The Indian National Congress: From Foundation to Independence

The Indian National Congress was founded in December 1885 and dissolved into the two new states of India and Pakistan in 1947. In the sixty-two years of its life it was the principal political organisation of the Indian independence movement, and its history is, in many respects, the history of that movement. The Congress began as a loyalist body seeking a greater Indian role in the British administration of India. It became, over six decades, the principal vehicle of Indian independence. The transformation, from loyalist opposition to mass revolutionary movement, was a long and contested process, and the Congress itself, at different times, was dominated by moderates, by extremists, by Gandhians, and by socialists. The achievement of Indian independence in 1947 was, in significant part, the achievement of the Congress. The partition of India, with the establishment of Pakistan as a separate state, was the most painful failure of the Congress. The two facts, taken together, are the central history of the Indian National Congress.

The Founding of the Congress

The Indian National Congress was founded in Bombay in December 1885. The principal founder was Allan Octavian Hume (1829–1912), a retired British civil servant who had served in the Indian Civil Service in Etah and who had retired to Simla in 1882. Hume was a liberal in British politics, a member of the Theosophical Society, and a believer in the value of Indian political association. He saw the Congress as a safety valve, a way of giving expression to Indian political opinion that would otherwise have taken more dangerous forms. The seventy-two delegates who attended the first Congress in Bombay in December 1885 were mostly English-speaking professionals, lawyers, journalists, and educators, drawn from the larger cities of British India.

The early Congress was a moderate body. Its principal figures — Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pherozeshah Mehta, Badruddin Tyabji, and others — sought a greater Indian role in the British administration of India, the introduction of competitive examinations for the Indian Civil Service, and the expansion of Indian representation in the legislative councils. The early Congress annual sessions, held in different cities of British India, were the principal occasions of Indian political life. The early Congress resolutions, drafted in the English language and submitted to the British authorities, were polite requests for reform. The British response was a series of minor concessions — the Indian Councils Acts of 1892 and 1909 — that left the substance of British power in India untouched.

The Moderates and the Extremists

The first major crisis of the Congress came in 1905, with the partition of Bengal and the resulting Swadeshi movement. Lord Curzon, the viceroy, partitioned the province of Bengal in October 1905, on the grounds that the existing province was too large to administer effectively. The partition, which split the Bengali-speaking population between the new provinces of Bengal and Eastern Bengal and Assam, was widely seen as a divide-and-rule measure, and it produced a serious political crisis. The Swadeshi movement, which called for the boycott of British goods and the promotion of Indian products, was the principal political expression of the Bengali protest.

The partition of Bengal produced a split in the Congress. The moderates — Gokhale, Naoroji, and others — supported a constitutional approach to the question, with continued pressure on the British authorities for reform. The extremists — Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Aurobindo Ghose — supported a more confrontational approach, with the promotion of Swadeshi, the boycott of British goods, and the development of a mass political movement. The split was formalised at the Surat session of the Congress in December 1907, when the two factions fought a literal brawl over the question of the Congress presidency. The Congress was, in effect, split in two.

The Rise of Gandhi and the Gandhian Era

The Congress was reunited in 1916, at the Lucknow session, with the Lucknow Pact between the Congress and the Muslim League. The reunion was, however, a temporary affair. The Rowlatt Act of March 1919, which authorised the British Indian government to try political cases without juries and to detain political prisoners without trial, produced a serious political crisis. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919, in which General Reginald Dyer ordered his troops to fire on a peaceful political gathering in Amritsar, killing perhaps 400 people and wounding perhaps 1,200, was the event that converted the Indian political class to the necessity of mass political action. Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), who had returned to India from South Africa in January 1915, became the principal figure of the Indian independence movement.

The Gandhian era of the Congress began in 1920, with the Non-Cooperation Movement. The movement, which called on Indians to boycott British institutions, British goods, and British courts, was the largest political mobilisation in Indian history. The movement was suspended in February 1922, after the Chauri Chaura incident, in which a mob attacked a police station and killed 22 policemen. The suspension was a major political crisis for the Congress, and the Gandhian strategy of non-violence was the subject of serious debate. The Salt March of March–April 1930, in which Gandhi led a group of followers on a 240-mile march from Sabarmati Ashram to the Gujarat coast to protest the British salt tax, was the most dramatic political demonstration of the Gandhian era. The Civil Disobedience Movement that followed the Salt March was the largest political movement in Indian history.

