Boundary disputes, border sealing, deportation of immigrants, trade and-tariff wars are paradoxes in our age of interdependent globalized economies; paradoxes which are creating confusion, discord and divisiveness within and between nations. With financial capital and information technologies flowing freely across geographical boundaries, it is a continuing challenge for nations to build themselves, retain and regain national identities while emerging from the shadows of social cultural and economic domination. In 2025, there is much to gain from the ‘gospels of ‘Atma – sakti’ or ‘Constructive swadeshi’ of 1905 when the British imperial decisions of Viceroy Lord Curzon to partition Bengal generated an unparalleled upsurge, an explosion of ideas, ideologies, programmes and movements which had been building up since the 1880s.

At the heart of the swadeshi movement, which gathered strength in Maharashtra, Punjab and Bengal, was a two-fold critique of the Congress. “The basic technique of appealing to British public opinion was condemned as ‘mendicancy’, futile in its effects and derogatory to national honour; the Congress was attacked for representing the English-educated elite alienated from the common people,” wrote Prof Sumit Sarkar in ‘The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908’. Instead of prayers and petitions, self-reliance and constructive work became the new slogans universal in their appeal then and, to think of it, equally relevant today. Bengal witnessed the start of swadeshi enterprises and stores, organisation of education on autonomous and indigenous lines, and the emphasis on concrete work at the village level.

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Such efforts at self-help, together with the use of the vernacular and utilisation of traditional popular customs and institutions (like the mela or fair), were felt to be the best methods for drawing the masses into the national movement, explained Prof Sarkar. Ideas and ideologies being the lifeblood of movements, swadeshi and its leadership were inspired by Swami Dayanand Saraswati in north India and Bankim Chandra and Swami Vivekananda in Bengal. By 1905, the swadeshi movement built the platform for a broad political movement on novel lines, with writings and speeches of Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai and Aurobindo Ghosh setting the political stage on fire. Tilak, through the mid1890s, organized Ganapati and Shivaji festivals, and worked among peasants during the........

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