Model answer & approach
- How did Swadeshi grow into a demand for Swaraj? (Answer in 150 words)
Introduction
The agitation that began in 1905 as an economic boycott ended by naming a political goal. Once Indians organised production, education and protest themselves, self-government followed as the next logical claim.
Body
1. The provocation: Curzon's partition of Bengal, effective 16 October 1905, met mourning and the boycott of Manchester cloth — a grievance petitioning failed to reverse.
2. Self-reliance bred confidence: Bengal Chemicals under P. C. Ray and Bengal National College under Aurobindo showed Indians could run their own institutions.
3. The drain argument supplied the logic: Naoroji's Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901) showed self-reliance was impossible without political control of policy.
4. New methods created new politics: samitis, volunteer corps and passive resistance, defended by Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal and Lajpat Rai, replaced prayer and petition.
5. The formal adoption: at the Calcutta Congress of 1906 Dadabhai Naoroji declared Swaraj the goal, alongside swadeshi, boycott and national education.
Conclusion
Repression and the Surat split of 1907 confirmed rather than reversed the shift. Swadeshi taught the technique and swaraj gave it a purpose, a fusion Gandhi completed in Hind Swaraj (1909).
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