In March 1885 it was decided to hold a meeting of Representatives from all parts of India at the coming Christmas. Pune was considered the most central and therefore suitable place and the following circular was issued by the former civil servant A. O. Hume. The conference, called Indian National Congress held in Mumbai on 28 December 1885, started a process which led to the strongest nationalist movement India had witnessed during the colonial rule. Below is the text of the circular sent to several ‘important’ Indians as invitation to the Congress;
“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 (1) 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 Conferences 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 year the Conference being in Poona, Mr. Chiplonkar and others of the Sarvajanik Sabha, have consented to form a Reception Committee in whose hands will rest the whole of the local arrangements. The Peshwah’s Garden near the Parbati Hill will be utilized both as a place of meeting (it contains a fine Hall, like the garden, the property of the Sabah) and as a residence for the delegates, each of whom will be there provided with suitable quarters. Much importance is attached to this, since, when all thus reside together for a week, far greater opportunities for friendly intercourse will be afforded than if the delegates were (as at the time of the late Bombay demonstrations) scattered about in dozens of private lodging houses all over the town.
“Delegates are expected to find their own way to and from Poona, but from the time they reach the Poona Railway Station until they again leave it, everything that they can need, carriage, accommodation, food, & c., will be provided for them gratuitously
“The cost thus involved will be defrayed from the Reception Fund, which the Poona Association most liberally offers to provide in the first instance, but to which all delegates, whose means warrant their incurring this further expense, will be at liberty to contribute any sum they please. Any unutilized balance of such donations will be carried forward as a nucleus for next year’s Reception Fund.
“It is believed that exclusive of our Poona friends, the Bombay Presidency, including Sindh and the Berars, will furnish about 20 delegates, Madras and Lower Bengal each about the same number, and the N. W. Provinces, Oudh, and Punjab together have about half this number.”
A few days, however, before the time fixed for the assemblage, and after the Sarvajanik Sabha had completed all their preparations at Pune, several cases of cholera occurred there. These cases might or might not be the commencement of a severe outbreak, travellers arriving tired at a station where there is cholera are notoriously proven to take the disease, and it was therefore considered prudent, despite the difficulties attendant on any change at so late a period to hold the Conference, (which it had in the meantime been decided to call the Congress) at Bombay (Mumbai).
