How Do Exhibitions Travel? A Case Study of the Indian National Congress Exhibitions

Denise Gonyo

     During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Britain staged many exhibitions in both Britain and the Indian subcontinent that celebrated its Empire. At these international gatherings, India often took center stage as the "Jewel in the crown" of Britain's Empire. At the same time, nationalist movements in India were growing. An organization that was founded during this period was the Indian National Congress, one of the most important in the history of Indian independence and continues to be an important political party in India today. During the first decade of the twentieth century, the Indian National Congress staged their own exhibitions in the subcontinent. They were the first to be primarily funded, developed, organized and run by Indians rather than the British.

     One of the themes commonly addressed in world history classrooms is the development of nationalism. How do exhibitions play a role in this process? How can we use exhibitions as a lens to see how nationalism developed in different cultures? How did early nationalists in India, for example, use exhibitions for their own purposes? In this paper, I take the Indian National Congress exhibitions as a case study to address the ways in which display impacted Indian nationalism.

     In contrast to British exhibitions, which represented India as both exotic and as a land of raw materials for the benefit of British industry, the Congress chose to represent India differently: as industrial and as a country on its way to becoming modernized. I aim to examine the exhibition as a cultural form, looking at the ways in which this particular form travelled and how it was appropriated by a group—in this case, a group of elite Indian nationalists—for their own purposes. In a broader sense, we can see how exhibitions can play important roles in the development of local nationalist movements.

     The majority of scholarship on the Indian National Congress focuses on the political, economic, and social histories, developments, and legacies of the Congress, especially in terms of the organization's complex relationship with the British. C.A. Bayly, for example, focuses on the role of patriotism and the development of Indian resistance, while Nicholas Owen analyzes the shifting coalitions between British leftists and Indian nationalists in the period before Indian independence in 1947, as there were branches of the Congress in Britain during this time.¹ Furthermore, much of the work on Indian nationalist movements focuses on the later anti-colonial movements in the 1920s and 1930s that were frequently associated with Gandhi. There is little information on the role of Congress exhibitions in the histories of Indian nationalism and their cultural impact is rarely studied in terms of political history. This paper tries to place their exhibitions into debates on the development of the Congress and their vision of India's future.

     It is important to first look at some histories of the British Raj while considering the development of the Congress and its exhibitions. While the British had been steadily expanding across the Indian subcontinent since the eighteenth century, government rule became more firmly established after the 1857 Indian Rebellion and after Queen Victoria was made Empress of India in 1877. During the nineteenth century, the British government in India instituted many changes in infrastructure, especially in communications and transport. They put down telegraph cables, roads, and railways in order to facilitate the export and import of goods. With these new changes, however, also came sweeping famines.² High levels of taxation led to agricultural indebtedness, economic stagnation, "investment paralysis and social tension."³ By the end of the nineteenth century, exports of raw materials from India to Britain had risen dramatically, while goods and raw materials were imported into India at inflated prices, further increasing poverty throughout rural villages and towns.⁴

     Meanwhile, in the 1870s and 1880s, several local nationalist organisations and associations were founded in the subcontinent. The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, was one of these organisations, and its members included prominent Indian lawyers, journalists, teachers, and merchants often described as urban elites.⁵ Many of these elites were located in the imperial centers of the subcontinent including Calcutta (now called Kolkata), Bombay (Mumbai), Madras (Chennai), and Benares (Varanasi). One of the major tenets of the Congress was the idea of subsuming family, caste, and regional interests for an overarching nationalist identity with shared economic and political interests. Many of the members were frustrated with their lack of political power and the problems that plagued the country, including high levels of taxation and the poverty that arose from the influx of foreign goods and raw materials at inflated prices and the export of Indian raw materials to Britain.⁶ While the Congress represented an elite class, members came from all over India as a conscious effort was made to include members from distant corners of India and from different religious groups. Those that organised and hosted the Congress exhibitions in the first decade of the twentieth century came from the same culture and background as those who were also at the forefront of later nationalist movements in the 1920s, including those associated with Gandhi.

