Indian National Congress Party

Indian National Congress Party :-

Indian National Congress Party symbol

Indian National was founded by Alan Octavian Hume, William Wedderburn, W.C. Bonnerjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Manmohan Ghosh, Lalmohan Ghosh, Badruddin Tyabbi, M.G. Ranade, Dadabhai Naraoji, Dinshaw Wacha and Pherozeshah Mehta in 1885. Headquarters of Indian National Congress is in 24, Akbar Road, New Delhi, 110001. 

Indian National Congress Party is also called by the name INC in short. It has several wings such as National Students Union of India ( a student wing ) , All India Mahila Congress ( a women wing ) and Indian National Trade Union Congress ( a labour wing ).

Indian Youth Congress

The president of Indian National Congress Party is Sonia Gandhi. The Parliamentary chairperson of Indian National Congress Party is also Sonia Gandhi. The Lok Sabha leader of Indian National Congress Party is Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury. The Rajya Sabha leader of Indian National Congress Party is Ghulam Nabi Azad. Indian National Congress Party is a major political party in India and has widespread roots.

Under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Congress became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement. Congress led India to independence from Great Britain. The social policy of Congress is based upon the Gandhian principle of Sarvodaya–the lifting up of all sections of society–which involves the improvement of the lives of economically underprivileged and socially marginalised people.

After India's independence in 1947, Congress formed government in central and many states. Congress is a dominant party in India and has its influence all over India. One of its biggest competitors is BJP ( Bhartiya Janata Party ) which had formed government in Central in 2014 and 2019 elections under the leadership of our honourable prime minister Narendra Modi Ji. Congress had won the majority of seats and make Central Government for 7 times and three times coalition government in India. There have been six Congress Prime Ministers in India, the first was Jawaharlal Nehru (1947–1964), and the most recent was Manmohan Singh (2004–2014). But in the last two elections Bhartiya Janata Party ( BJP ) had formed government. From 2004 to 2014, United Progressive Alliance, a coalition of Indian National Congress Party with several regional parties, formed the Indian government led by Manmohan Singh, as the Prime Minister and Congress Party as the head of the coalition government. Sonia Gandhi the President of the party has served as the longest term president of the Congress Party. 

Congress has been ruling India from 55 years ( majority of the time period after India's independence ) . 

Indian National Congress Party before Independence:-

Foundation of Indian National Congress Party:-

The Indian National Congress conducted its first session in Bombay from 28–31 December 1885 at the initiative of retired Civil Service Government official officer Allan Octavian Hume. In 1883, Hume had outlined his idea for a body representing Indian interests in an letter to graduates of the University of Calcutta. Its aim was to urge a greater share in government for educated Indians, and to form a platform for civic and political dialogue between them and the British Raj. Hume took this initiative, and in March 1885 a notice convening the first meeting of the Indian National Union to be held in Puna on the next December was issued. Because of a cholera outbreak there, it had been moved to Bombay.

Mahila Congress

Hume organised the primary meeting in Bombay with the approval of the Viceroy Lord Dufferin. Umesh Chandra Banerjee was the primary president of Congress; the primary session was attended by 72 delegates, representing each province of India. The Notable representatives of this first session of the Indian National Congress Party included Scottish ICS officer William Wedderburn, Dadabhai Naraoji, Pherozeshah Mehta of the Bombay Presidency Association, Ganesh Vasudeo Joshi of the Puna Sarvajanik Sabha, the social reformer and the editor of the newspaper Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, the Justice K. T. Telang, N. G. Chandavarkar, Dinshaw Wacha, Behramji Malabari, the journalist and the activist Gooty Kesava Pillai, and P. Rangaiah Naidu of the Madras Mahajana Sabha. This small upper class, unrepresentative of the Indian masses at the time, functioned more as a stage for elite Indian ambitions than a Congress party for the primary decade of its existence.

Early years of Congress Party:-

At the start of the 20th century, Congress Party demands became more radical within the face of constant opposition from the British government, and thus the party decided to advocate in favour of the independence movement because it might allow a brand new form of government during which Congress might be a significant party. By 1905, a division opened between the moderates led by Gokhale, who downplayed public agitation, and therefore the new extremists who advocated agitation, and regarded the pursuit of social reform as a distraction from nationalism. Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who tried to mobilise the Hindu Indians by appealing to an explicitly Hindu political identity displayed within the annual public Ganapati festivals which he had inaugurated in western India, and was prominent among the extremists.

