who presided the first session of indian national congress
Indian National Congress Hume organised the first meeting in Bombay with the approval of the Viceroy Lord Dufferin. Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee was the first president of Congress; the first session was attended by 72 delegates. Representing each province of India.[29][30] Notable representatives included Scottish ICS officer William Wedderburn, Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta of the Bombay Presidency Association, Ganesh Vasudeo Joshi of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, social reformer and newspaper editor Gopal Ganesh Agarkar, Justice K. T. Telang, N. G. Chandavarkar, Dinshaw Wacha, Behramji Malabari, journalist and activist Gooty Kesava Pillai, and P. Rangaiah Naidu of the Madras Mahajana Sabha.[31][32] This small elite group, unrepresentative of the Indian masses at the time,[33] functioned more as a stage for elite Indian ambitions than a political party for the first decade of its existence.[34]
Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress ( pronunciation (help·info)) (INC, often called Congress) is a broad-based political party in India. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa.[a][10] From the late 19th-century, and especially after 1920, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, Congress became the principal leader of the Indian independence movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants.[11] The Congress led India to independence from Great Britain,[b][12][c][13] and powerfully influenced other anti-colonial nationalist movements in the British Empire.[d][10]