of a Bengalee politician, the idea was to cause pecuniary loss to the British manufacturer and thus enlist his sympathy and help for the purpose of getting the measure cancelled. But it was soon dis¬ covered that the boycott might be an effective economic weapon, to be used as a measure of protection against the economic exploitation of the country by the foreigner.
To quote the same writer, “ The pledges sent from Calcutta came back, duly signed by large numbers of people, but with the conditional sentence, ‘ until Partition is withdrawn/ scored through. The boycott was a great success for some time. 4 The Lucky Day ’ of October, 1905, on which generally a very large number of forward contracts in Manchester goods are made at Calcutta, passed without any business being done. Simultaneously with this decline in foreign goods, many indigenous industries began to revive. There W2S a boom in handlooms all over India. Provinces outside of Bengal did not adopt a policy of active boycott, but the cry of Swadeshi[1] was taken up by all the country, whereby a great impetus was given to indigenous manufacturers. The significance of the movement in Bengal, where it was rigorously pursued, lay in the fact that prince and peasant, capitalist and labourer, literate and illiterate, educated and uneducated, all joined hands.” For some time the boycott was so effective that The Englishman, an Anglo-Indian newspaper published in Calcutta, declared : “ It is absolutely true that Calcutta ware-
- ↑ India made goods.
