The Indian National Congress

We have seen in the previous chapter that the chief result of the Sepoy Mutiny was to create a new awareness in the nation. The psychological forces unleashed after the Mutiny were very powerful and it was evident that before long this awareness would have to be given shape and a concrete form. However, let us first look at some of the developments that took place immediately after the Mutiny.

Soon after the Mutiny, the British Government effected major changes in India. In 1858, the East India Company was abolished. It was decided that India was to be ruled by the Crown; in other words the king or queen of the United Kingdom was to rule India under the advice of the British Government. The Secretary of State assisted by a fifteen-man council was put in charge of Indian policy. However the direct responsibility was with the Viceroy and his council. Queen Victoria was proclaimed the first Empress of India in 1858. As far as the Princely States were concerned the Crown promised: “to respect the rights, dignity and honour of the Native Princes”. Rulers who remained loyal during the Revolt were allowed to remain on their thrones without political power but as royal institutions.

Economic exploitation

The economic exploitation of India became very acute. It has been recorded that there were more than twenty-four famines in the next few decades. While the sufferings of the people were terrible, the Secretary of State drew a salary equivalent to the yearly income of over ten thousand peasants of India. Here is a quotation from Modern History Sourcebook describing the economic exploitation:

“The political drain, up to this time, from India to England, was above 500,000,000 pounds, at the lowest computation, in principal alone, which with interest would be some thousands of millions. The further continuation of this drain at the rate, was above 12,000,000 per annum, with a tendency to increase… The material condition of India is such that the great mass of the poor have hardly tuppence a day and a few rags, or a scanty subsistence. The famines that were in their (the British Government) power to prevent, if they had done their duty, as a good and intelligent government did not take place.”

Study of Indian history

On the other hand, European scholars had begun a study of Indian history. New discoveries were made in the field of archaeology, history and art. This knowledge of the past created in Indians a sense of pride; a nationalist feeling was aroused among the educated class with the desire to recover the past glory. Along with this came the introduction of the printing press; this made communication much easier. There was a greater spread of knowledge while in the field of public administration and politics there was a far greater awareness. The Press played an important role. It is reported that by the 1870’s there were a few hundred newspapers in India.

Thus the remarkable psychological change brought about by the Sepoy Mutiny created at the same time a sense of national awareness. A distinct national identity began to take shape. It was inevitable that this would try to express itself in the formation of National organizations and societies.

It will be of some interest to note that even before the sepoy mutiny these trends were visible. One such example of this trend can be seen in the life of Henry Derozio Henry Vivian Derozio, a native of Scotland had a special love for India and her people. He was a teacher of the Hindu College and exercised tremendous influence on his students. Derozio and his followers were known as the Derozians; he created a society called Young Bengal and the members of the society were fiery patriots. He expressed his love for India in his poetry and promoted radical ideas through his class lectures. He organised student societies for debates and discussions on literature, history, philosophy and science.

Another important personality was Rajnarayan Bose. An ardent nationalist, also called the Rishi, he played a vital role in establishing the National Society and the National School.

The national feeling was thus slowly taking shape and it was not before long that it would take a concrete form. This took the shape of the Indian National Congress. Ironically, it was an Englishman, Allan Octavian Hume, who was responsible for the formation of the Indian National Congress. In the words of an Indian historian, ”The Congress was the natural and inevitable product of forces already at work in the country; it would have emerged soon enough, Hume or no Hume”.

