Foundation of the Indian National Congress (Spectrum Digest, Ch 6)

Why organised nationalism arose

• A new middle class created by English education, the law and the professions could think in all-India terms.
• Political and administrative unification under one government, and physical unification by railways, the telegraph, the post and a common currency, made all-India politics possible.
• The press (vernacular and English) spread ideas and built opinion.
• Economic critique (the drain theory, deindustrialisation) gave a shared grievance.
• Racial arrogance of the rulers, sharpened by episodes such as the controversy over the Ilbert Bill (1883), convinced educated Indians that loyal petitioning alone would not secure justice.

Predecessor associations

Regional and pre-Congress bodies prepared the ground: the British Indian Association (1851), the Indian Association (1876, Calcutta) of Surendranath Banerjee and Ananda Mohan Bose, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, the Madras Mahajana Sabha (1884) and the Bombay Presidency Association (1885).

The founding, 1885

• The Indian National Congress was founded in December 1885 at Bombay (Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College).
• A. O. Hume, a retired British civil servant, was the moving spirit and first general secretary; the "safety-valve" theory (that Hume meant the Congress to drain off discontent before it became dangerous) is debated and probably overstated.
• The first session (Bombay, 1885) had 72 delegates and was presided over by Womesh Chandra (W. C.) Bonnerjee.
• The second session (Calcutta, 1886) was presided over by Dadabhai Naoroji.
• Early presidents who recur in CAPF questions: W. C. Bonnerjee (1885), Dadabhai Naoroji (1886, 1893, 1906), Badruddin Tyabji (1887, the first Muslim president), George Yule (1888, the first British president), Surendranath Banerjee and Pherozeshah Mehta.

Aims and character of the early Congress

The early Congress sought to:

• build a national, secular political platform cutting across region, religion and caste;
• train and unite public opinion;
• present India's grievances to the government and seek reform within the imperial framework.

It was loyalist and constitutional in method (the Moderate approach), believing in petitions, resolutions and the essential goodwill of British rule, an outlook examined in moderates and extremists.

The security and human-rights angle

The early Congress's demands for the Indianisation of services, separation of the judiciary from the executive, trial by jury and the rule of law were, in substance, demands for civil liberties and equality before the law under colonial rule. These are the seeds of the rights and due-process guarantees later written into the Constitution.

Common traps

• The Congress was founded in 1885 at Bombay; the first president was W. C. Bonnerjee.
• A. O. Hume founded it as a British civil servant; the "safety-valve" idea is a theory, not an established fact.
• Badruddin Tyabji (1887) was the first Muslim president; George Yule (1888) the first British president; Dadabhai Naoroji the first Parsi president.
• The Indian Association (1876) of Surendranath Banerjee preceded and fed into the Congress.

Authored practice

1. Who presided over the first session of the Indian National Congress (1885)? (a) Dadabhai Naoroji (b) W. C. Bonnerjee (c) A. O. Hume (d) Badruddin Tyabji. Answer: (b) W. C. Bonnerjee. Authored practice, not a verbatim PYQ.
2. The first Muslim president of the Congress was: (Answer: Badruddin Tyabji, 1887.) Authored practice, not a verbatim PYQ.