The history exaggerates itself in totality hitherto: the origin, objectives, the leaders hailing from all the regions of India-a book that glorifies the party, congress in terms of past and present times overtaking the latent evils of dynasty-Dom.

Tracing the history of the Indian National Congress from its founding in 1885 until about 1905, Professor McLane analyzes its efforts to build a national community and to obtain fundamental reforms from the British. In so doing, he extends our understanding of the dynamics of Indian pluralism. In its first two decades of existence, the Congress failed to inspire sacrifices from its members or to attract Muslims or Indians without an English education. The author explains this early stagnation in terms of developments within the Congress as well as outside in Indian society. Originally published in 1978. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This is the first book to stress the need for study of regional and local politics as an integral part of the history of the Congress.

"Great movements are like great rivers--they start as small streams, but if the cause is great, they draw to themselves many streams, joining together to achieve and reach their destination. And so it was with the Indian National Congress, which met for the first time with a 'microscopic minority' of seventy-two people in Bombay on the 28th December, 1885. It went on to challenge the mightiest empire of the time, using the slogan of peace and the method of non-violence. Led by men and women of extraordinary intellect, courage and commitment, it shaped the destiny of modern India in the twentieth century, and leads India as a global power in the twenty-first century. Commemorating 125 years of the Indian National Congress, this volume unfolds, page after page, the saga of struggle, sacrifice and nation-building. A lucid commentary, enlivened further by rare photographs and archival material, it offers the reader a pictorial glimpse of the epic journey that began in 1885. This is indeed, the journey of a nation ..."--Publisher's website.

Seventeen distinguished historians and political scientists discuss the phenomenon of Indian Nationalism, one hundred years after the founding of the Congress party. They offer important new interpretations of Nationalism's evolution during more than six decades of crucial change and rapid growth. As India's foremost political institution, the National Congress with its changing fortunes mirrored Indian aspirations, ideals, dreams, and failures during the country's struggle for nationhood. Many difficulties face by the pre-independence Indian National Congress are critically examined for the first time in this volume. Major times of crisis and transition are considered, as well as the tension between mass action and political control and the problem of creating and maintaining unity in the face of divisive social and economic interests and between deeply hostile religious communities. A composite portrait of the Congress Party emerges. We see a coalition of often conflicting communities and interests much like India itself, struggling to stay together, tenuously united by little more at times than a common "enemy," the imperial British Raj. But linked together in precarious, seemingly haphazard fashion, shifting networks of elite political entrepreneurs manage to keep India's National Congress alive long enough to convince the British that it would be easier to "Quit India" than to try to hang on to it by force. With the abrupt transfer of power form the British to the independent Dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947, Congress provided institutional sinews for the administration of what had been British India and over five hundred Princely States. By contributing to a deeper understanding of India's nationalist experience, this volume may illuminate the experience of other Third World states. Essays by:S. BhattacharyaJudith M. BrownMushirul HansanZoya HasanD.A. LowClaude MarkovitsJohn R. McLaneW.H. Morris-JonesGyanendra PandeyBimal PrasadRajat Kanta RayBarbara N. RamusackPeter D. ReevesHitesranjan SanyalRichard SissonStanley WolpertEleanor Zelliot This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1988.

This volume presents an analytical history of India's struggle for freedom and the role played in it by the Indian National Congress. It provides a comprehensive account of the Independence movement, encompassing events such as the extremist-moderate split in the Congress, Morley-Minto reforms, Round Table Conferences, the Quit India Movement; and the Partition. Drawing on statistical analysis and exhaustive research, it examines the impact of prevailing domestic and international economic conditions on the evolution of the politics of the Congress, the Muslim League, as well as the Indian revolutionary, socialist, and communist parties. The book also throws light on the complex interplay of power politics between the Centre, the States, and the various grass-roots organizatons on one hand and the push and pull of Hindu-Muslim communal politics on the other. This is the first English translation of the Bengali classic Swadhinata Sangrame Bharatiya Jatiya Congress: 1885-1947 (first published in 1990) by the late Professor Amales Tripathi, an eminent scholar and a renowned historian. This translation also carries a foreword by Dr Rudrangshu Mukherjee.