1850 to 1904: developed by leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji, Gokhale, Ranade, Tilak, G. V. Joshi and Bhaswat K. Nigoni. This was also known as First Swadeshi Movement.
1918 to 1947: Swadeshi thought shaped by Gandhi, accompanied by the rise of Indian91: Widespread curbs on international andion of obsolete technology during the licence-permit raj.
1991 onwards: liberalization privatisation and globalization. Foreign capital, foreign technology, and many foreign goods are not excluded and doctrine of export-led growth resulted in modern industrialism.
The word Swadeshi derives from Sanskrit and is a sandhi or conjunction of two Sanskrit words. Swa means "self" or "own" and desh means country, so Swadesh would be "own country", and Swadeshi, the adjectival form, would mean "of one's own country".
Background
Credit to starting the Swadeshi movement goes to Baba Ram Singh Kuka of the Sikh Namdhari sect, whose revolutionary movements which heightened around 1871 and 1872. Naamdharis were instructed by Baba Ram Singh to only wear clothes made in the country and boycott foreign goods. The Namdharis resolved conflict in the peoples court and totally avoided British law and British courts. They also boycotted the educational system as Baba Ram Singh prohibited children from attending British School, amongst other forms and measures he employed.
Swadeshi after independence
The Post-Independence "Swadeshi Movement" has developed forth differently than its pre-independence counterpart. While the pre-independence movement was essentially a response to colonial policies, the post-independence Swadeshi movement sprung forth as an answer to increasingly oppressive imperialistic policies in the post-Second World War climate. For a nation emerging from two centuries of colonial oppression, India was required to compete with the industrialised economies of the west. While rapid industrialisation under the umbrella of "Five year Plans" were aimed at enabling a self-sufficient India, the need to balance it with a predominantly agrarian set-up was the need of the hour. This need to preserve the old fabric of an agrarian country while simultaneously modernising, necessitated a resurgence of a slightly recast "Swadeshi Movement". Forerunners of this resurgent movement was noted journalist, writer and critic S. R. Ramaswamy. Others of late in the movement include the likes of Rajiv Dixit, Swami Ramdev and Pawan Pandit. In the Digital World Swadeshishopping.com taking novel initiative for promoting Swadeshi Movement.
Influences
E. F. Schumacher, author of Small Is Beautiful, was influenced by Gandhi's concept of Swadeshi when he wrote his article on Buddhist economics
