The Indian National Congress (abbreviated INC, and commonly known as the Congress) (Bhāratīya Rāṣṭrīya Kāṅgrēs) is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world.The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian political spectrum. Founded in 1885 by members of the occultist movement Theosophical Society—Allan Octavian Hume, Dadabhai Naoroji, Dinshaw Wacha, Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Monomohun Ghose, Mahadev Govind Ranade and William Wedderburn—the Indian National Congress became the leader of the Indian Independence Movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants in its struggle against British rule in India. After independence in 1947, it became the nation's dominant political party, led by the Nehru-Gandhi family for the most part; major challenges for party leadership have only recently formed.
In the 2009 general elections, the Congress emerged as the single largest party in the Lok Sabha, with 205 of its candidates getting elected to the 543-member house. Consequently it, along with a coalition of allies called the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), was able to gain a majority and form the government.
Read more about Indian National Congress: History, Recent Electoral History, Ideology and Policies, Internal Organization, Controversies and Criticisms, Prime Ministers of The Republic From The Congress Party, Congress in Pradesh (States), Congress in Various States, List of Current Congress Chief Ministers, List of Presidents of The Party
Famous quotes containing the words indian, national and/or congress:
“The Indian said a particularly long prayer this Sunday evening, as if to atone for working in the morning.”
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“Disney World has acquired by now something of the air of a national shrine. American parents who don’t take their children there sense obscurely that they have failed in some fundamental way, like Muslims who never made it to Mecca.”
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“The profession I chose was politics; the profession I entered was the law. I entered the one because I thought it would lead to the other. It was once the same road; and Congress is [s]till full of lawyers.”
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