‘The Greatest Indian’

This chapter describes the tributes to Gokhale after his death and reviews his many achievements during his career. The Statesman reported on 21 February 1915 that ‘Mr Gokhale was the greatest leader that India has ever produced, perhaps her greatest man’. At a memorial meeting in London, Sir Krishna Gupta, a member of the India Council, referred to Gokhale as the greatest Indian of his time. Obituaries and memorial tributes often need to be discounted, but there is no doubt that at the time of his death, and indeed for nearly a decade before it, Gokhale occupied a unique place in the Indian public life. He had forged his way to the forefront of Indian politics by 1902, but from 1905, when he presided over the Benares Congress, until his death in 1915, he was the ‘First Moderate’.

Keywords: Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Sir Krishna Gupta, death, tributes, Benares Congress, First Moderate

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B. R. Nanda

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‘The Greatest Indian’

‘The Greatest Indian’

B. R. Nanda