CDS (I) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 31 of 120

Correct — C, Lahore. The Congress met at Lahore in the last week of December 1929 with Jawaharlal Nehru in the chair, and it was there that the party abandoned dominion status as its goal and resolved on Purna Swaraj — complete independence. The date the paper fixes on, 31st December 1929, is the night the resolution was made public on the bank of the Ravi: the tricolour of independence went up at midnight, and the session went on to fix 26 January 1930 as the day the country would observe as Independence Day. Congress members were also asked to withdraw from the legislatures, and the Working Committee was authorised to launch civil disobedience — the road that led to the Dandi March three months later.

• (a)Ahmedabad — The Ahmedabad session met in December 1921, in the middle of Non-Cooperation. C. R. Das had been elected president but was in jail, so Hakim Ajmal Khan presided. Its business was the ongoing movement, not a declaration of complete independence.
• (b)Calcutta — Calcutta, December 1928, under Motilal Nehru, is the session immediately before Lahore and the one students most often confuse with it. It endorsed the Nehru Report and gave Britain a one-year ultimatum to concede dominion status. Purna Swaraj was what the Congress fell back on when that year ran out.
• (d)Lucknow — Lucknow, 1916, is remembered for the Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League and for the return of the extremists to the fold. It is thirteen years too early and its subject is unity, not independence.

Purna Swaraj means complete independence, as against dominion status — self-government within the British Empire, with the Crown still the head of state. Until 1929 the Congress had officially asked for the second. The Lahore session of December 1929, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, made the first the declared goal, and the pledge was read out at public meetings across India on 26 January 1930.

Two things fix this question. One is the year: 1929 is the hinge between the Nehru Report of 1928 and the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930, so the session that turns the wheel has to be the one at the end of 1929. The other is the president: Jawaharlal Nehru at forty was the young face the Congress put on the new demand, and Lahore is the session that made him. The trap is Calcutta 1928, which is genuinely about the same argument — the one-year ultimatum for dominion status — but is the demand Lahore replaced. The exact date printed in the stem, 31st December, is the midnight flag-hoisting on the Ravi rather than the day the resolution was moved in the subjects committee.

• The Lahore session of the Indian National Congress met in the last week of December 1929 with Jawaharlal Nehru as president.
• It adopted the Purna Swaraj resolution, replacing dominion status with complete independence as the goal of the Congress.
• The tricolour was hoisted at midnight on 31 December 1929 on the bank of the Ravi, and 26 January 1930 was fixed as Independence Day.
• The same session authorised civil disobedience and asked Congress members to resign from the central and provincial legislatures.
• Calcutta 1928, under Motilal Nehru, had given Britain one year to grant dominion status; Lahore is what followed when the year lapsed.

• Reading the 31 December date as the date the resolution was voted on; it is the midnight flag-hoisting that closed the session.
• Answering Calcutta because the dominion-status ultimatum of 1928 sounds like the same debate.
• Mixing up 26 January 1930, the first Independence Day observance, with 26 January 1950, when the Constitution came into force.

Usually as session-to-event or session-to-president matching across Lucknow 1916, Calcutta 1928, Lahore 1929 and Karachi 1931.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who presided over the Lahore session of the Indian National Congress in 1929?

  • (a)Motilal Nehru
  • (b)Jawaharlal Nehru
  • (c)Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
  • (d)Subhas Chandra Bose

  Answer(b) Jawaharlal Nehru — he was elected president at Lahore, and the Purna Swaraj resolution was adopted under his chairmanship.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Congress first observed Independence Day on which date, following the Lahore resolution?

  • (a)15 August 1930
  • (b)26 January 1930
  • (c)31 December 1929
  • (d)26 January 1950

  Answer(b) 26 January 1930 — the Lahore session fixed it, and the independence pledge was read at meetings across the country that day.