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The purpose of the propaganda was political, but the inducement offered to the Namasudras in order to stimulate their Nationalism was that the Brahmans would relax the rigour of caste in favour of those who took the Swadeshi vow, and it is stated that, in several villages where they succeeded in making a large number of converts, the Brahman agitators marked their approval by condescending to have their "twice-born" heads shaved by the village barber an act which, however trivial it may seem to us, constituted an absolutely revolutionary breach with a 3,000 years-old past.
Had we not abandoned Swadeshi, we need not have been in the present fallen state. If we would get rid of the economic slavery, we must manufacture our own cloth and at the present moment only by hand-spinning and hand weaving. All this means discipline, self-denial, self-sacrifice, organising ability, confidence and courage.
Pure Swadeshi meant sacrifice of the liking for fineries. He asked the nation to sacrifice its liking for the fineries of Europe and Japan and be satisfied with the coarse but beautiful fabrics woven on their handlooms out of yarns spun by millions of their sisters.
But it was in the courtyard of the great temple of Kali at Calcutta in the presence of "the terrible goddess" that the "leaders of the Bengali nation," men who, like Mr. Surendranath Banerjee, have always professed to be "moderates," held their chief demonstrations against "partition" and administered the Swadeshi oath to their followers.
"I know and you know what that means. You have not yet bartered away your magical influence for a mess of pottage. Because of one Indian woman supreme for me; and now ... because of another, they all have a special claim on my heart. 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.
The Swadeshi movement failed, as it was bound to fail.
Mr. Gokhale himself seems to have awakened to this danger, when in an eloquent speech delivered by him at Lucknow, in support of Swadeshi in 1907, he protested, rather late in the day, against the "narrow, exclusive, and intolerant spirit" in which some advocates of the cause were seeking to promote it, and laid stress upon the importance of capital as well as of enterprise and skill as an indispensable factor of success.
Within the last few years, however, the politician has realized that, whilst commercial and industrial development was steadily expanding and the demand for it was increasing on all sides, he was left standing on a barren shore. He has done his best, or rather his worst, to convert Swadeshi into a political weapon. His efforts have only been temporarily and partially successful.
It must be subverted and true Swadeshi rule established. May truth be victorious! The Gujarat hails the Hindu New Year which is coming "to take away the curse of the foreigners": Oh noble land of the Aryas, thou who wert so great art like a caged bird. Are thy powerful sons, Truth and Love, dead? The Shakti declares that:
He appealed to the pride of his Mahratta people by reviving the cult of Shivaji, the great Mahratta chieftain who first raised the standard of Hindu revolt against Mahomedan domination, and he appealed to their religious passions by placing under the patronage of their favourite deities a national movement for boycotting British-imported goods and manufactures which, under the name of Swadeshi, was to be the first step towards Swaraj.
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