     It is important to note that unlike the movements in the 1920s and later, during the early twentieth century, Congress officials did not believe that India should be completely separate from Britain. Typically, they advocated for administrative and constitutional reform to help improve high taxation and the high rates of import and export that they believed stunted India's economic growth. This period was termed "moderate" nationalism, in contrast to the more "extreme" forms of nationalism that characterized later nationalist movements, which were more explicitly anti-colonial and included measures such as boycotts and sometimes violent protest. Moderate nationalists, who characterized most of the Congress officials, aimed to attain "colonial self government,"⁷ where Britain would still rule but the Congress would be responsible for the everyday governance of the country.

     Against the backdrop of British rule and developing nationalist movements, colonial exhibitions in both Britain and India were held by the British. Exhibitions in Britain were often held as a means of celebrating Britain's role as an industrial and imperial world leader. Goods and art ware from across India were continually featured in British exhibitions, including the famous 1851 Great Exhibition, the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, and the 1883 Calcutta Exhibition. At the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, for example, there were displays including carved screens, carpets, jewellery, textiles, pottery, architecture, anthropological displays of 'natives,' and items from the tea and tobacco growing industries.⁸ Displays of raw materials represented the financial possibilities of production for Britain's benefit, while handicraft manufactures, ethnographic models, and jewels further exoticized the representation of India.⁹

     I turn now to the exhibitions organized by the Indian National Congress. The period that is examined in this paper is between 1901 and 1905 when the Congress first held their agricultural, industrial, and fine art exhibitions at the height of the "moderate" nationalist movement. During this period, Indians called for greater control over their government and institutional reform. They did not call for total separation, or independence, from Britain. From the inception of the Congress in 1885, members held annual meetings to discuss issues such as education, taxes, and other economic and political concerns. During the 1900 Congress session, it was decided that an industrial exhibition would be attached to the annual meetings starting in the following year. The exhibitions were held in many of the major imperial centers in the subcontinent, such as Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. They helped include various groups, such as the Gujarati commercial classes and Bombay cotton mill-owners, who had not been involved with the organization before. Typically, the exhibitions opened with the start of the Congress meetings at the beginning of December and remained open for up to two months. The exhibitions ranged in size: the Madras Exhibition of 1903, for example, estimated sixty thousand visitors in its one-month run, and the largest of the Congress exhibitions, Bombay in 1904, counted almost six hundred thousand.¹⁰ Like the international exhibitions in Britain, the Congress exhibitions held reduced price days and coupon-books for families, women and children.¹¹ Everyone could attend, including families, men, women, and children. Everyone could be a part of the celebration of India on display.

     Numerous advertisements for the exhibition were placed in prominent newspapers, including the Bombay-based Times of India. The exhibition was located on the Oval Maidan, a large oval-shaped park in south Bombay. Altogether, the grounds were two thousand feet long and six hundred feet wide, or approximately twenty-seven acres. The exhibition pavilions stretched across Queen's Road, a popular promenade site.¹² The Oval was located near Churchgate train station, in the Back Bay area, and was easily accessible by several different transportation methods. The grounds ran parallel to a railway running through the city. The location of the 1904 exhibition was strategically selected by Congress officials to ensure that the greatest number of people could attend.

