The Extremists, Swadeshi and the Surat Split

Between 1905 and 1909 Indian politics took a militant turn. A younger generation, impatient with the Moderates' polite petitions, demanded swaraj and direct action. The trigger was Lord Curzon's partition of Bengal in 1905. This set off the Swadeshi and Boycott Movement, the first mass agitation of the freedom struggle. The clash between the two wings tore the Congress apart at Surat in 1907. The government answered with the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909, which planted the poisonous seed of separate electorates. This is a very high-yield topic.

A radical, militant approach emerged in the 1890s and took concrete shape by 1905. Several factors drove it:

• Recognition of the true nature of British rule. The government was conceding nothing and even taking away existing rights (the criticised Councils Act of 1892, the Natu brothers' deportation and Tilak's imprisonment in 1897, the Official Secrets Act of 1904, the Indian Universities Act of 1904).
• Growth of self-confidence and self-respect. Leaders like Tilak, Aurobindo and Bipin Chandra Pal urged Indians to rely on their own character and capacity. They insisted the masses must join the struggle.
• Disillusion with the Moderates. The younger nationalists dismissed the "three P's" (prayer, petition and protest) as "political mendicancy." This critique had begun early. In 1893–94 Aurobindo Ghosh wrote a series of articles titled "New Lamps for Old" in the Indu Prakash, attacking the timid, elitist politics of the Moderates.
• International inspiration. Japan's rise after 1868, and especially its victory over Russia in 1905, shattered the myth of European invincibility. So did Ethiopia's defeat of Italy (1896) and the Boer Wars.
• Reactionary rule of Curzon. His seven years were "full of missions, commissions and omissions." His contempt for Indians, and above all the partition of Bengal, left no doubt about the reactionary nature of British rule.

A militant school of thought had emerged by 1900: Raj Narain Bose, Ashwini Kumar Dutta, Aurobindo and Bipin Chandra Pal in Bengal; Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar and Bal Gangadhar Tilak in Maharashtra; and Lala Lajpat Rai in Punjab. Tilak was its outstanding voice: "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it." Its tenets were hatred of foreign rule, swaraj as the goal, direct political action, faith in the masses, and a readiness for self-sacrifice.

The new leaders reached the masses through religious and historical symbols. Tilak started the Ganapati festival (1893) and the Shivaji festival (1895) in Maharashtra to spread the national message. Aurobindo and others glorified India's ancient, largely Hindu, past. This gave the movement emotional power, but at a price. The constant harping on the Hindu past alienated the Muslims. This is the main reason Indian Muslims, by and large, were not attracted to the Extremist movement.

The decision to partition Bengal was made public in December 1903 and came into force on 16 October 1905. The official reason was that Bengal, with 78 million people, was too big to administer. The real motive was to weaken Bengal, the nerve-centre of Indian nationalism. This was done by dividing Bengalis on the basis of language and, more dangerously, religion, splitting the province into a Hindu-majority west and a Muslim-majority east. As the home secretary Risley admitted, "Bengal united is a power; Bengal divided will pull in several different ways."

The anti-partition campaign (1903-05) was first led by Moderates (Surendranath Banerjea, K.K. Mitra, Prithwishchandra Ray) through petitions, public meetings and the press. When the government ignored public opinion, the mood hardened. On 7 August 1905 the Boycott Resolution was passed at a huge meeting in the Calcutta Townhall, formally proclaiming the Swadeshi Movement. Independent India remembers this date: 7 August is observed as National Handloom Day, commemorating the boycott of foreign cloth and the embrace of Indian handlooms. The day partition came into force was observed as a day of mourning. People fasted, bathed in the Ganga and tied rakhis as a symbol of unity, singing Bande Mataram. The movement soon spread to Poona and Bombay under Tilak, Punjab under Lajpat Rai and Ajit Singh, Delhi under Syed Haider Raza, and Madras under Chidambaram Pillai.

Under Extremist leadership after 1905, the movement threw up bold new forms of struggle:

• Boycott and public burning of foreign cloth, and refusal to handle foreign goods.
• Passive resistance. Aurobindo's call to make administration impossible by an organised refusal to cooperate, extending the boycott to government schools, courts, councils and titles.
• Corps of volunteers (samitis), such as Ashwini Kumar Dutta's Swadesh Bandhab Samiti in Barisal, for mass mobilisation. It was Dutta's samiti that drew even the Muslim peasants of Barisal into the agitation.
• Self-reliance (atma shakti). Rabindranath Tagore preached the cult of atma shakti, centred on the social and economic regeneration of the villages.
• A programme of national education. Satish Chandra Mukherjee had formulated a scheme of national education as early as 1898. The Swadeshi years gave it shape through the National Council of Education and the Bengal National College (1906), with Aurobindo as its first principal.
• Swadeshi enterprises: textile mills, banks, V.O. Chidambaram Pillai's Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company, and a flowering in art, science and literature (Tagore, Abanindranath Bose, J.C. Bose).

For the first time, students, women, some zamindars and sections of the urban lower-middle class took part. The movement could not, however, win over the Muslim masses, largely because of the Extremists' Hindu revivalist tone noted earlier. Partition was finally annulled in 1911, mainly to curb revolutionary terrorism. The capital was shifted to Delhi. The open movement fizzled out by 1908 under severe repression, lack of organisation and the loss of arrested or exiled leaders. Yet it was a turning point, a "leap forward" that gave Indian politics nearly every technique Gandhi would later use.

The differences between Moderates and Extremists had been building since the Benaras session (1905). There the Extremists wanted to extend boycott beyond Bengal, but the Moderates resisted. At the Calcutta session (1906), presided over by Dadabhai Naoroji, the Congress for the first time declared its goal to be "swaraj or self-government". But the word was left undefined, open to rival readings. The session passed four famous resolutions, and their fate became the test of unity:

• Swaraj (self-government) as the goal of the Congress.
• Swadeshi, the promotion of indigenous goods.
• Boycott of foreign goods.
• National education.

Note that the annulment of the partition of Bengal was not one of these four resolutions.

Matters came to a head at Surat in December 1907. The Extremists wanted the session at Nagpur with Tilak or Lajpat Rai as president and a reaffirmation of the four Calcutta resolutions. The Moderates chose Surat, in Tilak's home province, so he could not preside. They wanted to drop the resolutions on boycott, swadeshi and national education too. Both sides took rigid positions, and the Congress split, leaving it in Moderate hands. The government, following a carrot-and-stick policy, then launched a fierce attack on the Extremists. It passed five repressive laws between 1907 and 1911 and put Tilak on trial. He was sentenced in 1908 to six years' transportation to Mandalay.

The Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 (the Indian Councils Act of 1909) were the government's "carrot":

• They enlarged the legislative councils and, for the first time, recognised the elective principle for non-official members. Elections, however, were indirect.
• They gave legislatures power to pass resolutions, ask questions and discuss the budget, but not to vote on it. One Indian, Satyendra Sinha, was placed on the viceroy's executive council.
• Most fatefully, they introduced separate electorates for Muslims: only Muslims could vote for Muslim seats, with representation beyond their numbers. This was preceded by the Simla Deputation (1906) and the founding of the Muslim League (December 1906). It was a deliberate device to divide nationalists on communal lines, "a most detrimental step for India."

The reforms gave Indians, in the end, "a shadow rather than substance." The people had demanded self-government and were given "benevolent despotism."