The Extremist Programme

Emboldened by Dadabhai Naoroji’s declaration at the Calcutta session (1906) that self-government or swaraj was to be the goal of the Congress, the Extremists gave a call for passive resistance in addition to swadeshi and boycott which would include a boycott of government schools and colleges, government service, courts, legislative councils, municipalities, government titles, etc. The purpose, as Aurobindo put it, was to “make the administration under present conditions impossible by an organised refusal to do anything which will help either the British commerce in the exploitation of the country or British officialdom in the administration of it”.

The militant nationalists tried to transform the anti- partition and Swadeshi Movement into a mass struggle and

gave the slogan of India’s independence from foreign rule. “Political freedom is the lifebreath of a nation,” declared Aurobindo. Thus, the Extremists gave the idea of India’s independence the central place in India’s politics. The goal of independence was to be achieved through self-sacrifice.