인도 스와데시 운동의 성격에 관한 연구

Abstract

This paper traces the British imperialistic policy in Bengal, India, and the growth of the Swadeshi Movement from 1903 to 1908. The Swadeshi literally meaned of ones own country, or manufactured in ones own country was to be certain to associate with the Boycott Movement which aimed at to abstain from the purchase of British manufactures. Swadeshi was positive in character while Boycott was negative. But the two terms were complementary. Swadeshi would have remained an impotent and aesthetic idea without boycott of foreign goods.

The Swadeshi Movement was begun as an expression against the partition of Bengal planed by the Viceroy, Lord Curzon who was an ardent admirer of the doctrine of efficiency. The government regarded the size of the province to be too unwieldy to be properly administered by a single person, the lieutenant governor of Bengal.

Many of the leaders of Indian people looked upon the partition as an imperialistic scheme on the part of the Viceroy government to isolate the Muslims from Bengal and to keep the homogeneous Bengali speaking community under two divided administration. The Indian National Congress and other nationalist bodies interpreted unfavorably the partition as tactics related to the weakening of national unity.

When the partition scheme came to be known to the public of Bengal, the Congress leaders and inhabitants of the province rised to make resistance against the divide and rule policy of the government. All sections of the Indian community have been moved by a common impulse without distinction of caste or creed and acted together in offering resistance to a common wrong. Even though it was against the superior cottton goods of Manchester that the Swadeshi and Boycott movements were mainly directed, what is worth special attention was the fact that the Bhadralok class was active participants in the anti-partition movement.

The Swadeshi movement constituted a landmark in the history of Indian nationalist movement. It was the Swadeshi movement that planted the seeds of national self-consciousness in the minds of the great masses. The Swadeshi movement brought about a change in the nerveless attitude of the Congress towards the government and opened the way to the vigorous nationalist movement. While the Congress brought the educated middle classes on the same platform, it was the Swadeshism that rallied the classes and the masses together on the open forum. So the Swadeshi movement may be said as a rehearsal of the future massive Satyagraha Movement which Mahatma Gandhi will take the lead in the independence movement.