Congress and Congressmen in the Pre-Gandhian Era 1885-1917 (An Old and Rare Book)

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This work is an attempt at presenting an objective history of the Indian National Congress during the first thirty-three years of its existence. This important and formative period in the history of the national organisation has not received either from dispassionate scholars or from partisan writers the attention it deserves. An elaborate or abbreviated summary of the proceedings of the early years of the Congress along with the resolutions passed has usually been reckoned as its history.

Mahatma Gandhi's dynamic personality dominated the Congress for nearly three decades. It is not, therefore, unusual to identify the Congress with him. A recent writer has produced a treatise on the Congress ideology and programme, but his work ignores the earlier phase of the Congress and covers the period between 1920 and 1947, which he appropriately designates as the Gandhian era. It is not easy to imagine today that there was a time when Gandhiji's name having been proposed for the Subjects Committee could not be acceptable to the delegates electing that body; yet, this very thing happened in Bombay in 1915. Many of the speeches delivered in Hindi and Urdu were translated and reproduced in English in the Proceedings of the Congress but the speech which Mahatma Gandhi delivered in Hindi in the Calcutta session of the Congress in 1917 did not find any place in the official reports of the Congress of that year. This is why we have called the period beetween 1885 aad 1917 the pre-Gandhian era, though Mahatma Gandhi appeared on the Congress platform as early as 1901.

The facts collected by the son have been utilised by his father in writing out the first part of the book and the conclusion. The junior author is entirely responsible for the second and third parts of the book. As the original reports of the Congress contain numerous printing mistakes, especially with regard to the names of speakers and delegates, some mistakes may have inadvertently crept into the alphabetical list of delivered speeches in the Congress.