Allan Octavian Hume who was the son of a radical politician entered the Indian civil service in Bengal in 1849. After serving as magistrate in the district of Etawah at the time of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, he was assigned to the board of revenue in the North-Western Provinces. In 1870–79 he was attached to the central government of India as secretary in the revenue and agriculture department. His views favouring greater participation for Indians in Indian affairs created difficulties, and he returned to provincial administration. On his retirement from the civil service in 1882, he involved himself in political activities aimed at giving Indians more democratic, representational government and was one of the conveners of the first session of the Indian National Congress, held at Bombay in 1885. There have been some questions raised about the motives for starting the Congress. The most widely accepted view is that Hume, under Lord Dufferin, organised the Congress with two main purposes: to provide a “safety-value” to the anticipated or actual discontentment of the Indian intelligentsia and to form a quasi-constitutional party similar to Her Majesty’s Opposition in England. Lala Lajpat Rai maintained that the Indian National Congress was organised to serve as a ‘safety valve’ for the growing unrest in the country and to strengthen the British Empire. However, very soon the Indian National Congress was taken over by the Indians.

We shall divide the history of the Congress into three periods: the first phase being from 1885 to 1905, the second period from 1905-1915 and the third from 1915 to 1947.

Each one of these periods has distinct characteristics and we shall analyse the events, the psychology of the leaders and that of the mass.

The first period was dominated by four leaders, namely Dadabhai Naoroji, Pheroseshah Mehta, Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Surendranath Banerjee. For the next two decades till about 1905, they dominated the scene and controlled the Congress party. Here is a brief note on these four personalities.

Dadabhai Naoroji entered the political fray in 1852. He felt that the British misrule of India was because of ignorance of the way of life and needs of the Indian people. To remedy this he felt that he must educate the Indian masses of their rights. He also believed that the British bureaucracy in India must be made aware of the problems of India. He wrote several petitions to Governors and Viceroys regarding India's problems. Finally he felt that the British people and the British Parliament must be made aware of India's plight. He yearned to go to England to put forward India's case there. Dadabhai wanted to win friends and sympathizers for India. He joined several learned societies, delivered many speeches and wrote articles on the plight of India. He founded the East Indian Association on December 1st, 1866. The association was comprised of high- ranking officers from India and people who had access to Members of the British Parliament. Dadabhai had become the unofficial ambassador of India.

Dadabhai was elected to the British Parliament in 1892. This made it possible for Dadabhai to work for India from within! He got a resolution passed for holding preliminary examinations for the I.C.S. in India and England simultaneously and also got the Wiley Commission, the royal commission on India expenditure, to acknowledge the need for even distribution of administrative and military expenditure between India and England.

Dadabhai's efforts were rewarded in 1866 when the Secretary of State for India agreed to appoint 9 Indians out of 60 to the Indian Civil Service (I.C.S.) by nomination.

As the years passed, Dadabhai grew more and more disillusioned with the "fair-minded" British. After spending years collecting statistics, Dadabhai propounded the drain theory: "The inevitable consequence of foreign domination is the drain of wealth of the subject nation to the country of the rulers." Dadabhai proved that the average annual income of an Indian was barely Rs. 20. Examining the import and export figures for 37 years, he proved that India's exports exceeded its imports by Rs. 50 crores (approximately $135 million) annually.

The "Grand Old Man of India," as Dadabhai was fondly known, believed that the methods for justice for India should always be non-violent and constitutional.

Pherozeshah Mehta was born on August 4, 1845. After completing his education in Bombay he went to England to study law. He was called to the bar in 1868. He is known for the reforms he brought about in the municipal government in Bombay and is known as the Father of Municipal in Bombay. He gave up his successful career as a lawyer to enter public life as a nationalist, and was elected the president of the Indian National Congress in 1890. He became a member of the Bombay Legislative Council in 1893. He founded the newspaper Bombay Chronicle in 1910.

Surendranath Banerjea was the President of the Indian National Congress twice, in 1895 and 1902. He was an ardent advocate of social reform including widow remarriage and the raising of the age of marriage of girls. Born on November 19, 1848, Surendranath Banerjea had his early education in Calcutta. He appeared for the Indian Civil Service Examination in London and started his career in 1871 as an Assistant Magistrate. He had to leave the service on his dismissal on a flimsy charge. He went back to England and prepared himself for his future career as a national leader. He was a gifted orator and writer.