     Exhibitions were often a combination of education and entertainment in various forms, and the Congress exhibitions also included both. There were many large mechanical rides, such as a large water-chute, that attracted huge crowds. In order to broaden its appeal and ensure the success of their exhibitions, the Reception Committee of the Congress linked their exhibitions to tamasha, a type of travelling performance that was well-known to Indians from many different backgrounds. Tamasha originated in Maharashtra and was a Hindu tradition, often including song and dance forms to Hindu gods such as Ganesh, Krishna, and Radha. Typically, tamasha artists were nomadic and toured cities, towns and villages, making it a highly visible and influential form of entertainment that would reach a large number of people.¹³ The Madras newspaper The Hindu noted the exhibition's link to tamasha:

     There was the tamasha aspect connected with the Exhibition but, underlying that there was also the economic aspect. Tamasha influenced the staging of the Congress displays and a part of the exhibitions' success with the public. The success of the tamasha aspect was represented by the large crowds which came in to witness the Exhibition.¹⁴

     The Congress exhibition pavilions were decorated with bright flags, bunting, and goods designed to evoke the style of a bazaar or rural fair like tamasha performances.¹⁵ As the British control of India during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries increased, the lessons of tamasha theatre turned to those of social and political reform, often through the use of propaganda. ¹⁶ The Congress exhibitions followed along similar lines. Through the constant emphasis on creating a "national" identity that subsumed all other local and religious identities, the Congress aimed to bring change at the village level. The 1903 Madras meeting and exhibition, for instance, was proclaimed as a "common platform for all classes and creeds, and here was an opportunity for the interchange of views affecting national well-being."¹⁷ The Congress convenors also proclaimed, "The Exhibition had no doubt attracted all classes of persons from far and near."¹⁸ By aligning with tamasha traditions, the Congress ensured that their displays were both popular and successful by using forms that would be familiar to their visitors. The Congress not only popularised the displays with the masses but also helped confirm the exhibitions' legitimacy by linking them to tamasha's history of social and political reform. Aligning with tamasha was more than just ensuring the success of their exhibitions, however: associating with this type of entertainment illustrated the extent to which the Congress aimed to align with the people and with popular forms of life.

     The 1904 Bombay exhibition included one thousand exhibitors and over fifty thousand articles were displayed during its opening. Officials painstakingly established a bureaucratic structure to collect, organize, and set up the displays. There were objects and samples from local industries, all submitted by Indians, as well as exhibits of fine art and other objects from the United Kingdom. The objects ranged from various types of machinery; mechanical devices such as ploughs, portable engines, cotton gins, and wooden mills; electricity; fine arts; textiles; agriculture; chemical industries; and leather, wood and metalwork. There were also raw materials in the form of vegetable and animal products and soaps, butter, and other foodstuffs. Some examples of machinery included a horizontal condensing engine, Johnson's Rotary Pumps of the Atlas Company, European and Indian ploughs, "40 indicated horse-power double cylinder portable engine," a turbine and generator imported into India, and an automatic self-shuttling loom. Various models of dairy farms, milk sterilizers, cattle stables, ships, theatres, candle factories, and even models of the island of Bombay were on display. The most well-established and prominent of the Indian supporters and contributors to the 1904 Bombay exhibition was the firm of Tata and Sons, which contributed a large section on textiles. The Tata group are currently one of the largest multinational organizations in India and own brands such as Tata Steel, Land Rover, and Jaguar. Certain areas of the exhibition aimed to educate the visitor: for example, the galleries on forestry, vegetable products, agriculture, and machinery were situated in such a way that the visitor could be educated on the manufacturing process, from raw materials like timber to finished products such as Leather Goods. Alongside these displays were lectures on "sanitary, scientific, industrial, agricultural and commercial subjects."¹⁹

     When looking at the objects that the Congress chose to display, it is clear that officials aimed to show the vast array of Indian industries and to show India as industrial. For example, Congress officials associated their exhibitions with industry by including the word "industrial" in the titles: 1903 Madras was officially titled the "Madras Industrial and Arts Exhibition" while 1904 Bombay was called the "Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition." The Congress exhibitions aimed to emphasise a broad range of Indian industry and to illustrate India's manufacturing potential at all levels of production, from raw materials to machinery to products. The 1904 Bombay exhibition was about educating its visitors on commerce and industrialization and teaching about industry, in all its forms, so that the visiting public came to associate India with industrial development.

