“A conference of the Indian National Union will be held at Poona from the 25th to the 31st December 1885.
“The conference will be composed of delegates-leading politicians well acquainted with the English language-from all parts of the Bengal, Bombay and Madras Presidencies.
“The direct objects of the conference will be: (1) to enable all the most earnest labourers in the cause of national progress to become personally known to each other; (2) to discuss and decide upon the political operations to be undertaken during the ensuing year.
“Indirectly this conference will form the germ of a native parliament and, if properly conducted, will constitute in a few years an unanswerable reply to the assertion that India is still wholly unfit for any form of representative institutions. The first conference will decide whether the next shall be again held at Poona or whether, following the precedent of the British Association, the conferences shall be held year by year at different important centres.”
This was the circular issued in March 1885 and sent through mail to several ‘distinguished’ people across India by the Indian National Union led by A. O. Hume, Dadabhai Nauroji, Surendranath Banerjee, S. Subramania Iyer, K. T. Telang and others. The initiative was taken on 1 March 1883 when A. O. Hume, an English Civil Servant, addressed an open letter to the graduates of the Calcutta University.
Hume asked for 50 men – “with sufficient power of self-sacrifice, sufficient love or and pride in their country, sufficient genuine and unselfish heart-felt patriotism” – who would be willing to devote the rest of their life to the cause. He warned that if such men were not forthcoming there would be “no hope for India.”
The Indian National Union was formed in 1884 as a response to this letter which would in turn call people to form an Indian National Congress the next year. The letters dispatched to people in March, or April, 1885 asked people to gather at Poona (Pune) during the Christmas week that year.
Meanwhile, Pune witnessed a breakout of Cholera in November and the venue had to be shifted to Bombay (Mumbai) at the last moment. All the delegates, 72 of them, reached Bombay on 27 December and the first session started at 12 noon on 28 December 1885 at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College.
What people do not appreciate at first is the importance of Christmas week in the formation of the Indian National Congress and its further development. Since most of the delegates were employed with the British Colonial Government, Christmas week was the only viable time when they could avail enough vacations to travel to a city for a meeting. In those times when Airplanes were yet to be invented and trains were limited, someone reaching Bombay from Calcutta (Kolkata) or Lucknow meant a considerable time.
The next session at Calcutta was also held in the Christmas week. The convenience gave way to the practice and subsequent sessions kept taking place just after Christmas, between 25 and 31 December, each year. There were a few exceptions though but the annual sessions of the INC took place during the Christmas only till 1929 Lahore session. This was the time when the INC declared ‘complete independence’ (Purna Swaraj) as its goal. Maybe, the reason to shift was to assert the idea of decolonisation through distancing from the ‘European’ celebrations.
This close relationship between Christmas and the Indian Freedom Struggle is often less discussed. Whenever, we talk about any resolution at the INC session it is related to the Christmas week as well.
(The opinions expressed are personal of author)