Indian Business and the Congress Provincial Governments 1937–39

Abstract

The late 1930s saw a definite turn in political developments in India. Following the abandonment of Civil Disobedience in 1934, a prolonged period of internal peace helped the Congress, until then a broadly-based movement with a general commitment to fight foreign rule, evolve into a more organized party capable of aspiring to political dominance. In the process, its relations with different social forces took a more definite shape. While in the past the Congress had clung to the myth of an Indian society free of internal conflicts and united in opposition to the British, the growth of social conflicts in town and countryside forced it to take into account the competing aspirations of various groups.