The Swadeshi movement, part of the Indian independence movement, was a successful economic strategy to remove the British Empire from power and improve economic conditions in India through following principles of swadeshi (self-sufficiency). Strategies of the swadeshi movement involved boycotting British products and the revival of domestic-made products and production techniques. Swadeshi, as a strategy, was a key focus of Mahatma Gandhi who described it as the soul of Swaraj (self rule).

Principles

Mahatma Gandhi described Swadeshi as "a call to the consumer to be aware of the violence he is causing by supporting those industries that result in poverty, harm to workers and to humans and other creatures."

Villages

"The true India is to be found not in its few cities, but in its seven hundred thousand villages. If the villages perish, India will perish too." - Gandhi

Indian nationalists believed that the causes of their economic woes was in part of the British colonization of India. Swadeshi was a nationalistic movement to boycott British goods and to buy Indian made goods

Suspicion of Technology

History

• Reintroduction of the spinning wheel and production of Khadi

See also

• Indian independence movement
• Sarvodaya