Gopal Krishna Gokhale entered into public life in 1886 at the young age of 20 years. While contributing articles to the English weekly Mahratta, he was attracted by the idea of using education as a means to awaken patriotism among the people of India. He was promoted to Secretary of the Deccan Education Society. Later he was given charge of the Bombay Provincial Conference in 1893, and was elected to the Senate of the Bombay University. In time, Gokhale came to devote all his spare time to the causes of the common man: famine, plague relief measures, local self- government, land reform, and communal harmony. Gokhale also published a daily newspaper entitled Jnanaprakash, which allowed him to voice his reformist views on politics and society. Gokhale visited England and voiced his concerns relating to the unfair treatment of the Indian people by the British government. Gokhale pleaded for gradual reform to ultimately attain Swaraj, or self-government, in India, He was instrumental in the formation of the Minto-Morley Reforms of 1909, which eventually became law. Unfortunately, the Reforms Act became law in 1909 and it was disappointing to see that the people were not given a proper democratic system despite Gokhale's efforts. The communal harmony he had longed for was shattered when he realized that the Muslim community was steadfast in considering itself as a separate unit.

The Indian National Congress thus became the vanguard of the nationalist movement for the next few decades till the advent of freedom in 1947. Let us analyze the basic assumptions on which the movement was based during this first phase from 1885 to 1905.

In the first stage of its existence (1885-1905), the vision of the Indian National Congress was somewhat dim, vague and confused. The movement was confined to a handful of the educated middle class intelligentsia who drew inspiration from western Liberal and Radical Thought.

The essentials of the movement may be summed up thus:

• An implicit faith in the British sense of justice and fairplay.
• The determination to work within the framework of the constitution and by non-violent means.
• No clear cut goal for political freedom; only some reforms and a greater participation in the government;
• The method adopted to fulfill these demands were: pray, petition and protest; even for its shamefully modest demands, flattery to gain the goodwill of the British
• A total disinterest and neglect of the masses or the proletariat; the Congress became a movement of the elite upper classes.

Here are some illustrations of this psychological attitude through some of the resolutions and statements of the leaders of the Congress party.

The Congress held its first session on 28 December 1885. All the delegates affirmed their loyalty to the British Crown and they declared “all they desired was the basis of the government should be widened and that the people should have their proper and legitimate share in it.”

From that year onwards the Congress met every year and passed resolutions, which were reprinted in newspapers and widely discussed. The main idea of these resolutions was to educate public opinion and to persuade the British to effect various measures of political reform. The British in their turn completely ignored these resolutions. As a matter of fact, the British had nothing but contempt for the Congress Party. As Lord Curzon said: “The Congress is tottering to its fall, and one of my greatest ambitions, while in India, is to assist it to a peaceful demise.” In another of those ironies of history, it was Lord Curzon who was directly responsible to give the freedom movement a new lease of life.

Here is one illustration of a resolution of the Indian National Congress: “The Indian National congress tenders its loyal homage to His Gracious Majesty the King Emperor and respectfully welcomes the message sent by His Majesty to the Princes and People of India on the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Memorable Proclamation issued in 1858 by his Illustrious Mother Victoria The Good.This Congress begs to record its satisfaction that the interpretation placed by it upon the pledges contained in that ‘Great Charter of 1858 has been upheld by His Majesty.

The Congress gratefully welcomes the pronouncement made by His Majesty that the time has come when the principle of representative institutions, which, from the first, began to be gradually introduced in India, may be prudently extended and that the politic satisfaction of the claim to equality of citizenship and greater share in legislation and Government made by important classes in India, representing ideas that have been fostered and encouraged by British rule, will strengthen, not impair, existing authority and power.”

(Resolution No 1 of the 23rd Indian National Congress held at Madras on 28th, 29th and 30th December. 1908.)

