---
title: "Rise of Nationalism & the Early Congress: GS-1"
description: "Indian nationalism rose from colonial discontent, founding the Congress in 1885 and a moderate phase of constitutional agitation up to 1905. Study these"
url: "https://modeldiplomat.com/learn/lessons/upsc-modern-history-rise-of-nationalism-the-early-congress"
---

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Rise of nationalism & the early Congress

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# Rise of nationalism & the early Congress

The factors behind Indian nationalism's rise, the foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885, and the moderate phase of constitutional agitation up to 1905.

## 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.

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