     The presence of raw materials at the Congress exhibitions also played an important, and subversive, role. Typically, at nineteenth-century international exhibitions, raw materials signified that the country or location was at a lower stage of development. India's contributions to international exhibitions highlighted India as a land of raw materials for the benefit of British industry.²⁰ At the Congress exhibitions, however, India was not simply represented by raw materials, but as a land of vast resources and a country worthy and capable of its own industry. Raw materials were one part of the entire spectrum of industrial development. At the 1904 Bombay exhibition, they were prominently displayed in one of the first courts as visitors passed through the principal entrance. At the 1903 Madras exhibition, The Hindu reported that the sections of "raw materials and unmanufactured articles consisted of cereals, pulses, vegetables, gums, dye-stuffs, drugs, fibres, minerals, wax, fat, &c. Mysore exhibits were most interesting as the collection represented the material resources of the province."²¹ These goods were included alongside machinery and agricultural equipment in order to illustrate all stages of industrial production. They were not necessarily displayed in order to illustrate British power, but rather as a means of demonstrating India's potential for development. India became a wealth of resources but not for the taking of the British.

     The influence of the swadeshi movement was a thread that linked local industries and political movements at the Congress exhibitions. Swadeshi was a protest movement advocating that Indian resources should be developed by Indians themselves.²² Proponents of the swadeshi movement urged locals to support and purchase Indian goods and pushed those with funds to start industries that promoted those goods for the local market. Later swadeshi groups wanted to cut off trade entirely with the British, although the moderate nationalists of the Congress did not call for boycott. Supporters felt it was the patriotic duty of men with capital to pioneer such industries even though profits initially might be minimal.²³ For some there was also a push for industrial revival, national education, and for the establishment of trade unions. Swadeshi ideals later became a central tenet in Gandhi's political strategy of swaraj, or self-rule.

     An important element of swadeshi was the "fostering and revival of traditional indigenous crafts,"²⁴ and the Congress exhibitions, through their display of local crafts and industries, played a central role in publicising and supporting the movement. The exhibitions emphasized the contributions of regional industries. Displays at the 1902 Ahmedabad Congress exhibition, for example, included goods from Indian artisans and businesses, including "gold and silver work, jewellery, house decoration, copper and brass work, wood carving, cabinet work, wrought iron work, pottery, embroidery, textiles, and carpets."²⁵ Handlooms and textiles were often considered particularly "Indian."²⁶ These crafts were commonly taught at Indian art schools.²⁷ Some commentators, including the President of the 1905 Benares Congress, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, suggested: "the question of the immediate revival of the handloom weaving industry on a commercial basis demands the most earnest attention of every well-wisher of India."²⁸ While swadeshi is typically thought of as small-scale industries, such as handloom weaving that later became frequently associated with Gandhi, during this early period, swadeshi was taken to mean both small-scale and large-scale industrialization, such as huge weaving mills owned by companies like Tata. Through the exhibitions, Congress officials aimed to bring together small-scale and large-scale. Gokhale, for instance, argued that the weaving industry should become more modern through

Figure 1: Advertisement for "Swadeshi Scents" perfume, Calcutta at the 1905 Benares exhibition, Amrita Bazar Patrika, 22 Dec. 1905: 3. Used with permission of Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge.

widespread commercialization and mechanization. Advertisements for local stores at the exhibitions were included in prominent English-language newspapers, such as the Times of India (Figure 1).

