Being the President of the Indian National Congress, who among the following had called for complete independence from the British Raj in 1929?

Correct — C. Jawaharlal Nehru presided over the Lahore session of the Congress in December 1929.

That session adopted the Purna Swaraj resolution — complete independence, in place of the dominion status the Congress had been asking for.

Nehru hoisted the tricolour on the bank of the Ravi, and the session called on Indians to observe 26 January 1930 as Independence Day.

The stem sets two conditions at once — Congress president, and the 1929 call for complete independence. They meet in one man, option (c).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Subhas Chandra Bose — Bose reached the Congress presidency only in 1938, at Haripura, and again at Tripuri in 1939 — nine years after Lahore. He was a force at the session, but not in the chair.
• (b)
  Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel — Patel presided over the Karachi session of 1931, the one that passed the resolutions on Fundamental Rights and the National Economic Programme. Karachi followed Lahore by two years.
• (d)
  Mahatma Gandhi — Gandhi held the Congress presidency exactly once in his life, at Belgaum in 1924. He was central to the Lahore session and to the Civil Disobedience that followed, but he was not its president.

The Congress moved from dominion status to complete independence in two steps.

The Nehru Report of 1928, drafted under Motilal Nehru, asked for dominion status, and the Calcutta session of that year gave the British a year to concede it.

When the year ran out, the Lahore session of December 1929, with Jawaharlal Nehru in the chair, declared Purna Swaraj the Congress goal and fixed 26 January 1930 as the day to be observed as Independence Day.

The Civil Disobedience Movement and the Dandi March followed in 1930.

Key facts

• The Lahore session of the Indian National Congress met in December 1929 under the presidency of Jawaharlal Nehru.
• That session adopted the Purna Swaraj resolution, replacing dominion status with complete independence as the Congress goal.
• 26 January 1930 was observed as the first Independence Day, and the date was later chosen for the commencement of the Constitution in 1950.
• The Nehru Report of 1928, drafted under Motilal Nehru, had asked only for dominion status.

Common traps

• Answering Gandhi because he dominated the period. He was Congress president once only, in 1924.
• Confusing the Congress session at Lahore in 1929 with the Muslim League's Lahore Resolution of 1940.
• Placing the Purna Swaraj declaration at Calcutta in 1928, which only issued the one-year ultimatum.

No directly related past PYQ was found.