Study Guide · Chapter 4
Most Exam-Critical Sessions — Detailed Notes
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- 1885, Bombay (W.C. Bonnerjee): The founding session, held at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, with 72 delegates present.
- 1887, Madras (Badruddin Tyabji): First Muslim president of Congress, symbolically emphasising the organisation's claim to represent all communities from its earliest years.
- 1896, Calcutta (Rahimtullah M. Sayani): "Bande Mataram" (from Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel Anandamath) was sung for the first time at a Congress session, by Rabindranath Tagore.
- 1905, Banaras (Gopal Krishna Gokhale): Held in the immediate aftermath of the Partition of Bengal, marking the beginning of the more assertive Swadeshi-era political climate.
- 1906, Calcutta (Dadabhai Naoroji): For the first time, the demand for "Swaraj" (self-government) was explicitly articulated from the Congress presidential platform by the venerable Naoroji, then in his eighties.
- 1907, Surat (Rash Behari Ghosh): The infamous Surat Split — chair-throwing incident and open conflict between Moderates and Extremists over the choice of president and future methods, leading to a formal organisational split lasting until 1916.
- 1916, Lucknow (Ambica Charan Mazumdar): The historic Lucknow Pact, reuniting Moderates and Extremists and securing an unprecedented Congress-Muslim League joint agreement on constitutional demands (including continued separate electorates).
- 1917, Calcutta (Annie Besant): Annie Besant became the first woman president of the Indian National Congress.
- 1920, Nagpur (C. Vijayaraghavachariar): The Non-Cooperation Movement, adopted at the earlier special Calcutta session (1920, under Lala Lajpat Rai), was formally ratified here; the Congress constitution/organisation was also reorganised along linguistic-provincial lines, laying groundwork for its later mass-membership structure.
- 1923 (Special), Delhi (Abul Kalam Azad): Azad became the youngest-ever Congress president, at age 35.
- 1924, Belgaum (Mahatma Gandhi): The only session Gandhi ever presided over as Congress president, despite his central role throughout the freedom movement.
- 1925, Kanpur (Sarojini Naidu): Naidu became the first Indian woman president of Congress (Annie Besant, the first woman president overall, was British-born/Irish by origin).
- 1929, Lahore (Jawaharlal Nehru): The single most important session for exam purposes — adopted the Purna Swaraj (complete independence) resolution, with the Congress flag hoisted on the banks of the Ravi at midnight; 26 January 1930 was subsequently observed nationwide as the first "Independence Day" (Purna Swaraj Day).
- 1931, Karachi (Vallabhbhai Patel): Adopted important resolutions on Fundamental Rights and National Economic Policy, articulating a vision for social and economic goals of independent India — considered an early ideological precursor to parts of the Indian Constitution's Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles.
- 1933, Calcutta (Mrs Nellie Sengupta): Held despite a government ban on Congress activity during Civil Disobedience; Nellie Sengupta (a British-born wife of Bengali nationalist J.M. Sengupta) presided.
- 1937, Faizpur: The first Congress session held in a rural area (a small town in Maharashtra), reflecting the party's deepening rural/mass outreach by this stage.
- 1939, Tripuri (Subhas Chandra Bose): Bose was re-elected president, defeating Gandhi's preferred candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya, in a rare open contest revealing deep strategic and ideological differences with Gandhi (over the pace/method of pressing for independence, especially regarding a fixed ultimatum to the British); Bose subsequently resigned amid continued friction and went on to found the Forward Bloc (1939) as a more militant left-nationalist platform.
- 1940–46, Ramgarh onward, continuous presidency of Abul Kalam Azad: Owing to the disruption of World War II and the post-Quit India mass arrests, Azad held the Congress presidency continuously for six years — the longest tenure of any Congress president.
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