द इण्डियन स्ट्रगल / भारतीय स्वाधीनता संग्राम (नेताजी सुभाष चन्द्र बोस - ऐतिहासिक विश्लेषण)

INTRODUCTION 37 § IV. ORGANISATIONS, PARTIES AND PERSONALITIES To understand properly a narrative about the Indian struggle for freedom, it is necessary to have some idea of the different organisations, parties and personalities in India. The most important party or organisation in India is the Indian National Congress, founded in 1885. It has its branches all over India. There is a central committee for the whole country called the All-India Congress Committee, which consists of about 350 members. This committee elects an executive committee for the year, called the Working Committee. Each province has a Provincial Congress Com- mittee and under this committee there are district, sub- divisional (or tahsil or taluka), union and village Congress Committees. The different Congress Committees are all formed on the elective principle. The aim of the Congress is the ‘attainment of complete independence by all peaceful and legitimate means.’ The leader¹ of the Congress is Mahatma Gandhi—who is the virtual dictator. The Working Com- mittee since 1929 has been elected according to his dictation and no one can find a place on that committee who is not thoroughly submissive to him and his policy. Within the Congress there is a strong Left Wing who hold radical views on social and economic questions, i.e., questions relating to caste, to landlord versus peasant and to capital versus labour. This group also advocate a more vigorous and activist policy for the achievement of political freedom. On all such problems, Mahatma Gandhi holds a more com- promising position. A few years ago the prominent members of the Left Wing were Mr. Srinivasa Iyengar, ex-Advocate- General of Madras and ex-President of the Congress, Pandit Jarvaharlal Nehru of Allahabad, formerly an advocate by profession and son of the late Pandit Motilal Nehru, Dr. Mohammed Alam, an outstanding Moslem leader of Lahore and an advocate, and Mr. K. F. Nariman of Bombay, a Parsi ¹ The President of the Congress is not the real leader. Whoever presides at a plenary session of the Congress continues as Congress President till the next session. The Congress President is elected as a result of nomination by the different Provincial Congress Committees