Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee was the first president of the Congress the first session was held from 28–31 December 1885, and was attended by 72 delegates. Hume organised the first meeting in Bombay with the approval of the Viceroy Lord Dufferin. The first meeting was scheduled to be held in Poona, but due to a cholera outbreak there it was shifted to Bombay. Its objective was to obtain a greater share in government for educated Indians and to create a platform for civic and political dialogue between educated Indians and the British Raj. Hume took the initiative, and in March 1885 the first notice convening the first Indian National Union to meet in Poona the following December was issued. It has been suggested Template:By whom that the idea was conceived in a private meeting of 17 men after a Theosophical Convention held in Madras in December 1884. The Congress was founded in 1885 by Indian and British members of the Theosophical Society movement, including Scotsman Allan Octavian Hume.
What did the indian national congress want free#
The party primarily endorses social liberalism seeking to balance individual liberty and social justice, and secularism asserting the right to be free from religious rule and teachings. The Congress' social policy 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. In the 2014 general election, the Congress had its poorest post-independence general election performance, winning only 44 seats of the 543-member house. The Congress has previously directly ruled Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Goa. In Assam, Kerala and Uttarakhand it shared power with its alliance partners. In November 2014, the party was in power in ten states and had a majority in six - Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Manipur, Meghalaya and Mizoram. The party's social liberal platform is generally considered to be on the centre-left of Indian politics.įrom 2004 to 2014, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance, a coalition of several regional parties, formed the Indian government and was headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. There have been seven Congress Prime Ministers, the first being Jawaharlal Nehru (1947–64), and the most recent Manmohan Singh (2004–14). In the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries, Congress became a pivotal participant in the Indian Independence Movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants in its opposition to British colonial rule in India.Īfter independence in 1947, Congress became India's dominant political party in the 15 general elections since independence, it has won an outright majority on six occasions and has led the ruling coalition a further four times, heading the central government for 49 years.