CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST YEARS OF THE NATIONALIST MOVEMENT
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,[1] 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,[2] 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 The boycott was to last until “ the partition was withdrawn."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
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