_Partition of Bengal._ It was on the 16th of October, 1905, that the old Province of Bengal was partitioned by Lord Curzon. On that day “immense numbers of people in the two divisions of the partitioned province abstained from lighting their kitchen fire, went about barefooted, performed ceremonial baths in rivers or sacred tanks,[69] and tied on one another’s wrist the sacred _rakhi_, a piece of silk or cotton thread, as a symbol of fraternal or national unity.” On the 7th of August, 1905, the leaders of Bengal, in public meeting assembled, in the Calcutta Town Hall, under the presidency of Maharaja Mannidra Chandra Nundy of Cossimbazar,[70] had already declared “a general boycott of British goods as a practical protest against the proposed partition.” _Boycott of British Goods._ The original idea was to resort to boycott as a temporary measure, and therefore in the pledges drawn up in the early days, a time limit was put in. The boycott was to last until “the partition was withdrawn.” In the words of a Bengalee politician, the idea was to cause pecuniary loss to the British manufacturer and thus enlist his sympathy and help for the purpose of getting the measure cancelled. But it was soon discovered that the boycott might be an effective economic weapon, to be used as a measure of protection against the economic exploitation of the country by the foreigner. To quote the same writer, “The pledges sent from Calcutta came back, duly signed by large numbers of people, but with the conditional sentence, ‘until Partition is withdrawn,’ scored through. The boycott was a great success for some time. ‘The Lucky Day’ of October, 1905, on which generally a very large number of forward contracts in Manchester goods are made at Calcutta, passed without any business being done. Simultaneously with this decline in foreign goods, many indigenous industries began to revive. There was a boom in handlooms all over India. Provinces outside of Bengal did not adopt a policy of active boycott, but the cry of Swadeshi[71] was taken up by all the country, whereby a great impetus was given to indigenous manufacturers. The significance of the movement in Bengal, where it was rigorously pursued, lay in the fact that prince and peasant, capitalist and labourer, literate and illiterate, educated and uneducated, all joined hands.” For some time the boycott was so effective that _The Englishman_, an Anglo-Indian newspaper published in Calcutta, declared: “It is absolutely true that Calcutta warehouses are full of fabrics that can not be sold. In the earlier days of the boycott it was the fashion to assert that depression in piece goods trade was due to this or the other economic cause.