Purna Swaraj

Background

Through the 1920s the Congress's official demand had generally been dominion status within the British Empire — self-government on the model of Canada or Australia — rather than outright separation. The 1928 Nehru Report, drafted by a committee under Motilal Nehru, had reaffirmed dominion status as the constitutional goal, over the objections of younger leaders including Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose, who pressed for complete independence.

At the December 1928 Calcutta session, the Congress passed a compromise resolution giving the British government one year to grant dominion status, failing which the party would adopt full independence as its goal and launch civil disobedience. No such offer was forthcoming.

The Lahore resolution

At the Lahore session in December 1929, with Jawaharlal Nehru presiding as Congress president for the first time, the party adopted a resolution declaring purna swaraj — complete independence, severing all ties with the British Empire — as its objective, and authorised the Working Committee to launch a civil disobedience campaign.

On 26 January 1930, Congress volunteers and supporters across the country took a pledge affirming the right to freedom and observed the day as Independence Day, a practice repeated annually until 1947. The Salt March, launched by Gandhi in March 1930, followed directly from this resolution as the opening act of the Civil Disobedience Movement.

After independence, the Constituent Assembly chose 26 January 1950 as the date for the Constitution of India to come into force, in deliberate reference to the 1930 pledge; the date is observed as Republic Day.