ABSTRACT
The seventeenth annual session of the Indian National Congress, 1 held in Calcutta in December 1901, hosted an industrial exhibition in conjunction with its proceedings. For the first time, the session also devoted a considerable amount of time to a resolution on the state of industry in India, a motion given heightened political urgency by the recurrence of famine in the preceding years. 2 The presidential address left no doubt as to the forces behind this new feature of the Congress:
We have opened an Industrial Exhibition in connection with the Congress, which, I hope, will in future be a permanent feature of our annual meeting. We cannot live in ignorance of the supreme importance which industry has assumed in modern civilization. In these days every political question is at bottom an economic one. It seems that hence forward markets are to be the battle-fields where destinies of nations will be decided. With the average European, it is a fixed idea that in the pre-established harmony of the Universe, Europe is to sell and Asia to buy. But we cannot help feeling that our thoughts and energies cannot be better employed than in the work of effecting a revival and development of our industries. The Exhibition that we have got up cannot fail to be useful in that it will keep the industrial problem before our eyes: and the poverty of the show will impress us with the “little done and vast undone.” 3
