Indian National Congress — Foundation and Early Phase

Indian National Congress (INC), founded on 28 December 1885 in Bombay by retired ICS officer Allan Octavian Hume and 72 delegates, was the first modern all-India political organisation. It created a unified nationalist platform through which educated Indians articulated demands for civil liberties, legislative reform, and eventual self-governance under British colonial rule.

How Was the Indian National Congress Founded in 1885?

The Indian National Congress held its inaugural session on 28 December 1885 at the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Bombay (present-day Mumbai). Allan Octavian Hume, a retired member of the Indian Civil Service who had served under the Crown for nearly three decades, was the principal organiser. He had earlier, in 1883, written a circular to graduates of Calcutta University urging educated Indians to form a national body capable of giving direction to their collective aspirations.

The founding session was presided over by Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee (W.C. Bonnerjee), a distinguished barrister from Calcutta. Seventy-two delegates attended, representing the provinces of Bombay, Bengal, Madras, the North-Western Provinces, and Punjab. The all-India character of the gathering — modest but deliberate — distinguished the Congress from earlier regional associations such as the British Indian Association (1851) or the Indian Association (1876).

Hume had secured the implicit approval of Viceroy Lord Dufferin before the session was convened, which later fuelled debate about whether the Congress was a genuine nationalist body or a controlled outlet designed to serve colonial interests. Regardless of its precise origins, the INC rapidly became the institutional spine of India's freedom movement.

Who Were the Key Founders and Early Moderate Leaders of INC?

The early Congress was dominated by Western-educated professionals — lawyers, journalists, and teachers — who believed in constitutional agitation within the framework of British rule. Key figures of the founding and Moderate phase included:

Allan Octavian Hume — Retired ICS officer; the organisational architect of the Congress; served as its General Secretary for many years.
W.C. Bonnerjee — Calcutta barrister; presided over the first session (1885) and the ninth session (1892); symbolised the Congress's all-India reach.
Dadabhai Naoroji — "The Grand Old Man of India"; three-time INC president; formulated the Drain of Wealth theory; became the first Indian elected to the British Parliament (Finsbury Central, 1892).
Pherozeshah Mehta — Bombay lawyer and dominant Congress personality; presided over the fifth session (1890) and shaped the organisation's early culture.
Surendranath Banerjea — Founder of the Indian Association; twice INC president; used his newspaper The Bengalee to shape Bengali public opinion.
Gopal Krishna Gokhale — INC president (1905); founder of the Servants of India Society; mentor of Mahatma Gandhi; the clearest voice of Moderate liberalism.

What Were the Early Demands and Goals of the Indian National Congress?

During its first two decades, the INC did not demand independence but sought to reform colonial administration from within. Its agenda was rooted in civil rights, institutional reform, and economic justice. The principal demands were:

Simultaneous Civil Service Examinations — INC demanded that the Indian Civil Service examination be held simultaneously in India and England so that Indian candidates were not forced to travel to London to compete.
Expansion of Legislative Councils — Congress demanded the enlargement of provincial and central legislative councils and the inclusion of elected Indian members to ensure meaningful participation in lawmaking.
Separation of Judicial and Executive Functions — To prevent arbitrary executive action at the district level, Congress demanded that magistrates exercise judicial functions independently of their executive duties.
Reduction of Military Expenditure — Indian tax revenues were heavily burdened by military costs incurred for British imperial campaigns. Congress demanded their reduction and a review of colonial financial priorities.
Freedom of Speech and Press — Congress consistently opposed repressive legislation such as the Vernacular Press Act (1878) and championed freedom of expression as the foundation of political growth.
Abolition of the India Council — INC called for abolition of the Secretary of State's India Council in London, an unaccountable body spending Indian revenues without Indian consent.

What Was the "Safety Valve" Theory — Was INC Founded to Suppress Nationalism?

One of the most discussed debates in the historiography of Indian nationalism concerns the intent behind the founding of the Indian National Congress. The safety valve theory, articulated by radical nationalist Lala Lajpat Rai in his 1920 work Young India, argues that Hume and the colonial government deliberately created the Congress as a controlled outlet for educated Indian discontent — preventing the growth of genuine revolutionary nationalism by channelling political energies into harmless constitutional petitioning.

Lajpat Rai pointed to Hume's correspondence with Viceroy Lord Dufferin and the British establishment's initial tolerance of the Congress as evidence that it was conceived to serve imperial interests. Hume's own circulars acknowledged that unless educated Indians organised peacefully, popular frustrations could turn violent — language that seemed to confirm a preventive motive.

Modern historians, notably Bipan Chandra, largely reject this as a sufficient explanation. Whatever Hume's initial motives, the Congress rapidly transcended them. It gave India's dispersed educated class a national identity and a shared political vocabulary. Even the Moderate leaders, who accepted constitutional methods, forced the colonial government to repeatedly justify its policies and acknowledge the legitimacy of Indian political aspirations — a significant achievement in itself.

