NDA (II) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 55 of 150

Correct — C, It opposed the levy of tariff on imports. This statement is the wrong way round, which is why it is the odd one out. The swadeshi agitation of the 1890s wanted a duty put on imported British cloth and objected that the government refused to levy one. The Maharashtra State Gazetteer volume on Swadeshi and Boycott records that in June 1894 G. K. Gokhale, as secretary of the Sarvajanik Sabha, called a meeting to protest against the government's policy of excluding foreign textile goods from duty and asked his friends to vow not to buy Manchester articles until at least a duty was imposed on them. The same volume records that the Ahmednagar meeting of 1896 was itself convened to protest against the cotton duty. So the campaign was a demand for protection against imports, not opposition to it.

• (a)Its centre was Maharashtra — This is correct, so it cannot be the answer. The 1896 bonfire of English clothes took place at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra, organised by the pleader S. K. Jog, and the Maharashtra gazetteer calls it among the earliest of its kind in the country.
• (b)Its main participants were students — Also correct. Students were the visible body of the Maharashtra swadeshi agitation — the gazetteer's record of the movement is largely a record of student meetings, processions and punishments, from Poona to the Kolhapur high-school walkout.
• (d)It publicly burnt foreign clothes — Correct as well, and the campaign's signature act. At Ahmednagar in 1896 the participants burnt their English clothes in a public fire on Holi day, a method repeated at Poona, Nasik and Belgaum in the years that followed.

Swadeshi as an idea is much older than the famous movement of 1905. Through the 1870s to the 1890s nationalist economists argued that Britain had opened India to its own manufactures while denying Indian producers any protection, and the cotton duties were the sorest point. When import duties on cotton goods were finally levied in the 1890s, an equal excise duty was imposed on Indian mill cloth so that British exporters gained no disadvantage — a device Indians read as protecting Lancashire at India's cost. Public meetings, boycott vows and bonfires of foreign cloth were the response.

Answer this by asking what a swadeshi campaigner would actually want. Somebody urging people to stop buying Manchester cloth wants imported cloth made dearer, which means he wants a tariff on imports, not the end of one. Statement (c) reverses that motive and is therefore the false one. It helps to keep the two taxes apart in your head: the nationalists demanded an import duty on foreign cloth and resented the countervailing excise duty placed on Indian mill cloth. Both grievances point the same way, and neither is opposition to a tariff on imports.

• A bonfire of English clothes was held at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra in 1896, organised by the pleader S. K. Jog, at a meeting called to protest against the cotton duty.
• In June 1894 G. K. Gokhale, as secretary of the Sarvajanik Sabha, protested the government's policy of leaving foreign textile goods free of duty and urged a vow against buying Manchester articles.
• Nationalist opinion demanded a protective duty on imported cloth and objected to the countervailing excise duty laid on Indian mill cloth.
• Students were the most active participants in the Maharashtra swadeshi agitation, including the Kolhapur high-school walkout and the Poona meetings.
• Swadeshi became a nationwide political weapon only after the partition of Bengal was announced in 1905.

• Reading a swadeshi campaign as anti-tax in general; it wanted duties on imports, not their removal.
• Dating swadeshi entirely to 1905 and missing the earlier Maharashtra agitation of the 1890s.
• Confusing the import duty demanded by nationalists with the excise duty they resented.

NDA sets this as a 'which one is not correct' item, so three statements will be textbook-true and the fourth will quietly invert a motive.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The countervailing excise duty imposed on Indian mill-made cotton cloth in the 1890s was resented by nationalists because it

  • (a)cancelled the protection that the import duty would otherwise have given Indian mills
  • (b)was collected by the princely states rather than the British government
  • (c)applied only to handloom weavers and not to mills
  • (d)replaced the land revenue in the cotton districts

  Answer(a) cancelled the protection that the import duty would otherwise have given Indian mills — Indian cloth was taxed to the same extent as imported cloth, leaving Lancashire no worse off.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Swadeshi movement became a nationwide political weapon immediately after

  • (a)the partition of Bengal announced in 1905
  • (b)the Rowlatt Act of 1919
  • (c)the Surat split of 1907
  • (d)the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885

  Answer(a) the partition of Bengal announced in 1905 — the boycott of foreign goods was proclaimed at the Calcutta Town Hall meeting of 7 August 1905.