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It appears that while we were organizing our National Conference at Calcutta, some of our friends headed by the late Mr. Allen Hume had met at Madras for a similar purpose. Mr. Kashinath Trembuck Telang wrote to me from Bombay requesting me to send him some notes about the first National Conference held in 1883. The two Conferences met about the same time, discussed similar views and voiced the same grievances and aspirations. The one that met in Calcutta was called the 'National Conference' and the other, which assembled at Bombay, the 'Indian National Congress'. Henceforth those who worked with us joined the Congress and heartily co-operated with it.

We in Bengal started another movement upon lines parallel to those of the Congress, but less comprehensive in its scope, and dealing only with the affairs of the province. We held in 1888 the first Provincial Conference for Bengal. The National Congress, being a convention of India, could not take up for discussion questions affecting any particular province, unless such questions had assumed the proportions of a national problem. But there were provincial considerations of the utmost importance upon which it was necessary for public opinion to make definite pronouncements. Problems of sanitation, education and even local self-government differed in the different provinces, and it was for the representatives of the province in conference assembled to discuss and to deal with them. Such were the reasons that determined the holding of the first provincial conference in Bengal.

The other provinces have followed the example of Bengal. Provincial conferences are now a recognized institution and are held in almost every part of India. They have indeed been followed by still further developments, and district conferences are held in some parts of India. They are specially popular in the Madras Presidency.

In Bengal, the provincial conferences have attained enormous proportions; on occasions their numerical strength has exceeded that of the Congress. Sometimes they are followed by social conferences enlivened by animated debates on the burning social questions of the day. In Bengal, social considerations are no longer dead. They have passed the purely academic stage and are beginning to awaken a living interest among the educated community. I have more than once presided at these provincial social conferences and can bear witness to the genuine interest that the discussions evoked. The two questions of absorbing interest