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Bradlaugh : Charles (1833-91), English social reformer, secularist, & Liberal M.P., who attended the 1889 Congress Session at Bombay. Since its inception in 1885, the sycophantic Congress had repeated begged for a representation in the administration, the only result of which was catching the fancy of Bradlaugh & opportunists like him in that ‘Mother of All Parliaments’. Bradlaugh attended the 1889 annual Congress session held at Bombay. In that session Tilak moved an amendment to the resolution of Congress Big Guns praying for a skeleton scheme “for the reform & reconstruction of the Council of the Gov.-Gen. for making Laws & Regulations, & the Provincial Legislative Councils”. His plea was that as indirect representation had been adopted in the Provincial Councils, the natural sequel was that the Provincial Councils should elect the Imperial Council. This amendment, supported by G.K. Gokhale, was defeated on the ground that this delegation of the function of the electorate to the Provincial Legislatures would be illegal. Bradlaugh deluded the loyalist members by a sugary speech & they prayed to him to table a Bill in Parliament embodying their resolution. The shrewd Brit avoided committing himself by speaking of the possibility of the Govt. of Gladstone, his Liberal prime minister, introducing the Bill. A deputation of Congress representatives visited England to press for the consideration of the British public, the political reform which it prayed for. A journal called India (q.v.) was started in London in 1890 “to place before the British public the Indian view of Indian affairs.” The India Councils Act that Gladstone passed in 1892, the INC claimed, “yielded part¬ly” to its 7-year old prayer for “reform & reconstruction” of the Imperial & Provincial Councils. In Sri Aurobindo’s view, instead of learning from the 700-year-old Irish struggle not to appeal to the British sense of justice but to their own sense of manhood, the INC was crowing over a mere sleight-of-hand, for what Gladstone had yielded was “a loaf of plaster-of-Paris” with an assurance that his Govt. “would do its best to make plaster-of-Paris taste exactly like wheat.” The British, he warned INC in 1893, innovate their political institutions only to suit their immediate needs; they are not exactly panting to do justice to all whom they have to govern, though they liked to think themselves, & to be thought by others, just & a moral. Yet INC wallowed in eulogies while muttering toothless protests & pitiable petitions but “failed to secure any substantial grant of political reforms” until 1905.