Even a leader like Gokhale said in one of his statements: “Only men outside lunatic asylums could think or talk of independence… there is no alternative to British Rule, not only now but for a long time to come.” What was worse was that even for its shamefully modest demands, it resorted to flattery to gain the goodwill of the British

Another point to be noted at this time was the use of the policy of divide and rule adopted by the British. The British officials relied upon the policy of “divide and rule” to weaken the nationalist movement. They encouraged Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, Raja Shiv Prasad and other pro-British Indians to start an anti-Congress movement. They tried to drive a wedge between the Hindus and Muslims. They fanned communal rivalries among the educated Indians on the question of jobs in Government service. Indeed they succeeded in their game and the consequences are visible even today.

If we critically evaluate the work of the Moderates it is evident that they did not achieve much success. Very few of the reforms advocated by them were carried out. The foreign rulers treated them with contempt. The moderates failed to acquire any roots among the common people and even those who joined the Congress with high hopes were feeling more and more disillusioned. The politics of the moderates was “halting and half-hearted”. Their methods can be best described as those of mendicancy or beggary through prayers and petitions.

But it would be wrong to say that the political record of the moderates was a barren one. They made possible a decisive shift in Indian politics. To a certain extent they succeeded in creating a political awakening and in arousing among the Indians the feeling that they belonged to one common nation. They exposed the true character of British imperialism in India. They successfully brought to light the most important political and economic aspect of the Indian reality that India was being ruled by a foreign power for economic exploitation and thus undermined the moral foundations of British rule in India.

This was the seed-time of Indian nationalism. In spite of their many failures, they laid the foundation for the national movement to grow upon and they deserve a high place among the makers of modern India.

But at the same time it is also clear that the forces released by the Sepoy Mutiny did not get the chance to manifest - the direction and the leadership was lacking. The flame that was lit did not get the chance to grow into a fire. The attitude of the leaders was so weak and submissive that the masses could not be aroused. The nationalist feeling had to lie low for a more opportune moment. It must be however noted that even during this period, some leaders and writers proclaimed loudly their disenchantment with the Congress. We shall mention two such leaders: Sri Aurobindo then known as Aurobindo Ghose and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. As early as 1893, immediately after his return from England, at the young age of 21, Sri Aurobindo wrote a series of articles in the Indu Prakash. In these articles, he severely criticized the Congress for its mendicant approach. He felt that instead of having a clear-cut goal of national freedom, it wasted its time on immaterial trifles and paltry administrative reforms. He advocated a leonine policy rather than the mendicant policy being followed then by the leaders of the Congress party. Here is an extract from the Indu Prakash: “I say of the Congress, then, this – that its aims are mistaken, that the spirit in which it proceeds towards their accomplishments is not a spirit of sincerity and whole-heartedness, and that the methods it has chosen are not the right methods, and the leaders in whom it trusts not the right sort of men to be leaders; - in brief, that we are at present the blind led, if not by the blind, at any rate by the one-eyed.”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak was another severe critic of the Congress party and its methods. Tilak was a brilliant politician as well as a profound scholar who believed that independence was the foremost necessity for the well being of a nation and that extreme measures need not be dispensed with. He was one of the leaders to understand the importance of mass support and subsequently became one of the first mass leaders of India. He realized that the constitutional agitation in itself was futile against the British; however he felt that India was not yet prepared for an armed revolt.

He had a genius for organisation and started the newspapers 'Kesari' and 'The Maratha' in 1881; later in the early 1890's he started the annual celebration of 'Shivaji Festival' and 'Ganapati Festival' which served as a platform for people to join in the nationalist movement against the British.

It is evident that the leaders of the Congress did not capitalize on the spirit generated by the revolt of 1857. Instead, by asking for inconsequential reforms, which were even scoffed at by the British, they frittered it away. But the spirit remained dormant and was waiting for a chance to manifest itself. A spark was needed and that came with the partition of Bengal in 1905.

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