THE PRESENT VOLUME is a collection of 40 papers presented at the Dibrugarh Session of the Institute's Annual Conference held in 1978. Till June, 1979 when Dr. S. P. Sen, the Founder-Director of the Institute was alive, all the themes taken up for discussion at the various sessions of the Institute's Conference, were carefully chosen by him. These indicate his grasp over the progress of our historical investigations as well as their limitations. The subjects selected by him attest alike to the urgency of promoting in-depth investigations into areas which have received less attention than they deserve and the desirability of undertaking researches in subjects which command general as even popular interest. A recital of the themes on which papers were read since the first Conference met in 1961 will testify to the late Dr. Sen's constructive imagination as a scholar and organiser of research.
The theme, dealt with in the present volume, recommended itself as the want of a single comprehensive volume on the Public Associations in India from the early part of the last century had been a long-felt one. Separate volumes have, no doubt, appeared on several such organisations and the treatment has been more or less exhaustive. But a single comprehensive volume dealing with associations, formed at regional and also national levels, for public purposes in different parts of the country, was lacking. This volume, we do hope, will go a long way in removing the want.
While inviting papers on the theme, Dr. Sen did not provide for the inclusion of the Indian National Congress. This he did not include for two main reasons-first, the history of this gigantic national association would run into several volumes, and second, a lot of detailed study has already been made on it. As he said in his general instructions to the collaborators: "Our main objective is to compile in one handy volume accounts of all the other public associations in India which are not so well-known but which, by their steady activities in different regions of India prepared the ground for the massive national organisation, known as the Indian National Congress. Many of these public associations were organised in different parts of India long before the birth of the Congress and many of them had an active existence for half a century after the birth of the Congress. Many of these public associations were only regional or local in character, but their role in the national resurgence cannot be ignored. Most of these were not known outside the boundaries of their respective provinces their records have been largely lost and their activities completely forgotten after Independence. It is our object to compile full accounts of these lesser-known public associations for a period of nearly hundred years whose contributions to the development of national conscious-ness in India were immense and deserve to be remembered by the Post-Independence generation."
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