द इण्डियन स्ट्रगल / भारतीय स्वाधीनता संग्राम (नेताजी सुभाष चन्द्र बोस - ऐतिहासिक विश्लेषण)

32 THE INDIAN STRUGGLE Olcott, played an important rôle in social and public life. Mrs. Besant joined the society in India in 1893 and became the President in 1907, which office she continued to hold till her death in 1933. Mrs. Besant became the great champion of Hinduism against all attacks. Even the errors and abuses of Hinduism she would explain away, rather than attack. Thereby she helped to bring back into the hearts of the people faith in their own culture and civilisation which had been badly shaken as a result of the impact of the West. The large following which she managed to gather round herself through her religious and educational work, was of great value and strength to her when in 1916-17 she took an active part in politics and carried on a raging and tearing campaign for demanding Home Rule for India. By the beginning of the present century, the foreign government was able to strike its roots deeper into the soil of India. The political administration was no longer a centralised government with autonomy in the branches as in former times. It was a highly-complicated system with its rami- fications in every town and village of the country and with a bureaucracy ruling with a firm hand under orders from the centre. People began to feel for the first time in their history what foreign rule really meant. The beginning of the twen- tieth century found the Boers of South Africa fighting against the British for their freedom, the newly-awakened Japanese fighting the Russians for their existence and safety and the Russian masses fighting the all-powerful Tsar for their bread and their liberty. About this time the pride and the haughtiness of the rulers reached its limit and signs of serious political unrest appeared in Bengal and in order to nip it in the bud, the then Viceroy, Lord Curzon, ordered the dis- memberment of the province. This was the signal for a country-wide revolt and people everywhere began to feel that constitutional agitation was not enough. The partition of Bengal was taken as a challenge by the people and as a reply, for the first time in British Indian history, a movement was launched for the boycott of British goods. The political agitation gave a strong impetus to the growth of national art, national literature and national industry. Simultaneously,