NCERT Class 8 - Our Pasts III • NCERT Class 12 - Themes in Indian History Part III, Chapter 13

Rise of Nationalism and Early Congress

Indian nationalism grew out of the experience of common rule and common grievance. The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, was its first all-India political body, and for twenty years it worked through petition and public argument.

Causes of nationalism

• Economic exploitation - the drain of wealth, the decline of handicrafts, and famine, which convinced educated Indians that poverty was a result of policy.
• Western education brought ideas of liberty, nationality and representative government, and created a class able to argue in the rulers' own language.
• Administrative and political unity under one government, one law and one currency made a single political community thinkable.
• Railways, post and telegraph allowed leaders and newspapers to reach the whole country.
• The press and literature - vernacular and English newspapers created a national public debate.
• Rediscovery of the past through the work of Indian and European scholars gave educated Indians confidence in their own civilisation.
• Racial discrimination, felt sharply in the Ilbert Bill controversy of 1883, when Europeans in India protested against Indian judges trying them, showed that equality would not be granted.
• Lytton's policies - the Vernacular Press Act and the Arms Act of 1878, and the lowering of the maximum age for the civil service examination.

Early associations

Founding of the Congress

• The Congress met for the first time at Bombay on 28 December 1885, at the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, with 72 delegates.
• A. O. Hume, a retired civil servant, took the initiative in bringing it together; W. C. Bonnerjee was the first president.
• The theory that it was a safety valve meant to release discontent harmlessly is now generally rejected, since the leaders had their own reasons for wanting a national forum.
• Early sessions demanded representation in legislatures, Indianisation of services, reduction of military spending and relief for peasants and artisans.

The Moderates

• Leading Moderates were Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Surendranath Banerjea, Pherozeshah Mehta, Badruddin Tyabji and M. G. Ranade.
• Their method is summed up as prayer, petition and protest - constitutional agitation, meetings, resolutions and press campaigns.
• They believed in the possibility of reform within British rule and worked to educate public opinion in both India and Britain.
• Their major intellectual contribution was the economic critique of colonial rule, above all Naoroji's drain theory.
• Achievements include the Indian Councils Act of 1892, which enlarged the legislative councils, and the appointment of the Welby Commission on Indian expenditure.
• Their limits were a narrow social base and slow results, which produced impatience among younger leaders.