The ‘Swadeshi’ and ‘Boycott’ were adopted as methods of struggle for the first time during the

The correct answer is A. Swadeshi and Boycott were formally adopted as methods of political struggle during the anti-Partition agitation of 1905, after Lord Curzon announced the partition of Bengal. The resolution passed at the Calcutta Town Hall meeting on 7 August 1905 called for boycott of British goods, promotion of swadeshi goods and national education. Bonfires of foreign cloth and Rabindranath Tagore's Rakhi Bandhan were part of this wave.

Why the others fail:

• B) Home Rule Movement (1916-18): Led by Tilak and Annie Besant, it sought self-government within the Empire through propaganda, petitions and agitation. It was not a boycott movement.
• C) Non-Cooperation Movement (1920-22): Gandhi's movement did use boycott of schools, courts and foreign cloth, which is why it is a common confusion. But it came fifteen years after the swadeshi movement.
• D) Simon Commission (1928): The boycott of the Commission was a protest against its all-white membership. It came much later and was a specific boycott, not the origin of the method.

Core concept: the swadeshi-boycott strategy was the first mass economic resistance against the British and it brought extremist leaders and mass politics into the Congress. For Mains (GS-1, Modern India), connect it to the Moderate-Extremist divide and the growth of economic nationalism.

Trap: candidates pick Non-Cooperation because it is the most famous boycott movement. Fix the chronology: 1905 comes first, then 1920.