The Indian Congress was founded in 1885 with its first meeting was held on December 28, in Bombay (Now Mumbai). Presided over by W.C. Bonnerjee the inaugural session of the Indian National Congress registered the presence of 72 delegates from all over India. A retired English bureaucrat A.O. Hume played a significant role in this process.
It is quite often pointed out that Hume established the Congress to provide a ‘safety valve’ to deflect an impending widespread unrest among the Indian masses against the British rule. This view has acquired credibility because Hume himself stated that the formation of the Congress was required because a ‘safety valve for the escape of great and growing forces generated by our own action was urgently needed’.
In fact, Hume did believe that a popular outbreak was imminent because ‘these poor men were pervaded with a sense of hopelessness of the existing state of affairs; that they were convinced that they would starve and die, and that they wanted to do something’.
Image Source : cdn.publishyourarticles.net
ADVERTISEMENTS:
This ‘something’, in Hume’s opinion, was a resort to violence, an open revolt against the authorities which should be checked. He believed that the best way to check this popular insurrection was to help form an all-India body which would mediate between the discontented masses and the colonial authorities.
The formation of the Congress can be seen as a logical culmination of the nationalist activities since the 1860s and 1870s. The British policies in India were generating a sense of discontent among most classes of Indians. Nationalist ideas were being disseminated through the various newspapers and magazines published in various Indian languages and in English.
Various nationalist political associations were trying to create public opinion against the colonial policies. All these ideas and activities led to the formation of the Indian National Congress. Its goal was to create unity, intimacy and friendship among all the Indians from various linguistic, regional and religious backgrounds.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
It also sought to remove prejudices relating to race, language, religion and provinces. It further aimed at expressing the views of educated Indians on the important problems of the day, including the colonial policies. The early nationalists constantly wrote and spoke about the need for constitutional reforms which would give the Indians a more effective voice in the governance of their own country.
They also complained that the country was growing poorer under the British rule, that India’s wealth was taken away to Britain through various means, that the traditional Indian industries were destroyed through the import of foreign machine-made goods, that India’s modern industries were suffering due to faulty government policies about tariff, that Indian taxpayers were forced to pay for colonial expansionism in Afghanistan and Burma, and the Indian peasants were sinking in increasing poverty because of increasing revenue demand.
Despite the fact that the early nationalists adopted peaceful and legal methods of campaign, their constant criticism of the colonial government made the British authorities angry. The then Viceroy Lord Dufferin attacked the Congress leaders as disloyal babus’, ‘seditious Brahmins’ and ‘violent villains’.
He was of the opinion that the government ‘cannot allow the Congress to continue to exist’. And Curzon, a later Viceroy, expressed the hope in 1900 that ‘the Congress is tottering to its fall, and one of my great ambitions, while in India, is to assist it to a peaceful demise’. However, despite this official hostility, the Congress continued to grow and lead the national movement against the colonial rule.