The Foundation of Indian National Congress: Cornerstone of India’s Democratic Journey

On 28 December 1885, 72 delegates gathered at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Bombay to launch what would become one of the most consequential political organizations in modern history. The founding of the Indian National Congress (INC) was not a sudden event – it was the culmination of decades of growing political awareness, economic grievance, and the desire of India’s educated class to have a meaningful say in governing their own country. Understanding how and why the INC was founded reveals the deeper currents that would eventually carry India to independence in 1947.

The political climate before 1885 🔗

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a turning point. After it was suppressed, the British Crown took direct control of India from the East India Company, establishing what became known as the British Raj. This shift did not resolve the underlying tensions – if anything, it sharpened them. By the late 19th century, a rising class of English-educated Indians was becoming increasingly aware of the gap between the democratic principles they were being taught and the political exclusion they experienced in practice.

Several regional organizations had already emerged to articulate Indian grievances. The Indian Association, founded in 1876 by Surendranath Banerjee, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, and the Madras Mahajana Sabha were all actively pushing for reform. But these were regional in scope. What India lacked was a single, all-India platform – and that gap set the stage for the INC.

The role of A.O. Hume and the founding moment 🔗

The man who gave the idea its final, concrete shape was Allan Octavian Hume, a retired British Indian Civil Service officer. Hume founded the INC with the goal of forming a platform for civil and political dialogue among educated Indians. He reached out to graduates of Calcutta University as early as 1883, and by 1884 had formed the Indian National Union to bring educated Indians onto a common political platform.

The first session of the INC was originally planned for Poona, but a cholera outbreak forced a shift to Bombay. The first session was held from 28 to 31 December 1885 at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, organized by Hume with the approval of Viceroy Lord Dufferin. Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee of Calcutta was elected the first president, while Hume became General Secretary. The 72 delegates present were predominantly lawyers, representing each province of India, and included prominent figures such as Dadabhai Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, and Badruddin Tyabji.

It was at Dadabhai Naoroji’s suggestion that the organization was renamed from “Indian National Union” to “Indian National Congress” – a name deliberately chosen to signal inclusivity across the entire nation.

Who were the founders – and what did they want? 🔗

The founding membership of the INC was drawn almost entirely from India’s educated elite: lawyers, journalists, civil servants, and social reformers. The Congress was initially not a political party but an association for promoting friendship, eradicating provincial and religious prejudices, and pooling the opinions of educated Indians on pressing social questions. Its early leaders shared a broadly moderate outlook – they believed in working within the legal and constitutional framework of the British Empire to win concessions, not in confronting it directly.

These early leaders, often called the Moderates, were confident in the power of reasoned petitions and parliamentary debate. They believed British liberalism, if properly informed about India’s conditions, would respond to legitimate demands. Their primary demand was straightforward: Indians deserved a greater share in their own governance. They primarily advocated for the Indianisation of administrative services, emphasising that India should be governed by Indians in collaboration with the British.

The “safety valve” controversy 🔗

The circumstances of the INC’s founding have long been debated by historians. The so-called Safety Valve Theory holds that Hume – with the tacit blessing of the British establishment – created the Congress as a controlled outlet for growing Indian discontent, thereby preventing a violent uprising like the Revolt of 1857. This theory was advanced by extremist leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai, and later versions appeared in the work of Marxist historian R. Palme Dutt, who framed the INC’s founding as a conspiracy by the colonial bourgeoisie.

However, modern historical scholarship has largely rejected this theory, emphasizing the genuine nationalist aspirations of the Indian leaders who formed the Congress. Historian Bipan Chandra, for instance, argued that early Congress leaders deliberately used Hume as a “lightning conductor” – his British identity offered the nascent organization protection from immediate suppression by colonial authorities. As the historian Gopal Krishna Gokhale noted in 1913, no Indian could have started such a movement without it being suppressed; only a respected British official could have brought it into existence without triggering a colonial crackdown.

The irony was neatly captured in a phrase that has stayed with historians: if Hume hoped to use Congress as a safety valve, the Congress leaders hoped to use Hume as a lightning conductor. Both sides, in other words, had their own strategic calculations – but the organization that emerged was genuinely nationalist in its character and ambitions.

