This is a pioneering work on the Indian National Congress. It analyses, in the context of British imperial legacy, the class character of the Congress Party and its Government in terms of its economic policy and political behaviour. As the presence of imperialism inevitably imparted to ttie Congress a national complexion, its class character remained blurred in the early stages of development as a movement. Even so, the movement - party dichotomy could not altogether remain suppressed. Though the present work is basically devoted to an understanding of the Congress economic policy, it goes beyond and examines the related considerations of politics and problems of policy implementation. The study discloses that the declared object of the movement was to wrest power from Great Britain in the interest of all classes and sections of the Indian people, while the object of the Congress Party was to make sure that the power when so wrested remained in the hands of the vested interests in it, more especially of big business, and political and professional elites.