WHAT CONGRESS AND GANDHI HAVE DONE TO THE UNTOUCHABLES : 11 A STRANGE EVENT
To understand the first question it is necessary to note that when the Indian National Congress was founded at Bombay in
1885, it was felt by the leaders of the movement that the National movement should not be exclusively political but that side by side with the consideration of political questions, questions affecting Indian social economy should also be discussed and that the best endeavours of all should be put forth for vitalizing Hindu Society by removing all social evils and social wrongs. With this view, Dewan Bahadur R. Raghunath Rao and Mr. Justice (then Rao Bahadur) M. G. Ranade delivered addresses on Social Reform on the occasion of the meeting of the First Congress at Bombay. In
1886, at Calcutta, nothing further was done. Discussion, however, was going on among the leaders of the Congress movement and other leaders of educated Indian thought whether the Congress as such should concern itself with social questions or whether a separate body should be set up for the discussion of social questions. It was at last resolved after mature deliberation by, among others, Dewan Bahadur R. Raghunath Rao, Mr. Mahadeo Govind Ranade, Mr. Narendra Nath Sen and Mr. Janakinath Ghosal, that a separate organization called the Indian National Social Conference, should be started for the consideration of subjects relating to Indian social economy. Madras had the honour of being the birth-place of the Conference, for, the First Indian National Social Conference was held at Madras in December 1887, with no less a man than the late Rajah Sir T. Madhavrao, K.C.S.I., the premier Indian statesman of his time, as the President. The work done at this First Conference, however, was not much. Among other important resolutions members then present recognized the necessity of holding annual National Conferences in different parts of India for considering and adopting measures necessary for the improvement of the status of our society, and of our social usages ; and taking steps to organize and establish Provincial Sub-Committees of the Conferences. It was agreed that among social subjects which the Conference might take up, those relating to the disabilities attendant on distant sea-voyages, the ruinous expenses of marriage, the limitations of age below which marriages should not take place, the remarriages of youthful widows, the evils of the re-marriages of old men with young girls, the forms and evidences of marriages and inter-marriages