     Women played an important role in the swadeshi movement, both in general and at the Congress exhibitions. The 1904 exhibition included special times where only women were allowed so that women who may have had purdah restrictions could also visit (Figure 2). The 1904 Bombay exhibition devoted a substantial section to articles produced by local and Western women. The "Ladies' Section" at 1904 was primarily organized by prominent Bengali Saraladevi. The displays included examples of textiles alongside examples of lace and other embroideries considered domestic industries. There was also enamel work and painting, including a painted fan and a painted Greek vase.²⁹ A local woman and member of the organisational committee for the women's sections, Miss Seerinbai Maneckjee Cursetjee, gave a speech on opening day in which she noted the participation of women: "in several of its principal towns, Indian ladies formed themselves into committees and in some places a few kindly inclined English ladies."³⁰ Newspapers such as the Times of India praised the court, admiring the "fine section which the enterprising and public spirit of the ladies of Bombay have brought together."³¹ The swadeshi movement called attention to Indian-made industries and homespun cloth and local women's displays fell under that category.

     The Ladies' Section illustrated the ways in which women participated in local textile and domestic industries and publicized their contributions to swadeshi. Cursetjee, in her opening address at 1904 Bombay, suggested that the ultimate "motive" for the Ladies' Courts was to "initiate a small beginning for showing the variety of arts which exist in various parts of India and to revive old industries and develop new ones for the women of India."³² Cursetjee firmly aligned the contributions of women with the overall goals of modern industrialization of the Congress exhibitions, linking women's domestic industries to economic and industrial development and ultimately, the prosperity of the country. The women involved in the Ladies' Section created a space in which they could participate in the swadeshi movement. They reminded visitors that their involvement was tied to overall industrial development of the country, and the country could not afford to ignore their contributions to India's economic health.

Figure 2: Advertisement for the 1904 Bombay exhibition, promoting the "Ladies and Purdah Ladies Day," the "café chantant," and admission rates, Times of India, 8 Jan. 1905: 3. Used with permission of Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge.

     Hand in hand with the emphasis on swadeshi and industry at these exhibitions was the Congress' desire to alleviate the overwhelming poverty in the Indian subcontinent. India's economy was hit particularly hard in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: multiple famines, the influx of British goods flooded the Indian markets and caused a decline in Indian production, and the overwhelming majority of the population remained poor. To Congress officials, India had all the resources for industrial progress but remained underdeveloped.³³ The exhibitions, I suggest, became a space for projecting hopes for the future of India, and as a means of buoying India's industries and relieving the pressures of poverty. At the 1903 Madras exhibition, organizer C. Sankaran Nair made a speech suggesting that the Congress exhibitions served as a catalyst for industry and even contributed to ending poverty and famine:

     How far our hopes and expectations will be realised it is impossible to say. It is, however, our earnest hope that this movement of which the Exhibition is only a small beginning may lead to great industrial progress, find employment for thousands of people, reduce the pressure on land, alleviate if not prevent, the horrors of famine (Continued cheers.)³⁴

     To many commentators, these exhibitions would not only benefit industry, but would in fact trigger industrial regeneration. Nair viewed them as the first step towards industrial and artistic restoration and would be key to solving the country's problems—those of poverty and famine. Famous nationalist Romesh Chunder Dutt also commented on the influence of the Congress exhibitions. Dutt was one of the first Indians to earn a position in the Indian Civil Service and was well known for his literary and historical writings in the subcontinent, including his seminal two-volume work The Economic History of India.³⁵ He strongly encouraged exhibition visitors and the Indian Government to support swadeshi industries as a means of alleviating famine. He argued that support of swadeshi:

     Will certainly foster and encourage our industries in which the Indian Government has always professed the greatest interest. It will relieve millions of weavers and other artisans from the state of semi-starvation in which they have lived, will bring them back to their hand-loom and other industries, and will minimise the terrible effects of famines which the Government have always endeavoured to relieve to the best of their power.³⁶

     Government support of local industries, Dutt suggested, would help provide a solution for poverty and famine.

     Significantly, there was an absence of exoticism from these exhibitions. This representation was in contrast to the Western exhibitions, which tended to illustrate India as exotic in comparison to the civilized British. The Congress exhibitions, on the other hand, offered opportunities for Indians to envision an India based on its own economic development. There was a particular vision of India's future put forward at this exhibition: one that associated India with industrial development and illustrated the country's readiness for improvement. This was a central argument of moderate nationalists like the Congress officials, who believed that this kind of modernization would lead to progress. The exhibitions supported the Congress's case that India should be industrialized.

