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 Alarmed
at the rapid spread of the spirit of defiance of the government, the British
rulers resorted to repressive measures. Even shouting of 'Bande Mataram'
became a crime in the eyes of the law. But the harsh measures adopted by the
government to suppress the movement proved counter- productive.
"The old faith of the people in the British government as the saviour of this
country is almost dead," wrote B.C. Pal. Rabindranath summed up this feeling
as only a poet could : "The more they tighten their fetters, the more will our
fetters snap; the more their eyes redden, the more our eyes will open."
Even those who had advocated swadeshi in the late 19th century had not dreamt
that the spirit of swadeshi, would bring about a transformation in the Indian
attitude to British rule. They had advocated swadeshi because they wanted to
promote Indian industry, nothing more. They had not expected it to develop
into a movement for self-government. But that is what happened. Swadeshi was
quickly conceptualised to mean freedom from foreign rule. A reader writing in
a newspaper in February 1906 expressed his feelings in verse :
"From life without freedom
Oh, who would not fly!
For one day of freedom
Who would not die!"
Even the mild-mannered national leader, Gopal Krishna Gokhale was moved by the
spirit of swadeshi. In his presidential address at the Congress session in
Benaras in 1905 Gokhale said, "....For the first time since British rule
began, all sections of the Indian community, without distinction of caste or
creed have been moved by a common impulse and without the stimulus of external
pressure to act together in offering resistance to a common wrong. A wave of
true national consciousness has swept over the provinces and at its touch, old
barriers have, for the time at any rate, been thrown down, personal jealousies
have vanished, other controversies have been hushed... the most outstanding
fact of the situation is that the public life of this country has received an
accession of strength of great importance."
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