Economic Impact Self-reliance also meant an effort to set up Swadeshi or
indigenous enterprises.
    • The period saw a mushrooming of Swadeshi textile mills, soap and
       match factories, tanneries, banks, insurance companies, shops, etc.
    • While many of these enterprises, whose promoters were more
       endowed with patriotic zeal than with business acumen, were unable
       to survive for long.
    • But some others, such as Acharya P.C. Ray’s Bengal Chemicals
       Factory, became successful and famous.
    • Further, the economic policy followed by the British had reduced the
       Indian craftsmen to a status of farm labourers. As a result of this
       movement, these craftsmen got their work back.
Cultural Impact It was, perhaps, in the cultural sphere that the impact of
the Swadeshi Movement was most marked.
    • The songs composed at that time by Rabindranath Tagore, Rajani
       Kanta Sen, Dwijendralal Ray, Mukunda Das, Syed Abu Mohammed
       and others, later became the moving spirit for nationalists of all hues.
    • Rabindranath’s Amar Sonar Bangla, written at that time, was to
       inspire liberation struggle of Bangladesh later and was adopted as the
       national anthem of that country in 1971.
    • The Swadeshi influence could be seen in Bengali folk music, popular
       among masses.
    • It evoked collections of Indian fairy tales such as, Thakurmar Jhuli
       (Grandmother’s Tales) written by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumdar,
       which delights Bengali children to this day.
Artistic and Scientific Impact
    •  In art, this was the period when Rabindranath Tagore broke the
       domination of Victorian naturalism over Indian art and sought
       inspiration from the rich traditions of Rajput, Ajanta and Ellora
       paintings.
    •  Nandalal Bose, who left a major imprint on Indian art, was the first
       recipient of a scholarship offered by the Indian Society of Oriental Art
       founded in 1907.
    •