     Not all Indians were on board with the messages of the Congress. Many took issue with the moderate nationalism that advocated for close ties to Britain. During this period, many of the Congress members and visitors wore Western styles of clothing as part of their efforts to prove to the British that they were "English gentlemen."³⁷ As I mentioned earlier, at this time, most members of the Western-educated strata did not want a complete break with the British; they did not see the contradiction in supporting swadeshi and embracing English ways of life. More radical members of the press, however, considered this situation to be hypocritical. The indigenous newspaper Charu Mihir, of Mymensingh in the north of Bengal, published a scathing review of the 1901 Calcutta exhibition, arguing that "it is ridiculous to praise country-made goods and at the same time to dress oneself, from top to toe, in foreign-made articles of clothing."³⁸ The newspaper also argued that those visiting the Congress exhibitions "will not speak well for the patriotism of the Congressists if they attend the Congress in dresses made of foreign stuff," for "patriotism is still a mere empty profession with many—beginning with speech, and ending in speech."³⁹ These kinds of criticisms were powerful. Congress leaders like Gokhale may have worked so hard to associate their exhibitions with swadeshi in order to overcome this criticism. Amidst growing anti-government sentiment, along with the Congress's staunchly moderate stance, these critiques contributed to a mass boycott of the 1906 Calcutta Congress exhibition.⁴⁰ After 1905, more extreme forms of nationalism, including the boycott of English cloth, became more prominent. Attendance to the Congress exhibitions fell rapidly and they stopped hosting exhibitions in 1915. ⁴¹

     While ideas of India's future were debated in many locales, the Indian National Congress exhibitions were an important medium through which we can study the social and economic concerns of many Indians of the time. It is evident that the first decade of the twentieth century were formative for many Indians in the establishment of their own forms of nationalism, which occurred by engaging in debates that arose from hosting and attending the exhibitions. The exhibitions also provided a space for debates about swadeshi and for the expression of nationalism through the display of goods and industries considered typically "Indian."

     When exhibitions travel to different cultures and different locations, they are often altered to suit the local needs and agendas of the people. In the case of Indian National Congress exhibitions, what has been typically considered an imperial form (the exhibition) was mobilized by moderate nationalists for their own purposes. At exhibitions of India staged by western countries, India was traditionally presented as a land of ancient beauty, well-skilled in the weaving and spinning of textiles, and also as a land of raw materials. Typically, India was illustrated as a place that could help Britain economically. One of the main ways in which the Congress' representation of India was different was showing India as a place capable of having its own industry. Exhibitions were important locales where the Indian public could debate issues that impacted their society, including modern industrialization. When considering the Congress exhibitions in a world history context, we can see the development and interaction of cultures at the exhibition, specifically in terms of the intersection of local, national, and international forms: from the local ideas of tamasha and swadeshi, to the ideas of the moderate nationalists, to the influence of British ideas and forms of the exhibition.

     When thinking about this example in a larger context, how could other cultures have put on their own exhibitions during this time period and what could these exhibitions have looked like? How, perhaps, did others use exhibitions for their own purposes? How could these exhibitions have been integrated into popular culture, like the ways in which the Congress exhibitions were woven into the fabric of everyday life through tamasha? This paper has demonstrated how versatile exhibitions could be when they travelled out of the West and into the colonies during the height of the colonial period.

Denise Gonyo is a recent graduate of the University of Brighton with a PhD in Historical and Critical Studies. She works at Excelsior College. She can be reached at denisegonyo@gmail.com.

¹ See C.A. Bayly, The Origins of Nationality in South Asia: Patriotism and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), and Nicholas Owen, The British Left and India: Metropolitan Anti-Imperialism, 1885–1947 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

² Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (New York: St. Martin's, 1997), 304.

