Person · first INC president · India
Umesh Chandra Bonnerjee
Also known as W.C. Bonnerjee, Umesh Chandra Bonnerjee, Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee, Bonnerjee
Bengali barrister (1844-1906) educated at Oriental Seminary Calcutta and Middle Temple London, who presided over the first session of the Indian National Congress at Bombay on 28-31 December 1885 as its founding president. Bonnerjee had been among the first Indians called to the English Bar, practised in Calcutta as a Standing Counsel of the Government of India, and twice served as a Congress president (1885 and 1892). He stood for the British Parliament unsuccessfully in 1892 at Barrow-in-Furness. The 1885 Bombay session's choice of Bonnerjee to preside was Hume's and Pherozeshah Mehta's agreement that a Bengali Hindu barrister represented a national rather than a Bombay-local figure for the inaugural moment.
- Date
- 1844–1906
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Tradition
- Standard reference and biographical literature; INC proceedings and contemporary memoirs.
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
Worth knowing
His Croydon house in London is said to have been where the 1885 Bombay session was partly planned during his 1884 visit to England. His daughter Nalini became one of the first Indian women to practise medicine in Britain, and his son Shelley later served in the Government of India. He died in Croydon in 1906 and was buried there.
About the place
Placed at Calcutta where he practised.
Connections (2)
- First president ofIndian National Congress (founding era)
Umesh Chandra Bonnerjee presided over the first session of the Indian National Congress at Bombay on 28-31 December 1885 as its founding president, and served again as president at the 1892 Allahabad session. The 1885 choice of Bonnerjee as president was Hume's and Pherozeshah Mehta's agreement that a Bengali Hindu barrister represented a national rather than a Bombay-local figure for the inaugural session. His presidency gave the Congress its first institutional precedent.
- Based atKolkata
Umesh Chandra Bonnerjee practised at the Calcutta High Court as Standing Counsel of the Government of India from the 1870s through the 1890s — one of the first Indians to hold that position, and the central Calcutta barrister figure of the early INC. His chambers at the High Court served as the eastern Indian coordination point for Congress organisation through the first decade of its existence.