Significance of Congress Sessions in UPSC Prelims

A famous proverb says “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots.”. This goes best for the civil services exam. Our future is dependent upon history and our present is an imprint of history. The seeds of our civilization remain embedded in the soil of our history and the destiny of mankind is the culmination of historical events of the past. This is the reason that Syllabus Of History has been given such importance in the Civil Services Exam and every year a significant number of questions appear in the prelims and mains exam from Indian History. Previous Year Question Paper Of Prelims reveal that about 10-15 questions are asked from Indian History. Among these questions, there is a fair portion of Modern History in the prelims paper. Modern history is all about events that took place during the 18^th century in India. The period after the Mutiny 1857 saw the rise of the nationalist movement in a more planned and coordinated manner. Before 1857 there were few small rebellions by unsatisfied landlords, kings and peasants that can’t be said as a national movement.

The formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 witnessed the participative and collaborative ways to uproot the British from India. Indian National Congress gave a platform to people where they can raise their voice against British in a peaceful manner. There were various other associations too that sprouted before 1885 but they were failed utterly to woo the masses. Congress included a number of prominent political figures. Dadabhai Naoroji, regarded as a grand old man of India, was elected president of the party in 1886 and was the first Indian Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons (1892–1895). Congress also included several other prominent leaders such as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Congress was transformed into a mass movement during the partition of Bengal in 1905 and the resultant Swadeshi movement. However, the arrival of Gandhi changed the course of the Indian National Movement completely. Gandhi launched new means of opposition which were nonviolent in nature completely. His ways of non-cooperation and satyagraha not only appealed to the masses but also became threatening to the British people.

Leaders of Indian National Congress met annually which was usually referred to as sessions of congress. All these sessions of congress were important as they culminated into some important resolutions and outcomes that forced the reigning government to pass some legislations or easing curbs on Indian Masses. Realizing the importance of these sessions UPSC has been putting some 2-3 questions every year in the prelims paper. The congress sessions are large in number and all of them associated with lots of information. However, there are only a few sessions that need to be memorized from an exam point of view. All these sessions can be referred from the NCERT book of history and make notes accordingly. The most important task that remains is to sort the sessions as per their importance and relevancy of the exam. The other question is what to memorize and how much should be memorized from an exam point of view. Books often have plenty of information and extracting important information out of this ocean remains tricky and cumbersome. At this point in time students often search for some study material that compiles all this relevant information in one place in point form. GS Score Prelims Sampoorna Fact File on Congress Sessions could be a one-stop solution for this. This entire material has been designed in a way that serves the entire purpose of the exam. This material is written in a crisp and to-the-point manner that is quite fruitful for revision purposes also.