Who was the President of the Indian National Congress at the Gaya Session of 1922 ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, Chittaranjan Das. Deshbandhu C. R. Das presided over the Congress session held at Gaya, in Bihar, in December 1922, and the session matters for what happened under his presidency rather than merely for the name in the chair. The Non-Cooperation Movement had been suspended in February 1922 after Chauri Chaura, and the Congress was arguing about what to do next. Das, with Motilal Nehru, urged that Congressmen should contest elections and enter the legislative councils in order to obstruct the government from within. The No-changers, who held that the constructive programme outside the councils should continue, defeated the proposal at Gaya. Das resigned the presidency, and on 1 January 1923 he and Motilal Nehru founded the Swaraj Party to pursue council entry as a separate group inside the Congress fold — which is why UPSC's own question on the Swaraj Party dates it from 'after the 1922 Gaya session'. Das was by then one of the most prominent men in Indian public life, the Bengal leader who had given up a huge legal practice for the movement, and he presided over a session of the All India Trade Union Congress at Lahore the following year. Since (a) is right, option (d) 'None of the above' fails. The Bihar connection is the reason this question is on a BPSC paper at all: Gaya is one of the Congress sessions held in the state.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Gandhi presided over the Congress exactly once, at Belgaum in December 1924 — a striking fact given how completely he dominated the organisation from 1920 onwards. In December 1922 he was not even at liberty: he had been convicted after the suspension of Non-Cooperation and was in prison, which is part of why the Congress was free to argue about council entry at all.  (c) The most instructive wrong answer, because Hakim Ajmal Khan did preside over a Congress session at just this period — Ahmedabad in 1921, where he took the chair as acting president precisely because C. R. Das, the elected president, was in jail. A candidate who has stored 'Ajmal Khan presided when Das could not' without the year attached will place him a session too late.  (d) Requires all three names to be wrong, and the first is right. On a question that names a specific session in a specific year, the answer is a matter of record, and reaching for the escape option here reflects uncertainty rather than any defect in the question.

Concept: Gaya 1922 is one of the hinge sessions of the freedom movement. Non-Cooperation had been called off in February 1922 after the violence at Chauri Chaura, and the withdrawal split the Congress into two tendencies. The Swarajists — C. R. Das, Motilal Nehru, later N. C. Kelkar and others — argued that the movement should not vacate the councils created by the Government of India Act of 1919, but should contest them and wreck them from inside. The No-changers — Rajendra Prasad, Vallabhbhai Patel, C. Rajagopalachari — held that the constructive programme of khadi, national education and Hindu-Muslim unity was the way forward. Gaya decided against the Swarajists, Das resigned, and the Swaraj Party was formed on 1 January 1923. It went on to do well in the 1923 elections, particularly in the Central Provinces and Bengal, and the two wings were formally reconciled at the Belgaum session of 1924 under Gandhi's presidency. The Swaraj Party remains examinable in its own right — it was the body that in 1934 took up the demand for a Constituent Assembly to frame India's constitution.

State PCS 2025 Q130 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q130 — History PYQ with Answer