Congress included variety of prominent political figures. Dadabhai Naoroji, a member of the sister Indian National Association, was elected president of the party in 1886 and was the primary Indian Member of Parliament within the British House of Commons (1892–1895). Congress also included Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Jinnah was a member of the moderate group within the Congress, favouring Hindu–Muslim unity in achieving self-government. Later he became the leader of the Muslim League and instrumental within the creation of Pakistan. Congress was transformed into a mass movement by Surendranath Banerjee at the time of partition of Bengal in 1905.

Indian National Congress Party

Congress Party as a mass movement:- 

Mahatma Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915. With the assistance of the moderate group led by Ghokhale, Gandhi became president of Congress. After the first world war, the party became related to Gandhi, who remained its unofficial leader and icon. He formed an alliance with the Khilafat Movement in 1920 to fight for preservation of the Ottoman Caliphate, and rights for Indians using civil disobedience or satyagraha as one of the tool for agitation. In 1923, after the deaths of policemen at Chauri Chaura, Gandhiji suspended the agitation. In protest, a number of leaders, Chittaranjan Das, Annie Besant, and Motilal Nehru, resigned to set up the Swaraj Party. The Khilafat movement collapsed and Congress was split.

The rise of Gandhi's popularity and his satyagraha art of revolution led to support from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad, Khan Mohammad Abbas Khan, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Chakravarti Rajgopalachari, Anugrah Narayan Sinha, Jayaprakash Narayan, Jivatram Kripalani, and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. As a results of prevailing nationalism, Gandhi's popularity, and therefore the party's attempts at eradicating caste differences, untouchability, poverty, and non secular and ethnic divisions, Congress became a forceful and dominant group. Although its members were predominantly Hindu, but it also had members from other religions, economic classes, and ethnic and linguistic groups.

At the Congress 1929 Lahore session under the presidency of Jawaharlal Nehruji , Purna Swaraj (complete independence) was declared as the Indian  National Congress party's goal, declaring 26th January 1930 as the "Purna Swaraj Diwas" (Independence Day). The same year, Srinivas Iyenger was expelled from the party for demanding full independence, not just self-government as demanded by Gandhi. 

After the passage of the govt of India Act 1935, provincial elections were held in India within the winter of 1936–37 in eleven provinces: Madras, Central Provinces, Bihar, Orissa, United Provinces, Bombay Presidency, Bengal, Punjab, NFWP, Assam and Sindh. After contesting these elections, the Indian National Congress gained power in eight of them but lost elections in Bengal, Punjab, and Sindh. The All-India Muslim League is not able to form a government in any province. Indian  National Congress ministries resigned in October 1939 and November 1939 in protest against the Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's declaration that India was a belligerent in the Second world war without even consulting with the Indian people.

In 1939, Subhas Chandra Bose, the elected president in both 1938 and 1939, resigned from Congress over the selection of the working committee. The party wasn't the only representative of the Indian polity, other parties included the Akhil Bharatiya Hindu Mahasabha, and also the All India Forward Bloc. The party was like an umbrella organisation, which is sheltering radical socialists, traditionalist people, as well as Hindu and Muslim conservatives. Gandhi expelled all the socialist groupings, including the Congress Socialist Party , the Krishak Praja Party, and also the Swarajya Party, together with Subhas Chandra Bose, in 1939.

The Azad Hind, an Indian provisional government, had been established in Singapore in 1943, and was supported by Japan.

In 1946, British tried the Indian soldiers who had fought alongside the Japanese during world war II within the INA trials. In response, Congress helped form the INA Defence Committee, which assembled a legal team to defend the case of the soldiers of the Azad Hind government. The team included several famous lawyers, including Bhulabhai Desai, Asaf Ali, and Nehru . The same year, Congress members initially supported the sailors who led the Royal Indian Navy mutiny, but they withdrew support at a critical juncture and therefore the mutiny failed.

Post independence :-

After Indian independence in 1947, the Indian National Congress became the dominant party within the country. In 1952, at the first election held after Independence, the party swept to power within the national parliament and most state legislatures. It held power nationally until 1977, when it was defeated by the Janata coalition. It returned to power in 1980 and ruled until 1989, when it had been another time defeated. The party formed the govt in 1991 at the top of a coalition, likewise as in 2004 and 2009, when it led the United Progressive Alliance. During this era the Congress remained centre-left in its social policies while steadily shifting from a socialist to a neoliberal economic outlook. The Party's rivals at state level are national parties including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPIM), and various regional parties, such as the Telugu Desam Party, Trinamool Congress and Aam Aadmi Party.

A post-partition successor to the party survived because the Pakistan National Congress, as a political party which represented the rights of spiritual minorities within the state. The party's support was strongest within the Bengali-speaking province of Bangladesh . After the Bangladeshi War of Independence, it became called the Bangladeshi National Congress, but was dissolved in 1975 by the govt.