³ James, Raj, 194.

⁴ James, Raj, 357.

⁵ Gyan Prakash, Another Reason: Science and Imagination of Modern India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 179.

⁶ James, Raj, 194.

⁷ Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908 (New Delhi: People's Publishing Press, 1973), 37.

⁸ William Clowes, Official Guide to the Colonial and Indian Exhibition (London: William Clowes & Sons, 1886).

⁹ Lara Kriegel, "Narrating the subcontinent in 1851: India at the Crystal Palace," in The Great Exhibition of 1851: new interdisciplinary essays, ed. Louise Purbrick (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), 150.

¹⁰ Proceedings of the Twentieth Indian National Congress, Bombay, 1904 (Bombay: Crown Printing Works, 1905).

¹¹ Advertisement, Times of India, January 17, 1905: 3.

¹² "The Bombay Exhibition: A Preliminary View," Times of India, December 8, 1904, 7.

¹³ Tevia Abrams, "Tamasha: People's Theatre of Maharashtra State, India," (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1974), 18.

¹⁴ "The Industrial Exhibition," The Hindu, January 18, 1904, 4.

¹⁵ John R. McLane, Indian Nationalism and the Early Congress (Guildford: Princeton University Press, 1977), 98.

¹⁶ Tevia Abrams, "Folk Theatre in Maharashtrian Social Development Programs," Educational Theatre Journal 27 no. 3 (October 1975), 396.

¹⁷ Report and Proceedings of the Nineteenth Indian National Congress, Held at Madras, 1903 (Madras: G.A. Natesan, 1904).

¹⁸ Report and Proceedings of the Eighteenth session of the Indian National Congress, Held in Ahmedabad, 1902 (Bombay: Commercial, 1902).

¹⁹ "The Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition," Indian Textile Journal, November 1904, 56.

²⁰ Kriegel, "Narrating the subcontinent in 1851," 153.

²¹ The Hindu, "The Madras Industrial and Arts Exhibition. III [By Our Special Commissioner]," 4.

²² Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 47.

²³ Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 92–3.

²⁴ Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 111.

²⁵ "Correspondence. To the Editor of the Indian Textile Journal," Indian Textile Journal, September 1902, 8.

²⁶ Morris D. Morris, "The Growth of Large-Scale Industry to 1947," in Dharma Kumar, ed., The Cambridge Economic History of India Volume 2: c. 1757– c. 1970 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 355.

²⁷ Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922: Occidental Orientations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

²⁸ Shaheda Gufran Zaidi and A. Moin Zaidi, eds., Encyclopaedia of the Indian National Congress, Volume Four: 1901–1905: On Road to Self-Government (New Delhi: Chand, 1978), 701.

²⁹ "The Bombay Exhibition. Exhibits of the Royal Princesses," Times of India, December 30, 1904, 8.

³⁰ Proceedings of the Twentieth Indian National Congress, Bombay, 1904.

³¹ "The Bombay Exhibition: Some Impressions," Times of India, December 16, 1904, 6.

³² Proceedings of the Twentieth Indian National Congress, Bombay, 1904.

³³ Prakash, Another Reason, 181.

³⁴ Report and Proceedings of the Nineteenth Indian National Congress, Held at Madras, 1903.

³⁵ Prakash, Another Reason, 181.

³⁶ The Swadeshi Movement: A Symposium. Views of Representative Indians and Anglo-Indians (Madras: G.A. Natesan, 1917), 93.

³⁷ Morris, "The Growth of Large-Scale Industry to 1947," 364.

³⁸ Charu Mihir, Indian Newspaper Reports, Part 1: Bengal, 1874–1903 (1901) 914.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 115.

⁴¹ Arindam Dutta, The Bureaucracy of Beauty: Design in the Age of Its Global Reproducibility (London: Routledge, 2007), 236.