-64_A Practicable Boycott.htm

A Practicable Boycott

Boycott is an ideal, like freedom; it means independence in industry and commerce, as freedom means independence in administration, legislation and finance. But it is not always possible to accomplish the whole of the ideal by the first effort towards it. So long as we cherish the ideal whole and unbroken, we are at liberty to consult the demands of practicability and realise it, not at one rush, but by successive approximations, each being the vantage-ground for a fresh rush forward. This does not imply slow progress, the leisurely and gentleman-like spreading out of the struggle for freedom through five or six centuries in order to avoid the perils of the struggle; it is rather the necessary condition of rapid progress. The force of the hunger for the whole ideal, of impatience with half realisations must remain behind, but the means of each advance must be secured by that which went before.

When the boycott movement first began, it was the opinion of Mr. Tilak and other Nationalist leaders that the exclusion of foreign goods should be directed against British products first of all. The immediate exclusion of all foreign goods was obviously impracticable. But very soon it became evident that the voice of the whole nation in Bengal and Maharashtra was for the more comprehensive movement, and the leaders wisely put aside their own opinion and made themselves simply executors of the national will. Wisely, because at such times there is something divinely inspired in the motions of the national mind which exceeds the human wisdom and statecraft of the individual. It was and remains true that the exclusion of all foreign goods is an impracticable measure in the present economical condition of India. But the comprehensive boycott movement was necessary, — first, in order that the ideal might be stamped deep into the consciousness of the people; and that has been done by the very acts of repression which were largely designed, as admitted by Mr. Hobhouse, to crush the Swadeshi Boycott movement;

— secondly, in order that the idea of India’s separate and self-sufficient existence as a nation might thoroughly replace the habit of dependence and contented economical servitude which English education and the effacement of political life had induced. That work also is done. The idea of Swadeshi has entered into the very marrow of our thought and feeling. It is therefore time now to consider the practical measures by which boycott may be made gradually and steadily successful.

Boycott is essentially a form of voluntary protection and it cannot do more than protection does towards the creation of industries. Protection serves two ends; it prevents the infant industry from being strangled in its weak unestablished state by full-grown and powerful competitors, it gives a stimulus to it by assuring it a market. It cannot supply the place of enterprise, business capacity, naturally favourable conditions. It can however mitigate the incidence of natural conditions, not entirely but comparatively unfavourable, by throwing a countervailing disadvantage into the scale of the more favourably circumstanced competing country. This is the limit of the utility of protection; it is also the limit of the utility of boycott. What boycott could do for the cloth industry, it has done, but for the producer to lean entirely on boycott and expect it to take the place of business enterprise, energy, capacity, the improvement of his goods, is to lay a burden on the national spirit which it is neither possible nor desirable that it should bear. The nation agrees to purchase an inferior indigenous article in place of a superior foreign article, not with the intention that the producer should be excused the necessity of improvement and should be able to force the inferior article on us to all eternity, but solely to give him time to improve his methods, his processes, his machinery, his dexterity in spite of the competition of his superior rival. It saves him from extinction, it gives him a period of grace; he must use it to reach and outdistance the excellence of his rival’s methods and production, and if he neglects this duty he does it at his peril and it is not open to him to cry out against the want of patriotism in the people because they withdraw a support which he has abused. The nation, again, agrees to deny itself necessaries or restrict the quantity of its purchase, not with the intention of permanently

lowering its standard of comfort and living a barer and more meagre life, but in order to give time for capital and enterprise to increase the supply, so that eventually the wants of the nation may be supplied from within. If it is found that there is not an expansion of industry commensurate with the self-denial in the nation and that only a few businessmen are exploiting the national sentiment for their own personal profit, it is idle to expect the boycott to survive. We have noticed signs of a most unhealthy spirit of mutual trade jealousy among Swadeshi mill-owners, who seem to be under the impression that they are natural rivals for the patronage of the consumer. No single Indian producer can monopolise the supply necessary for national consumption, nor can even the whole body of Indian producers combined, at present, meet the demand. One Indian mill-owner gets nothing by the decline of another; on the contrary, his prosperity is bound up in the prosperity of all other Indian mills; for the maintenance of the boycott, which saved the mill industry at a crisis of its destinies, depends on the increased supply of Swadeshi cloth. Instead of attempting to rise by pressing each other down, it would be far better for the Indian producers to follow the example of English manufacturers and combine for the welfare of the national industry.