Early demands: constitutional reform and Indian representation 🔗

In its first two decades, the INC pursued a carefully moderate agenda. The INC programme during 1885-1905 called for moderate constitutional reforms, economic relief, administrative reorganisation, and the protection of civil rights. Through annual sessions held in different cities – a deliberate strategy to build all-India participation – the Congress passed resolutions on a wide range of issues and presented them to the British government as petitions.

Between 1885 and 1892, the Congress’s primary demand was the expansion and reform of the Legislative Councils, pushing for greater Indian representation in governance. As a result of their persistent agitation, the British government was compelled to pass the Indian Councils Act of 1892 – though Congress leaders considered it wholly inadequate. They also consistently advocated for the Indianisation of the civil services, demanding that competitive examinations be held simultaneously in India and England so that qualified Indians would have a fair chance at administrative positions.

On economic matters, the early Congress was direct. Leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji developed the Drain of Wealth Theory, meticulously documenting how British colonial policies drained India’s resources. Congress passed resolutions condemning the salt tax, the treatment of Indian labourers abroad, and the economic hardships faced by forest-dwelling communities under colonial forest administration. The reduction of military expenditure – a burden that fell heavily on Indian taxpayers – was another recurring demand.

Reaching beyond the elite: workers, peasants, and land 🔗

The founding membership of the INC was unquestionably elite, and critics – including later nationalist leaders – pointed out that the early Congress did little to directly represent the vast majority of Indians who were peasants and workers. The ordinary people of India were largely unaware of the Congress’s existence in its early years, as the Congress never initially attempted to address the issues of poverty, lack of healthcare, or social oppression.

Yet the early Congress was not entirely indifferent to agrarian distress. Congress leaders attributed the impoverishment of peasants to increased land revenue demands, and blamed food shortages on the export of grain to Europe – articulating these concerns through the framework of economic nationalism. They advocated for the establishment of agricultural banks to rescue peasants from the grip of moneylenders, and passed resolutions calling for reforms to the exploitative zamindari system. The demands were political rather than grassroots – driven from above by educated reformers rather than emerging from peasant movements – but they planted the seeds of a language connecting political rights with economic justice.

The INC’s indirect engagement with the issues of workers and peasants was also expressed through philanthropy and civic action by its members. Numerous resolutions were passed at INC sessions concerning the salt tax, the treatment of overseas Indian labourers, and the hardships faced by forest dwellers due to colonial forest administration. These were important early steps, even if the Congress would not become a truly mass organization until Mahatma Gandhi transformed it after 1920.

From elite platform to mass movement: the longer arc 🔗

The growth of the Congress in its first decade was striking. The number of delegates rose from 72 in Bombay in 1885 to 436 in Calcutta in 1886, 607 in Madras in 1887, and 1,248 in Allahabad in 1888 – a clear sign that the platform resonated far beyond its founding circle. By the end of 1905, Congress began transforming into a mass movement, largely driven by agitation against the partition of Bengal and the rise of the Swadeshi movement.

The founding period laid the intellectual and organizational infrastructure for everything that followed. It established the principle of annual, rotating sessions to build national unity across regional and religious lines. It developed a vocabulary of rights, representation, and economic nationalism that later leaders would deepen and radicalize. And it created a legitimate, recognized platform through which Indian political opinion could be organized and expressed – without which figures like Tilak, Gokhale, and eventually Gandhi would have had no national stage to stand on.

The INC was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British Empire in Asia and Africa – a fact that underscores just how significant its founding was, not only for India, but as a model for anti-colonial politics globally. What began in a college hall in Bombay with 72 delegates eventually led a nation of hundreds of millions to independence.

What do you think? The early Indian National Congress was shaped almost entirely by educated, upper-middle-class professionals – how do you think this social composition shaped the kind of politics it practised, and what were its limits? And if A.O. Hume’s British identity was key to protecting the Congress from colonial suppression in its early years, what does that tell us about the constraints faced by colonised people in building their own political institutions?

References

1. https://vajiramandravi.com/upsc-exam/foundation-of-indian-national-congress/
2. https://www.dalvoy.com/en/upsc/mains/previous-years/2025/history-paper-ii/indian-national-congress-safety-valve-theory
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Indian_National_Congress
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Congress
5. https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/indian-national-congress-founded
6. https://selfstudyhistory.com/2015/02/09/the-indian-national-congress/
7. https://vajiramandravi.com/upsc-exam/moderate-phase-of-inc/
8. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-National-Congress