The Congress in the 1930s

The Government of India Act of 1935, which established provincial self-government and a federal structure for the whole of British India, was the principal British attempt to find a constitutional framework for an independent India. The provincial elections of February 1937, held under the Act of 1935, gave the Congress a clear majority in seven of the eleven provinces, and the Congress ministries took office in July 1937. The Congress ministries, led by figures like Nehru in the United Provinces and B. G. Kher in Bombay, were the principal training ground for the Indian politicians who would lead independent India.

The Hindu-Muslim question, however, was a serious problem for the Congress in the 1930s. The All-India Muslim League, under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was an increasingly assertive political force, and the demand for Pakistan — a separate Muslim state — was gaining ground. The Lahore Resolution of March 1940, which called for “independent states” for the Muslim-majority areas of British India, was the founding document of the Pakistan movement. The Congress, for its part, was increasingly dominated by Hindu leaders, and the political culture of the Congress became, in some respects, less accommodating to Muslim concerns. The failure of the Congress to find a constitutional framework that would accommodate the Muslim League was the principal cause of the partition of 1947.

The Second World War and the Quit India Movement

The Second World War was the decisive event in the history of the Congress. The British declaration of war on Germany in September 1939, on behalf of British India without consulting Indian political leaders, produced a serious political crisis. The Congress ministries in the provinces resigned in October 1939, in protest against the British action. The Muslim League, taking advantage of the Congress absence, celebrated the “Day of Deliverance” and consolidated its position in the Muslim-majority provinces.

The Cripps Mission of March–April 1942, which offered India dominion status after the war in exchange for cooperation during the war, was rejected by the Congress. The Quit India Resolution, passed by the All-India Congress Committee on 8 August 1942, called for the immediate withdrawal of British rule and authorised a mass civil disobedience campaign. The British response was the immediate arrest of the principal Congress leaders, including Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The Quit India Movement, in which perhaps 60,000 people were arrested and perhaps 1,000 were killed, was the most serious crisis of British rule in India since 1857. The movement was effectively over by 1944, but the question of Indian independence was not resolved.

The Cabinet Mission and the Final Settlement

The end of the Second World War in August 1945 produced a new political crisis. The Labour government of Clement Attlee, elected in July 1945, was determined to resolve the Indian question. The Cabinet Mission of March–June 1946 attempted to find a constitutional framework for an independent India. The Cabinet Mission Plan, which proposed a three-tier federation of India, was rejected by the Muslim League. The Direct Action Day of 16 August 1946, called by the Muslim League, produced a massacre of Hindus in Calcutta in which perhaps 5,000 people were killed. The cycle of communal violence that followed was to last until 1947.

The decision to partition British India was taken by the British government in February 1947, in response to the breakdown of the Cabinet Mission process. The Indian Independence Act of July 1947, passed by the British Parliament, established the two new dominions of India and Pakistan. The transfer of power took place on 14 August 1947 (Pakistan) and 15 August 1947 (India). The Congress, having been the principal vehicle of Indian independence, became the principal political organisation of the new state of India. The Muslim League, having been the principal vehicle of the demand for Pakistan, became the principal political organisation of the new state of Pakistan.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of the Indian National Congress has been substantially revised since the 1990s. The older tradition, of which the work of R. C. Majumdar, the History of the Freedom Movement in India project, and the early volumes of the Cambridge History of India are representative, treated the Congress as a national movement whose history was, in effect, the history of Indian independence. The post-independence Indian historiography, of which the work of Sumit Sarkar, Partha Chatterjee, Ranajit Guha, and the Subaltern Studies group has been the most influential representative, has tried to recover the experience of those who were not represented in the Congress. The current generation of historians, of whom the work of C. A. Bayly, David Arnold, Ayesha Jalal, and the contributors to the Oxford History of the British Empire are the most distinguished representatives, has produced a much more nuanced picture. The Congress, on this more recent view, was a complex and contested political organisation whose history is not identical with the history of the Indian independence movement. The Gandhian moment, in particular, has been the subject of substantial revisionist work: the work of the “Nonviolence and the State” project, of the work of William Dalrymple, and of the work of Kim Wagner have produced a more nuanced picture of the relationship between non-violence and violence in the Indian independence movement.

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