What Methods Did the Moderate Phase of INC (1885–1905) Use?

The period from 1885 to 1905 is known as the Moderate phase of the Indian National Congress. Moderates believed that progress must come gradually, through constitutional agitation and cooperation with enlightened British liberal opinion. Their methods included:

Petitions and Memorials — Carefully drafted petitions submitted to the British Parliament and Secretary of State, enumerating Indian grievances and proposing specific reforms.
Annual Sessions Across India — INC held annual sessions in different cities — Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Allahabad, Lahore — to build an all-India presence and recruit local leadership.
Delegations to England — Congress leaders lobbied British Members of Parliament and spoke at public meetings to build sympathy for Indian reforms among British liberals.
Journalism and Public Writing — Newspapers like Surendranath Banerjea's The Bengalee and Gokhale's speeches educated Indian public opinion and kept nationalist ideas in circulation.
Economic Critique — Dadabhai Naoroji's Drain of Wealth theory and R.C. Dutt's economic histories gave Congress a rigorous intellectual critique of colonial exploitation.

The Moderate approach achieved limited immediate results. The Indian Councils Act of 1892 marginally expanded legislative councils but fell well short of Congress's demands. Nevertheless, the Moderate phase was historically significant: it created institutional foundations for Indian nationalism, trained a generation of political leaders, and established the principle that Indians had both the right and the capacity to participate in their own governance.

What Was the Class Composition of the Early Indian National Congress?

The early INC was explicitly a body of India's educated middle class — lawyers, doctors, journalists, teachers, and lower-ranking government employees. Its founders intended it to represent the professional class rather than the peasantry or the nascent industrial working class, who were largely outside its reach in this period.

This social composition shaped the Congress's political character. It spoke the language of British liberalism, invoked constitutional rights, and framed demands in terms that educated British liberals could understand and potentially support. It did not challenge the legitimacy of British rule as such, only the manner in which that rule was exercised.

Critics, including later radical leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak, argued that the Moderate Congress failed to connect with the Indian masses and therefore lacked the popular mobilisation necessary to compel genuine British concessions. This tension grew steadily through the early twentieth century and ultimately produced the dramatic Surat Split of 1907, marking the transition from the Moderate to the Extremist phase of the Indian National Congress.

Frequently Asked Questions

When and where was the Indian National Congress founded?

The Indian National Congress was founded on 28 December 1885 at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay. The first session was attended by 72 delegates and was presided over by W.C. Bonnerjee. A.O. Hume was the principal organiser of this inaugural meeting.

Who was A.O. Hume and what role did he play in founding the Indian National Congress?

Allan Octavian Hume was a retired Indian Civil Service officer who served as the key organiser behind the formation of the Indian National Congress. In 1883, he wrote a circular to graduates of Calcutta University urging them to form a national body. He convened the 1885 founding session and served as the Congress's General Secretary for many years, though the presidency was always held by an Indian.

What was the "safety valve" theory related to the Indian National Congress?

The safety valve theory, articulated by Lala Lajpat Rai in his book Young India (1920), argues that the Indian National Congress was deliberately created by A.O. Hume and the British government as a controlled outlet for Indian political discontent, preventing the rise of genuine revolutionary nationalism. Modern historians largely reject this as the full explanation, arguing that Congress quickly became a genuine nationalist platform regardless of whatever colonial intentions lay behind its founding.

What were the main demands of the Indian National Congress during the Moderate phase (1885–1905)?

During the Moderate phase, the Indian National Congress demanded simultaneous Civil Service examinations in India and England, expansion and reform of legislative councils, separation of judicial and executive functions at district level, reduction of military expenditure, freedom of speech and press, and abolition of the India Council in London. The Moderates pursued these demands through petitions, resolutions, delegations to England, and constitutional agitation.

Who were the key Moderate leaders of the early Indian National Congress?

The key Moderate leaders of the early Indian National Congress included Dadabhai Naoroji (formulator of the Drain of Wealth theory and the first Indian elected to the British Parliament), Pherozeshah Mehta (dominant Bombay Congress figure), W.C. Bonnerjee (first INC president), Surendranath Banerjea (Bengal's foremost Congress leader), and Gopal Krishna Gokhale (INC president 1905 and mentor of Gandhi).

Sources and Further Reading

According to IGNOU's BHIC-134 (Modern History of India, Block 4, Units 14–16: "Rise of Nationalism and the Indian National Congress"), the founding of the Congress in 1885 and the Moderate phase through 1905 constitute the foundational period of organised Indian nationalism. These units cover the social origins of early Congress leadership, the Moderate programme and methods of agitation, and the ideological debates between constitutional agitators and later radical nationalists. Students preparing for UPSC Civil Services should read these units alongside Bipan Chandra's India's Struggle for Independence (Penguin, 1988) and Sumit Sarkar's Modern India 1885–1947 (Macmillan, 1983), both of which provide comprehensive analysis of the Moderate–Extremist divide and the evolution of Congress ideology.