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The rejection of colonial provincial categories-the Madras Presidency, the Bengal Presidency, etc-through the creation of local Congresses based on language proved to be a superbly effective link between the metropolis and the periphery. In the short and medium term, Gandhi was successful in all but the third ambition. Fourth, he worked to nurture a second rung of political leadership, that would work with him in deepening the social base of the Congress and make it more representative of the nation-in-the-making. Third, he campaigned to abolish Untouchability and to promote Hindu-Muslim harmony, to answer the charge that the Congress was a party of upper caste Kayasths, Banias, and (especially) Brahmins. Next, he brought in peasants and women, two groups that had previously been excluded from the proceedings.
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First, he encouraged the Congress to function in the vernacular, by forming provincial committees that operated in Marathi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Oriya, and other languages of the people. Gandhi felt this criticism keenly, and sought to refute it. Given the shallow social base of the Congress, it was easy for the British to dismiss it as a front for lawyers and other English-speaking professionals seeking the loaves and fishes of office. Still, it had two serious, and inter-related, weaknesses-it was active only in the major cities, and its debates and proceedings were conducted only in English. Gandhi returned home from South Africa in 1915, the Congress was a genuinely national organization. With their sophisticated intellectual cultures, Bengal and Maharashtra were in the vanguard-but the Congress had a reach and presence in North and South India as well.īy the time Mohandas K. The most intense Congress activity was in Eastern India, where the major figures included Surendranath Banerjee and Bipin Chandra Pal, and in Western India, where the acknowledged stalwarts were Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Gopal Krishna Gokhale. In the first few decades of its existence, the Indian National Congress built a network of branches spread across the country. From its beginnings in 1885 its ambitions were immense, these contained in its very title, with the last, definitive word indicating that it would not be sectarian, but embrace Indians of all shapes and sizes, or castes and communities. It has a lineage and record of achievement comparable to that of the Labour Party in Great Britain, the Social Democratic Party in Germany, and the Democratic Party in the United States. Unlike the representatives of the BJP or the regional party, he should have known better than to defend dynastic rule, duck the question of the massacre of Sikhs in 1984, disregard the growing evidence of corruption in a Congress-led government, and so on.ĭespite what it has done to itself in recent years, the Indian National Congress is one of the great political parties of the modern world. Hence the savagery with which I turned on the Congressman in the television studio. When confronted with the Congress of today, an Indian who knows some history cannot but be struck by the chasm between the present and the past. Its ministers and legislators were men and women of high personal integrity. Its finest leaders were not confined by national boundaries they had a universalist vision. This was the party that led the movement for freedom, the party that united India and brought people of different religions and languages into a single political project. For their part, the regional parties use the rhetoric of caste and linguistic discrimination mostly to advance the wealth and power of their leaders. Despite its occasional disavowal of the Hindutva programme, the BJP is a party of bigots which detests minorities and atheists. Why had I been less harsh on the others? It may have been because from them a historian can expect no better. As the argument grew more heated, I found myself ignoring the others and turning on the Congressman in particular.Ĭoming out of the studio, and driving home, I later reflected on this partisanship of my own. In the course of the conversation I found reason to criticize the three netas for their sectarian stands. One was a Congress Member of Parliament, a second an MP from the Bharatiya Janata Party, the third the President of one of the smaller regional formations. Not long ago, I found myself in a panel discussion on television with three politicians.