The moderate & extremist phases of the Congress
The Indian National Congress from 1885 to 1916: the Moderate strategy of constitutionalism, the Extremist turn to Swaraj, the 1907 Surat Split, and the 1916 reunion.
The founding and the Moderate strategy (1885-1905)
The Indian National Congress was founded in December 1885 at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay, with A.O. Hume, a retired Civil Servant, as its principal architect and W.C. Bonnerjee as its first president. Seventy-two delegates attended. The early leadership—Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Surendranath Banerjea, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, R.C. Dutt and Badruddin Tyabji—belonged to the Western-educated professional class and is collectively termed the Moderates.
The Moderate creed rested on three pillars. First, constitutional agitation: petitions, prayers, resolutions, memorials and deputations—the so-called method of the '3 Ps' (petition, prayer, protest), later dismissed by Tilak as 'political mendicancy'. Second, faith in British justice and the providential character of British rule; they sought reform within the empire, not its overthrow. Third, the use of the press and the public platform to educate opinion, exemplified by the Indian Mirror, The Hindu, Amrita Bazar Patrika and Bengalee.
The economic critique
The Moderates' most enduring contribution was intellectual: the Drain of Wealth theory, formulated by Dadabhai Naoroji in Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901) and reinforced by R.C. Dutt's Economic History of India (1901-03). They demonstrated that home charges, salaries, pensions and council bills siphoned India's surplus to Britain, deindustrialised the country and impoverished the peasantry. This economic nationalism stripped British rule of its claim to benevolence.
Concrete demands and limited gains
The Moderates demanded the Indianisation of the services, simultaneous ICS examinations in India and Britain, a raised age limit, expansion of legislative councils, separation of the judiciary from the executive, reduction of military expenditure, and the spread of education. Their pressure contributed to the Indian Councils Act of 1892, which enlarged the councils and introduced a limited, indirect element of election—modest, but the first official recognition of the elective principle.
The Moderates have been criticised for elitism, an annual three-day 'theatre', and excessive faith in Britain. Yet they laid indispensable foundations: they established the legitimacy of an all-India political organisation, exposed the colonial economy, and trained a generation in disciplined political work. Gokhale's restraint and constitutional mastery later made him Gandhi's self-declared political guru.
