ABSTRACT
By situating the Congress vis-à-vis the Government of India Act of 1935, Congress leaders began to formulate ideologies of governance. Challenged by the imposition of this alien constitution, Congress leaders were obliged to consider Centre-subordinate relations in a prospective national state and began to engage with ideas of centralized and federal governmental structures. The policies generated by the Working Committee betray the extent to which the would-be Centre sought to dominate subordinate branches of the emerging national state. Such viewpoints, in turn, denote the Congress leadership’s predilection for centralized governmental functions. The structure Congress leaders began constructing in the mid-1930s strongly replicated the autocratic Raj bureaucracy, wherein policies originated at the Centre and were transmitted through a hierarchical chain of command.
