When Dussehra was used to fuel anger against British rule

This Dussehra will see a showdown between Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and chief minister Eknath Shinde as the two rival camps launch a show of strength through their parallel rallies

This Dussehra will see a showdown between Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray and chief minister Eknath Shinde as the two rival camps launch a show of strength through their parallel rallies. However, over a century ago, the Dussehra festival was used to demonstrate popular resentment against the divide-and-rule policies of the British and provide an impetus to the idea of swadeshi.

Thane, India - September 30, 2022: Artists from daily walks of life that include auto drivers, painters, transgenders, mobile repair shop workers and school students, enact Ramleela, an 11-day long Ramayan story on stage after a gap of two years. After a one-month long practice session, the artists geared up for the performance witnessed by at least 2500 people, at Indira Nagar, in Thane, Mumbai, India, on Friday, September 30, 2022. (Praful Gangurde/HT Photo) (HT PHOTO)

It was on Dussehra day in 1905 that Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, then a student at Fergusson College in Pune, organised the first bonfire of imported clothes in the country. A 5000-strong crowd as well as stalwarts like Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Shivram Mahadev Paranjape were in attendance.

Viceroy George Nathaniel Curzon’s announcement in 1905 of partitioning Bengal on religious lines had led to an upsurge of anger. The idea of dividing the Bengal Presidency, which spanned a huge geographical expanse covering Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Chota Nagpur, had been under consideration since 1896, but nationalists saw this partition into (largely Muslim) East Bengal and West Bengal as a design to sow the seeds of division between Hindus and Muslims.

In July 1905, Krishna Kumar Mitra, through his periodical ‘Sanjibani’ called for a boycott of foreign-made goods and adoption of swadeshi. The victory of Japan over Russia (1904-5) and the boycott by the Chinese of American goods (1905) fuelled this sentiment, and swadeshi grew into a form of mass protest.

This agitation had reverberations in Maharashtra. In England, Gopal Krishna Gokhale took a position against the partition, while Tilak began organising the people in the state. In his newspaper ‘Kesari’, Tilak charged Curzon with “trampling on the grass of the Bengali nation’s sentiment like a drunken elephant” and advocated the boycott of British goods. Tilak’s position supporting the Bengali nationalists won him admirers in Bengal, making him the first pan-India mass leader.

Swadeshi had been promoted in the earlier century by stalwarts like Justice M G Ranade and Gopal Hari Deshmukh. Ganesh Vasudev Joshi aka ‘Sarvajanik Kaka,’ a public figure in Pune, had adopted swadeshi attire till his demise in 1880. As Tilak noted, the idea of swadeshi as an instrument for national welfare was not new for the people of Pune or Maharashtra. He stressed that while people could buy goods manufactured in Japan, Germany, France or America, they should boycott those made in England. The logic was simple—harm the industrial interests of England to make it accede to Indian demands.

On 27 August 1905, Tilak presided over a public meeting of 3,000 students in Pune against the partition of Bengal, where Savarkar also spoke. Savarkar, who had launched the secret society ‘Abhinav Bharat’ a year earlier, also met Tilak and suggested that a bonfire of foreign clothes be organised. He organised a series of public meetings to rally people for the cause and collect imported clothes. He was assisted in this by Bhaskar Balwant Bhopatkar, aka ‘Bhaalakar Bhopatkar,’ who edited the newspaper ‘Bhaala’.

This bonfire, organised on Dussehra day on October 8, 1905, marked Savarkar’s entry into public life. That day, a procession was organised from Pune’s Reay Market (present-day Mahatma Phule Mandai), to Lakdi Pul at Deccan Gymkhana. Tilak and Paranjape made speeches after the clothes were set on fire. Paranjape picked up an imported coat from the heap and rifled through its pockets to symbolise the economic exploitation of India by the British.

‘Wrangler’ R P Paranjape, principal of Fergusson College, rusticated Savarkar from the hostel and fined him ₹10. An angry Tilak wrote in ‘Kesari’: ‘He aamche guruch navhet (These are not our gurus).’ Later, Savarkar secured letters of recommendation from Tilak and Paranjape to apply for a scholarship for Indian students offered by Shyamji Krishna Varma, the London-based nationalist and founder of the India House hostel.

Savarkar sailed for London on June 9, 1906, and took his battle to the very heart of the British empire. It was here that he was arrested in 1910 for his revolutionary activities, sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment and transported to the infamous Cellular Jail in the Andamans. But that is another story.