Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/141

13

The Indian National Congress, 1894-1896

IN 1894, the Indian National Congress met at Madras. We chartered a steamer, and the Bengal delegates all went in a body. The steamer party was most useful, for the delegates were thrown together for several days; and, apart from the solidarity of life and thought that this promoted, it helped the discussion of public questions in a friendly and informal way, which is often a more effective, and certainly a less irritating, method of solution than formal debates.

On board the steamer we came to a most important decision affecting the holding of our Provincial Conferences. The Provincial Conferences are offshoots of the Congress, and, as Dr. Mohendralal Sircar observed while presiding over one of them, they are tributary streams which flow on to swell the great volume of the Congress movement. Hitherto our Provincial Conferences used to be held in Calcutta, but the movement was languid and did not seem to gather force or volume. We decided upon a change; and we came to the conclusion that it was desirable to alter the locale of the Provincial Conferences from year to year, and to hold them in different mofussil centres in different years. We resolved to invest the Conferences with the peripatetic character that belonged to the Congress. Babu Baikuntanath Sen of Berhampore, who was one of the delegates present, agreed to invite the Conference to Berhampore in 1895. The change gave a new impetus to the movement; and the Berhampore Conference of 1895, the first of its kind held in a mofussil town. was a great success. Since then the experiment has been repeated with increasing success; and, as I have observed in an early part of these Reminiscences, the Provincial Conferences in point of numbers and enthusiasm reflect the character of the great Congress gatherings.

Mr. Webb, an Irish Member of Parliament, presided over the