Boundary disputes, border sealing, deportation of immigrants, trade and-tariff wars are paradoxes in our age of interdependent globalized economies; paradoxes which are creating confusion, discord and divisiveness within and between nations. With financial capital and information technologies flowing freely across geographical boundaries, it is a continuing challenge for nations to build themselves, retain and regain national identities while emerging from the shadows of social cultural and economic domination. In 2025, there is much to gain from the ‘gospels of ‘Atma – sakti’ or ‘Constructive swadeshi’ of 1905 when the British imperial decisions of Viceroy Lord Curzon to partition Bengal generated an unparalleled upsurge, an explosion of ideas, ideologies, programmes and movements which had been building up since the 1880s.

At the heart of the swadeshi movement, which gathered strength in Maharashtra, Punjab and Bengal, was a two-fold critique of the Congress. “The basic technique of appealing to British public opinion was condemned as ‘mendicancy’, futile in its effects and derogatory to national honour; the Congress was attacked for representing the English-educated elite alienated from the common people,” wrote Prof Sumit Sarkar in ‘The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908’. Instead of prayers and petitions, self-reliance and constructive work became the new slogans universal in their appeal then and, to think of it, equally relevant today. Bengal witnessed the start of swadeshi enterprises and stores, organisation of education on autonomous and indigenous lines, and the emphasis on concrete work at the village level.

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Such efforts at self-help, together with the use of the vernacular and utilisation of traditional popular customs and institutions (like the mela or fair), were felt to be the best methods for drawing the masses into the national movement, explained Prof Sarkar. Ideas and ideologies being the lifeblood of movements, swadeshi and its leadership were inspired by Swami Dayanand Saraswati in north India and Bankim Chandra and Swami Vivekananda in Bengal. By 1905, the swadeshi movement built the platform for a broad political movement on novel lines, with writings and speeches of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Aurobindo Ghosh setting the political stage on fire. Tilak, through the mid1890s, organized Ganapati and Shivaji festivals, and worked among peasants during the 1896 famine.

He organized no-rent campaigns, a boycott movement in protest against the new excise duty on Indian cotton, and the agitation against the plague regulations in 1897 ~ a microcosm of anti-British campaigns which would come to dominate the freedom struggle in the decades ahead. When in 1901 Lala Lajpat Rai advocated not just technical education and industrial self help, he also ridiculed the “fatuous annual festival of Englisheducated Indians which went by the name of the Congress” in his writings in ‘Kayastha Samachar’. He argued, “the Congress should openly and boldly base itself on the Hindus alone, since unity with Muslims was a chimera”. Arya Samaj leaders from Punjab came to influence Bengal more powerfully in 1905 when preachers like Tahal Ram Ganga Ram gave fiery lectures at College Square calling for boycott and swadeshi. He created a sensation in Calcutta in the early months of 1905. Eight years before Lala Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Gho sh in a famous series of articles ‘New Lamps for Old’ (1893-94) provided the classic criticism of Congress, hammering on three main points: the English model of gradual constitutional progress admired by the moderates and its serious limitations; Congress was attacked for its talk on the blessings of British rule; and finally striking a remarkably modern class conscious tone, the issue of bridging the gulf between ‘the burgess or the middle class’, which Congress represented and the ‘proletariat . . . the real key of the situation’.

In sharp contrast to the flamboyant personality of Aurobindo was the quiet school- teacher of Barisal, Aswinikumar Dutta, who through a life-time of patient social work in his district built up a mass following unequalled by any other leader in Bengal. “The only person, who has a large and devoted following among the masses” as Pal described him in 1909. Aswinikumar organised students of his Brojomohan Vidyalaya into several volunteer bands on a permanent basis, sent up a petition to the Commons de manding elective legislatures with 40,000 signatures in 1887 and converted Barisal into a real fort of the swadeshi movement after 1905, when the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti with its 159 branches penetrated deep into the district. But it is from the writings of Rabindranath Tagore that “we get the clearest ~ as well as of course the most memorable evidence of the growth of a new spirit in Bengal,” noted Prof Sarkar.

