Rise of nationalism & the early Congress

The Material and Intellectual Roots of Nationalism

Indian nationalism was the product of forces unleashed by British rule itself, even as it turned against that rule. Economic exploitation supplied the deepest grievance: Dadabhai Naoroji's Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901) systematised the Drain of Wealth theory, arguing that Britain annually siphoned India's surplus abroad. Romesh Chandra Dutt's Economic History of India (1902-04) and Naoroji's earlier 1867 paper documented the deindustrialisation of handicrafts, the burden of the Home Charges, and recurrent famines (the 1876-78 and 1896-97 famines killed millions).

Administrative and political unification created a single arena for a national consciousness. The railways (begun 1853), the telegraph, a uniform postal system, and English as a link language enabled an all-India intelligentsia to communicate. The Indian Penal Code (1860), the codified law and the unified judiciary produced a shared legal universe.

The Press, Western Education and the New Intelligentsia

Western education, formalised by Macaulay's Minute (1835) and Wood's Despatch (1854), produced a class steeped in the liberal-democratic ideas of Mill, Burke, Spencer and Mazzini. The universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras (all 1857) became nurseries of political thought. A vigorous vernacular and English press — the Amrita Bazar Patrika, The Hindu (1878), Kesari and Maratha (Tilak, 1881) — built public opinion, which the colonial state tried to muzzle through the Vernacular Press Act of 1878 under Lytton.

Pre-Congress associations laid organisational foundations: the Bengal British Indian Society (1843), the British Indian Association (1851), Dadabhai Naoroji's East India Association (1866, London), the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (1870), Surendranath Banerjea's Indian Association of Calcutta (1876), and the Madras Mahajan Sabha (1884) and Bombay Presidency Association (1885).

Immediate provocations sharpened resentment. Lytton's repressive measures — the Vernacular Press Act (1878) and the Arms Act (1878) — and the reduction of the maximum age for the Indian Civil Service examination to 19 (1876) provoked the Ilbert Bill controversy (1883-84), when European opposition to allowing Indian magistrates to try Europeans exposed the racism underlying the Raj and demonstrated the power of organised agitation.

The Birth of the Indian National Congress, 1885

The Indian National Congress was founded in December 1885 at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay. A retired Scottish civil servant, Allan Octavian Hume, was its prime organiser; Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee presided over the first session of 72 delegates. The discredited 'safety-valve' theory — that Hume created the Congress to forestall revolution — derives from Lala Lajpat Rai's 1916 reading of Hume's biography (W. Wedderburn, 1913); modern historians treat the Congress as the culmination of an indigenous nationalist process for which Hume's involvement was a convenient lightning conductor.

The Moderate Phase, 1885-1905: Aims and Methods

The first two decades of the Congress are dominated by the Moderates — Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Surendranath Banerjea, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Madan Mohan Malaviya, Dinshaw Wacha and W.C. Bonnerjee. Their ideology was constitutionalist: they sought reform within the British connection, believing British rule was, on balance, providential but in need of 'Indianisation'. Their method was the 3-P formula — Prayer, Petition and Protest — supplemented by what Gokhale termed mobilising public opinion in India and Britain.

Their demands were graduated, not separatist. They pressed for the expansion of the Legislative Councils and a larger Indian share in them; the Indianisation of the civil services and holding the ICS examination simultaneously in India and England; the separation of the judiciary from the executive; reduction of military expenditure; and the abolition of the Council of India in London. On economics their critique was incisive — the Drain theory, opposition to the salt tax and to one-sided free trade, and demand for the development of indigenous industry.

Achievements, Limits and the Seeds of Division

The Moderates' tangible gains were modest but real. The Indian Councils Act of 1892, passed in response to their agitation, enlarged the councils and introduced an indirect, limited principle of election — though the franchise remained narrow and the councils advisory. They established the British Committee of the Congress (1889) and the journal India (1890) in London to influence Parliament, and Naoroji entered the House of Commons as Liberal MP for Central Finsbury in 1892. Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society (1905) to train public workers.

The Moderates' enduring achievement was political education: they exposed the economic basis of imperialism, popularised democratic-nationalist ideas, and built the institutional skeleton of the movement. Their limits, however, generated impatience. Their narrow social base — English-educated professionals — their faith in British justice, and their cautious 'mendicancy' (a term flung by Aurobindo Ghosh and Bipin Chandra Pal) alienated a rising generation.

By the turn of the century the Extremists — Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal (the 'Lal-Bal-Pal' trio) and Aurobindo Ghosh — demanded Swaraj and direct action. Tilak's slogan, "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it," and his use of the Ganpati (1893) and Shivaji (1896) festivals signalled a militant, mass-oriented turn. The fault-line would split open at the Surat Split of 1907, but its origins lie in this Moderate decade — the subject of the next lesson.

Why This Matters for the Exam

This lesson is a high-frequency zone in both Prelims GS and Mains GS-1 (the modern Indian history segment running 'from about the middle of the eighteenth century until the present').

How It Is Tested in Prelims

Prelims favours factual precision and matching: founders and dates of pre-Congress associations (East India Association 1866, Indian Association 1876, Poona Sarvajanik Sabha 1870); the first Congress session (Bombay, December 1885, 72 delegates, W.C. Bonnerjee presiding); authorship of key texts (Naoroji's Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, 1901; Dutt's Economic History); and the chronology of the Indian Councils Acts (1861, 1892, 1909). UPSC has repeatedly set 'match the leader with the organisation/newspaper' and 'arrange in chronological order' items. Retain that the Vernacular Press Act (1878) and Arms Act (1878) belong to Lytton, and the Ilbert Bill (1883) to Ripon.

How It Is Tested in Mains

Mains demands analysis of causation and assessment. Canonical PYQ angles: 'Examine the factors responsible for the rise of nationalism in the 19th century'; 'The Moderates failed to carry conviction with the nation about the real character of British rule — comment'; and questions contrasting Moderate and Extremist methods. The examiner rewards (1) a multi-causal framework — economic, administrative, intellectual, press, and the role of repressive measures; (2) a critical handling of the safety-valve historiography; and (3) a balanced verdict that credits the Moderates with political education and the Drain critique while acknowledging their narrow base.

High-Yield Retention

Memorise: A.O. Hume (founder-organiser); the 3-P method (Prayer, Petition, Protest); the 'Grand Old Man of India' (Naoroji, MP 1892); the Servants of India Society (Gokhale, 1905); and the Lal-Bal-Pal trio. Link this lesson forward to the Partition of Bengal (1905) and the Surat Split (1907), and backward to the economic-drain consequences of British policy. Always close a Mains answer by situating the Moderates as the necessary first phase of a movement they could not by themselves complete.