. ”

“ We want to work out the real political and economic regeneration of the country by Swadeshi. And the problem of the Swadeshi is the problem of 80 per cent. of our population who spend more than six months of the year in [pg 063] enforced idleness, eking, throughout the year, a miserable, half-starving and half-naked existence. We must find out suitable work for them during their idle hours. We must make them a real asset and power to the nation. Pure Swadeshi alone can do it. ”

“ Khaddar, he must meet the local weavers and induce them to weave hand spun yarn. He must stimulate in his own district hand spinning among its women. He must come in touch with the carders and get them to card cotton. All this means intelligence, organisation and great ability. A man who can exhibit these qualities has a right to take 10 p.c. profits. And a Swadeshi Bhandar conducted on these lines becomes a true centre of Swadeshi activity. ”

“ No one considers that the political life of the country is in a happy state. Following out the Swadeshi spirit, I observe the indigenous institutions and the village panchayats hold me. India is really [Pg 14] a republican country, and it is because it is that, that it has survived every shock hitherto delivered. Princes and potentates, whether they were Indian born or foreigners, have hardly touched the vast masses except for collecting revenue. ”

“ It is hard, indeed, for men to be frank and straight and healthy, when their country is in the throes of dejection.
Then were all eyes turned on my husband, from whose estates alone foreign sugar and salt and cloths had not been banished. Even the estate officers began to feel awkward and ashamed over it. And yet, some time ago, when my husband began to import country- made articles into our village, he had been secretly and openly twitted for his folly, by old and young alike. When Swadeshi had not yet become a boast, we had despised it with all our hearts. ”

“ Do you think I am fit to pass examinations at my age?"
Indumati, pouting her little lips, said—"You are not willing to give up serving the Feringhees—that's the real reason. Let us know please, are you in favour of Swadeshi or against it?" ”

“ The motives underlying these attempts were absolutely patriotic, combining an element of philanthropy in them. The private colleges in Bengal, started by Vidyasagar and others, were also due to the same impulse, and so was the Pachaipiya College at Madras. Bombay had its own schemes and was ahead of the rest of India in purely Indian industrial and trade organisations. Similarly in the Punjab the idea of swadeshi had been started as early as 1877. The motives were economic and patriotic. ”

“ This being so, I have to say with regret that it is the merchant class which has brought ruin to the Swadeshi practice, and the Swadeshi movement in this country. Complaints have lately risen in Bengal about the increase of rates, and one of them is against Gujarat. ”

“ The students will lose nothing by the occupation: they will gain a kingdom here and hereafter. There is a famine of cloth in India. To assist in removing this dearth is surely an act of merit. If it is sinful to use foreign yarn, it is a virtue to manufacture more Swadeshi yarn in order to enable us to cope with the want that would be created by the disuse of foreign yarn. ”

“ The Swadeshi outbreak drew him from Russia to India. Here in an entirely different environment was another discord of race and culture, and he found in his study of it much that illuminated and corrected his impressions of the Russian issue. A whole drawer was devoted to a comparatively finished and very thorough enquiry into human dissensions in lower Bengal. Here there were not only race but culture conflicts, and he could work particularly upon the differences between men of the same race who were Hindus, Christians and Mahometans respectively. ”

“ Being themselves excluded from a voice in their destiny, they turn savagely upon the Government whenever distress or disorder [Pg 147] supervenes, and the only real hope I could see in the situation was the appearance of the little bands of volunteers who in true Swadeshi spirit were spreading the conception of self-reliance throughout India. Sir Andrew Fraser and the higher officials welcomed their efforts, but the average Anglo-Indians and the journalists of Calcutta either treated them with contempt, or shrieked “sedition!” ”

“ Real home-rule is self-rule or self-control. The way to it is passive resistance: that is soul force or love-force. In order to exert this force, Swadeshi in every sense is necessary. What we want to do should be done, not because we object to the English or that we want to retaliate, but because it is our duty to do so. Thus, supposing that the English remove the salt-tax, restore our money, give the highest posts to Indians, withdraw the English troops, we shall certainly not use their machine-made goods, nor use the English language, nor many of their industries. ”

“ And after all, India cannot become truly and economically independent so long as she must rely on the supply of machinery from outside for the manufacture of her cloth.
The cleanest and the most popular form of Swadeshi, therefore, is to stimulate hand-spinning and hand-weaving and to arrange for a judicious distribution of yarn and cloth so manufactured. With a little talent and a little industry this thing is easy. Even as each home cooks its own food without difficulty, so may each home weave its own yarn. ”