RAS question
The Anti-Partition Movement (1905) involved which four main strategies?
Correct answer: (C) Boycott, Swadeshi, National Education, and Passive Resistance.
The Anti-Partition Movement of 1905 used boycott, Swadeshi, national education, and passive resistance as its four main strategies.
Explanation
The Anti-Partition Movement, also known as the Swadeshi Movement, moved beyond the Moderate style of prayer and petition. The cited IGNOU unit says the newer nationalist leaders advocated passive resistance, boycott, adoption of Swadeshi, and national education as new modes of protest. After Bengal was partitioned in 1905, the protest took organised shape, and the Swadeshi Movement officially began on 7 August 1905. Boycott of foreign goods and government schools became central modes of protest, while national schools and Swadeshi manufacturing units were opened. This is why option C captures the movement's practical programme: reject British goods and institutions, promote Indian alternatives, and resist colonial policy without relying on armed revolt.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) Armed struggle, terrorism, and revolution belonged to revolutionary politics, whereas the mainstream Anti-Partition programme in the source is framed around boycott, Swadeshi, national education, and passive resistance.
- (B) Petition, prayer, protest, and propaganda describe the older Moderate method, while the source specifically contrasts prayer and petition with the new methods adopted during the Swadeshi phase.
- (D) Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience, the Salt March, and Quit India belong to the later Gandhian phase, not to the 1905 Anti-Partition Movement.
Concept
This tests the extremist nationalist phase of the Indian national movement, especially the shift from Moderate constitutional methods to mass boycott and Swadeshi politics. It recurs in RAS because Bengal Partition links ideology, methods of protest, and the later evolution of nationalist strategy.