Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on his recent visit to Varanasi, called on citizens to adopt the spirit of ‘Swadeshi’ and support locally-made products. He stressed that true service to the nation lies in promoting indigenous goods, especially amid “global economic uncertainties”.

The Prime Minister’s comments, made soon after the US announced harsh tariffs on exports from India and 70 other countries, assumes significance. It provides a bridge to the past, an occasion to learn lessons from the Swadeshi movement which began in 1905 in Bengal and then spread across the subcontinent. Swadeshi voices of legendary leaders and thinkers are worth pondering today. At the 22nd session of the Indian National Congress, held in Calcutta from 26-29 December 1906, Dadabhai Naoroji delivered the presidential address highlighting “Swadeshi is not a thing of to-day. It has existed in Bombay as far as I know for many years past. I am a freetrader and I am a Member in the Executive Committee of the Cobden Club for 20 years, and yet I say that Swadeshi is a forced necessity for India in its unnatural economic muddle.

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As long as the economic condition remains unnatural and impoverishing, by the necessity of supplying every year some Rs. 20,00,00,000 for the salary, pensions etc. of the children of a foreign country at the expense and impoverishment of the children of India, to talk of applying economic laws to the condition of India is adding insult to injury. I ask any Englishman whether Englishmen would submit to this unnatural economic muddle of India for a single day in England, leave alone 150 years? No, never. No, Ladies and Gentlemen, England will never submit to it.” Dr Rash Behari Ghose, who succeeded Dadabhai as Congress president in 1907, said in a lengthy welcome address, “Swadeshi movement seems also to have given great offence to a certain section of the AngloIndian community. It seems that if you call the movement a boycott of foreign goods, you are a traitor to England.

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But competition with Manchester is not yet treason in the Indian Statute Book. The Swadeshi movement is only a prelude to our determination to enter into the great brotherhood of the trading nations of the West…come with me to the exhibition on the other side of the street, a visit to it, I am sure, will fill the heart of every one of you with hope and gladness; for in Swadeshism you see the cradle of a new........

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