The plea for self-reliance or ‘atmasakti’ as opposed to the degrading mendicancy of Congress politicians can be dated back to the 1880s when Rabindranath, through his song at the 1886 Congress, said “Ask not for a song from me …” Now, there was a definite call to turn away from conventional old-style politics to build up “our own strength through constructive economic and educational work ~ Swadeshi and national education. A third important theme is to bridge the gulf between the educated and the masses through use of the mother tongue as medium of instruction and in political meetings, utilising traditional folk institutions like the mela.” By 1904, Rabindranath was urging to turn away from oldsty le politics. “Let volunteers go to the villages instead, spreading social and political enlightenment in the melas and through magic lantern lectures; and, above all, let us try to revive our traditional samaj, channeling all constructive work through it once again”.

The bond of unity with the country was being sought explicitly now through the Hindu religion and samaj. He questioned: “Will not Hinduism be able to bring every one of us day by day into bonds of affinity and devotion to this Bharatvarsha of ours ~ the abode of our gods, the hermitage of our rishis, the land of our forefathers?” To avoid dissensions, Tagore wanted the appointment of a single leader or ‘samajpati’. Well before 1905, the spirit of self-help had started expressing itself through numerous ef – forts to promote swadeshi sales through exhibitions and shops like Rabindranath’s Swadeshi Bhandar in 1897, Jogeschandra Chaudhuri’s Indian Stores in 1901 and Sarala Debi’s Laksmir Bhandar in 1903.

Bengal Chemicals was established in 1893, and a company to exploit the Raj mahal kaolin deposits for porcelain manufacture was floated in 1901. The message of self help in industry and education was spread among the Calcutta student elite by Satischandra Mukherji through his journal Dawn (started in 1897) and his Dawn Society (1902-7). The Bhagavat Chatuspathi (1895) connected with Satischandra Mukhetji, the Dawn Society’s weekly classes and seminar, the Saraswat Ayatan of Brahmobandhab Upadhyay (August 1902), and Tagore’s ashram near Bolpur (started in December 1901, with Upadhyay as the main adviser) marked the beginnings of a national education movement. The enthusiastic response to Jogendrachandra Ghosh’s proposal (March 1904) for an association to raise funds for students going abroad for technical training was symptomatic of the new atmosphere in Bengal.

Finally, the call for a break with the traditional type of agitation was raised from the presidential chair at the Burdwan Provincial Conference of June 1904 when Asutosh Chaudhuri declared: “A subject nation has no politics”. His plea for constructive self-help in place of mendicancy was lauded, and Tagore welcomed it in in his Swadeshi Samaj address. From July 1905, as Prof Sarkar detailed the time-line, reliance on self-help or ‘atmasakti’ had become the creed of the whole of Bengal. The air was full of swadeshi schemes ~ textile mills and improved handlooms, river transport concerns, match and soap factories, earthenware and tanneries ~ the Prabasi of Kartik 1313 (1906) gives a fairly comprehensive list of the first fruits of this upsurge. National education was becoming a reality through mufassil schools, the Bengal National College and School (August 1906), and Tarak nath Palit’s Society for the Promotion of Technical Education.

The Swadesh Bandhab Samiti of Barisal claimed to have settled 523 disputes through 89 arbitration committees by August 1906. In retrospect, it is Rabindranath Tagore rather than the politicians who stands out as the most vivid and remarkable personality of those stirring 1905 days ~ participating in the rough and tumble of politics as never before and after, suggesting far reaching schemes of autonomous rural development on the model of Armenian nationalists in Russia.

Tagore’s prolific writings and his vision as a poet best owed a rare beauty and imaginative appeal to the whole movement. His compositions of a magnificent series of patriotic songs ~ Amar Sonar Bangla and Banglar mati Banglar jal ~ will surely endure even if everything else about the swadeshi movement is forgotten.

(The writer is a researcher author on history and heritage issues, and a former deputy curator of Pradhanmantri Sangrahalaya)