The first condition of a successful boycott, therefore, is the organisation of national industry with a view, first, to the improvement and extension of that which exists, secondly, to the opening up of new lines of enterprise. This is largely a work for the producer himself, but there is one duty which the leaders of the national movement can perform and that is to organise information. The nature of the industries that can be profitably opened in India, the unfavourable circumstances, the favourable, the means of obviating or mitigating the former, utilising and improving the latter, the conditions of success, the cost of outlay and management, this is the information that capital and enterprise need; the Swadeshi articles that can be procured, the place of their manufacture, their price, quality and supply, this is the information needed by the consumer. To organise all this information would be to give a great stimulus to the advance of Swadeshi.

The second condition of a successful boycott is the organisation of supply. It is not possible for everyone to hunt Swadeshi articles to their source and purchase them. There must be a supplying agency which brings the goods to a near and convenient market and, as far as possible, to the doors of the people. The difficulty of supply is grievously felt in many parts of Bengal; but there is no one whose duty it is to consider the difficulty and meet it. Swadeshi is in danger of being stifled under the mass of spurious goods, foreign masking as indigenous, which the dishonest methods of European Commerce pour into the country. There is no one to consider the problem of baffling this flank attack and devise methods of assuring the consumer that he gets the article which he wants. The organisation of a genuine and sufficient supply is the second condition of a practicable boycott.

These measures will help the growth of Swadeshi, but by themselves they can only partially serve the wider national aim which is the heart of the great movement commenced in 1905, the industrial independence of the Indian people. There is no doubt that the great mass of the Indian people cherish this aspiration and would willingly follow any practicable means of bringing it into the list of accomplished ideals. Previous to the great movement in Bengal this idea had been twice put into motion and produced a certain result, but the idea then was absolute abstention from all purchase of articles not genuinely Indian. Such a self-denial may be possible for the individual, it is not possible for great masses of men. The good sense of the nation therefore qualified the vow of abstinence by the proviso that it should be "as far as possible". This, however, is a vague and fluid phrase. It has to be made precise if the movement is to advance from its purely idealistic character and put on the garb of practicability. Some attempt had been made to define it. The boycott of cloth, salt and sugar was made absolute; machinery, medicines, objects of art and literature were exempted. But this was largely an empirical division based neither on a consideration of immediate possibility, nor on a reasoned policy. As a matter of fact the boycott of foreign sugar has hopelessly broken down, the boycott of cloth has had a partial success qualified by the necessity of

taking yarn for Swadeshi cloth from England. A more practical definition is necessary.

The first principle we would suggest is to make a clear division between articles of necessity, interpreting the word in a broad sense, and articles of luxury and to have an absolute interdict of the latter unless they are of indigenous manufacture. The first reason for the interdict is that many articles of luxury are produced in India, but find it difficult to maintain themselves because they depend on the patronage of the rich, who are wedded to European vulgarity and want of taste in the appointments of their life. The poorer classes cannot indulge in luxuries; the middle class, in the present condition of the country, should not. An organised preference of Swadeshi arts and crafts by the rich would revive and stimulate a great source of national wealth and reopen a field of national capacity. Articles of necessity can be divided into those indispensable for life and a decent existence and those necessary for our work and business. In the former we can always prefer an inferior but usable indigenous article, in the latter no such self-denying ordinance can be imposed. I cannot be called upon to use an article or implement which cripples my business or puts me at a serious disadvantage with my competitor, merely because it is produced in the country, just as in my own home I cannot be called upon to use a pen which will not write, a lamp which will not give light, a cup which cracks and breaks after a few days’ use. But if the home article is usable or if the business implement is only slightly inferior to its foreign rival, then it would be unpatriotic and a violation of the boycott oath to prefer the foreign to the indigenous production. On these lines we believe a rational and workable meaning could be put on the proviso "as far as possible" which would not put too great a strain on human nature and could yet form the basis of an effective and practical protection of Indian industry. A similar concession would have to be made in the case of Swadeshi articles which are too dear for the purse of the poorer classes, but there is no reason why the richer members of the community should not extend their protection to those industries which are compelled for the present to exceed greatly the foreign cost of production and yet have a future before them.

It will be evident therefore that, however far we may carry the boycott individually, there are limits which the mass of men cannot exceed. A considerable number of foreign articles must be purchased even for home consumption, still more for work and business. The question is, cannot this inevitable resort to the foreigner be so regulated as to assist materially the progress of the boycott and prepare the future industrial independence of the nation ? This is the subject we propose to consider in our next issue.