Boundaries
WARNING: THIS POST IS MORE ABOUT MY THOUGHT PROCESS THAN ABOUT HISTORY QUA HISTORY. FEEL FREE TO ABANDON SHIP IF THIS IS NOT YOUR THING.*
A couple of weeks ago, one of my favorite bloggers in the writing/publishing/creativity world, Dan Blank, wrote a post about choosing a single word to explore over the course of the year. I’ve read about this idea before–several times. I’ve always thought “interesting” and moved on without a pause. This time a word popped into my mind: boundaries.
It’s a word that has a lot of personal resonance for me, but that’s of no interest to you all, except to the extent that my success at defending my time to write, read, think and take road trips with My Own True Love keeps me primed to write blog posts. No mental fuel, no History in the Margins.
But the idea of boundaries is important to me in another way: it’s one of the concepts that holds my eclectic and hopefully electric vision together. I’m fascinated by the times and places where boundaries (literal and metaphorical) blur and the people who kick them down. I like to watch the way they move over time.** I’m interested in the expansion and dismantling of empires. I’m fascinated by frontiers and people who boldly go–where ever.
Over the course of 2014, I plan to think about boundaries: personal, historical, cultural, social. I suspect a lot of that thinking will show up here.
What about you?
◆ Is there a word that sums up (in part or in whole) your ideas about history?
◆ What are your thoughts about boundaries?
◆ Is there a word you plan to think about in 2014?
Onward!
* I hear the grumbles. First a holiday break, now a little musing. Don’t worry I’ve got some hard core history lined up for the next post.
** Have I mentioned how much I like maps?
Taking a Holiday
For the first time since I started History in the Margins, I’m going to take a planned break from blogging.* Unless I stumble across something that I feel I absolutely need to tell you RIGHT NOW, I’ll be back on January 3.
In the meantime, have a merry/jolly/happy/blessed time as you celebrate the victory of light over the darkness in the tradition of your choice.
*Which is not to say that there haven’t been some unplanned gaps.
The Swadeshi Movement: The First Step Toward Indian Independence
Beginning in the 1830s, the British East India Company provided Western education to a small number of Indian elites: it was cheaper and more effective than recruiting the entire work force of the empire back home in Britain. In addition to training clerks of all kinds, the East Indian Company created as a by-product what Thomas Babington Macaulay described as “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect”. A large proportion of this class came from Bengal province, home to Calcutta, then the capital of British India. Calcutta soon became the center of a thriving Indian intelligentsia.
Following the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, expanded opportunities for Western education and Queen Victoria’s proclamation of equal opportunity for all races seemed to open the door for advancement. A generation of young Indians saw Western education as the path to jobs in law, journalism, education, and, most importantly, the Indian Civil Service. They soon discovered that the door was less open than it initially appeared. Thwarted in their desire to play a larger role in India’s government, the most politically conscious among them founded India’s first nationalist organizations. At first, their model was not the United States but Canada: not independence, but self-rule within the Commonwealth.
In 1905, the Indian government divided Bengal into two provinces, leaving its powerful western-educated elite a minority in its own homeland. The official explanation for the division was bureaucratic efficiency. The western-educated Bengali elite saw it as an attempt to undercut their power base.
Bengalis signed petitions against the partition and marched in protest through the streets of Calcutta. They also boycotted British imports, especially British cloth. Protestors burned British-made saris and other cloth to the cry of swa-deshi (of our own country). Wearing clothing made from swadeshi cloth became an emblem of nationalist beliefs. A few leaders called for Indians to boycott not only British goods, but British institutions, knowing that the law courts and government services could not function without the support of Indian employees. The movement soon spilled over into other regions of India.
As swadeshi sales grew and India’s industrial base boomed, the Indian government cracked down. The movement’s leaders were arrested. Politically active students found their financial air threatened. The police attacked protest marchers with long, metal-tipped poles called lathis.
After several years of increasingly violent protests, the Indian government annulled the partition of Bengal and instituted a series of reforms designed to give Indians a voice in local government. At the time, nationalist leaders were hopeful that they had taken the first step toward self-rule. In fact, the partition of Bengal proved to be the first in a series of decisions made over the next thirty years that would drive Indians to demand their independence.