Swadeshi Strikes

A branch of the Printers' Union seems to have been set up at The Statesman Press by November 1905 with union activities reaching a high point by May-June 1906. A Special Branch report dated 7 September 1906 noted 'quite an epidemic of strikes among the printing presses in Calcutta...no less than six private presses and the Bengal Secretariat Press.' The Printers' Union set an example of working-class solidarity by sending a message of sympathy from their 23 June meeting to the Indian staff of the East Indian Railway loop line who had gone on strike

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Boycott and Swaraj: these were weapons of mass unrest and grievance to challenge the British Indian Government announcement on 19 July 1905 to partition Bengal. Viceroy Lord Curzon had planned the new province would be called 'East Bengal and Assam', comprising Chittagong, Dacca and Rajshahi divisions, hilly Tripura, Maldah and Assam. What took the British government by surprise was the magnitude of protests, strikes and public grievances across towns and villages of Bengal, Maharashtra, Punjab, Madras and in England and Europe too.

Leaders of the stature of Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Aurobindo Ghosh; poets-educationists and painters Rabindranath Tagore, Sister Nivedita, Jagadish Chandra Basu and Abanindranath Tagore; barristers AC Banerji, AK Ghosh defending labour disputes; Satischandra Mukerji's Dawn, Jogindranath Chattopadhyay's monthly Swadeshi, the Sandhya of Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya were at the forefront when labour disputes, as in the case of the Burns Iron Works, gave the Swadeshi movement one of its defining moments.

Reading the pledge of patriotism published by Krishna Kumar Mitra, the editor of Sanjivani, is soul-stirring till date: "We are taking this oath in the name of our holy motherland and for the welfare of our country that we shall never use foreign goods if we get goods manufactured in this country. For this if we have to bear financial or other sacrifice, we shall be ready to do it. We will not only do all these ourselves, but try to persuade friends and all other people to act accordingly." On 7 August 1905, this boycott pledge, now a resolution, was adopted at a huge public meeting in Calcutta's Town Hall. Lord Curzon had arrogantly declared, "Bengal partition is a settled fact." Moderate Congress leader Surendranath Bandyopadhyay at once sharply retorted "We shall unsettle the settled fact".