❖​ Congress politics during the first twenty years of its history is roughly referred to

as moderate politics.
❖​ Congress at that time was hardly a full-fledged political party; it was more in the
nature of an annual conference, which deliberated and adopted resolutions;
advocated reforms through speeches and petitions rather rather than
confrontation.
❖​ The major stated external objective was to obtain "representa tive institutions" for
India.
❖​ Its members were mostly part-rime politicians— successful professionals
belonging to Anglicised upper class.
❖​ Key members of the Moderates included Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale,
Surendranath Banerjee, Pherozeshah Mehta, and Anand Mohan Bose.

❖​ There had been some distinct phases in moderate politics, but on the whole, there
was an overall uniformity in their objectives and methods of agitation (constitutional
methods) — They advocated for reforms through petitions, resolutions, and
speeches rather than confrontation.
❖​ Their complaint was only against "un-British rule" in India perpetrated by the
viceroy, his executive council and the Anglo-Indian bureau cracy-an imperfection that
could be reformed or rectified through gentle persuasion.
❖​ They were conscious of the exploitative nature of British rule, but wanted its
reform, not expulsion.
❖​ Therefore, within the constitutional field, the moderate politicians never
visualised a clinical separation from the British empire; what they wanted was
only limited self-government within the imperial framework.

Initial years and Hume’s leadership

❖​ Hume, with W. C. Bonnerjee's help from the chair, guided the Congress through
its first proto-parliamentary session in 1885, intervening to keep the proceedings
moving, to clarify issues, and to find compromises when delegates disagreed on
resolutions.
❖​ The realization that the Congress rested on a narrow base
[contributed to the deep malaise which settled over the movement in the 1890s in the
form of dispirited leadership, poor attendance, abstention of Muslims, internal
division, a reluctance of its financial backers to pay for its activities in England and
India, and a widespread indifference to the Congress organization and platform
among nationalist minded Indians in general.]
❖​ The March 1885 circular which announced the first Congress session stated
that the Congress's first object would be "to enable all the most earnest
labourers in the cause of national progress to become personally known to
each other."
❖​ Hume followed up the Bombay meeting with a campaign to draw into the Congress
those nationalists who had missed the first session.
 ➢​ arranged an alliance between Surendranath Banerjee's Indian
Association and the landholders of the British Indian Association.
➢​ The very act of coming together to criticize the British for their racially
exclusionary policies in matters such as jury trials, military volunteering, and
civil service employment, for their refusal to conduct a Parliamentary inquiry
into Indian affairs, and for the considerable expense of their war in Burma was
sufficient to arouse widespread interest in the Congress.
➢​ As a result, the Congress was less an organization than an annual
meeting, a group of demands directed toward the British, and, most
importantly, an attitude of mind which held that Indian interests should
prevail over British interests in the conduct of Indian affairs.
➢​ Through the annual Congresses, nationalists were learning to communicate
with their counterparts in other regions and were gaining an
understanding of the social and political geography of India.
➢​ The overall trend in regional interactions was in the direction of unity and
homogeneity that was meant to contribute to national unification —
however, Within that trend, the direction was far from uniform.
Individuals and sometimes large groups recoiled from the process of
integration after preliminary contact with people from unfamiliar backgrounds.
❖​ Soon after Hume saw that English-speaking nationalists were be coming acquainted
through the Congress sessions, he in late 1880s tried to to enlarge Muslim and
peasant participation in the Congress – lacked influential Muslim allies
❖​ Their principal Muslim associate was Badruddin Tyabji – (Nawab Sayyid Muhammad
of Madras)
❖​ The apprehensions of English-educated Muslims centered upon Congress demands
for more elections and competitive examina tions for positions in the schools and civil
services. They feared that since Muslims were a minority in every province except
the Punjab, they would be outvoted.
❖​ Public consciousness of the unequal distribution of education among various regions,
religious groups, and castes had been raised by the tours, taking of testimony, and
reports by the Education and Public Service Commissions of 1882-1883 and 1886
1887. The Congress goal of a more open and competitive society, if implemented,
seemed likely to favor educated Hindus and to accentuate existing disparities
between religious communities
❖​ Significant Muslim opposition to the Congress emerged in 1887 and 1888 – by Amir
Ali's Central National Muham madan Association, by the Muhammadan Educational
Congress which met annually from 1886, and by Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Aligarh
College and the United Indian Patriotic Association, both of which he helped found.
❖​ Englishmen seized the opportunity to emphasize the division of interests between
Indian elites.
❖​ Hume's main hope was Badruddin Tyabji who might, he thought, persuade Muslims
not to follow Sayyid Ahmad. Hume wrote to Tyabji in January 1886 and said perhaps
you are "marked out for the work of suppressing Syed Ahmed." The Congress had
decided to invade "our opponents' own dominions" by having the 1888 session at
Allahabad. Unless there were a Muslim president, and that Muslim should probably
be Tyabji, the Muslims would be likely to stay away from the Allahabad session.41
❖​ Tyabji refused to serve as president again, but he did write letters to Sayyid Ahmad,
Sayyid Amir AIi, and Nawab Abdul Latif in an attempt to persuade them not to op
 pose the Congress.42 The response to these letters was utterly discouraging and in
October 1888 a dejected Tyabji wrote Hume about the increasing hostility of the
Muslims toward the Congress. The goal of the Congress had been to unite the
communities of India
❖​ While the Deoband ulama's indirect support for the Congress was perhaps motivated
less by sympathy for Congress goals than by rivalry with the more secular and
Westernized Aligarh intelligentsia,55 individual Muslims who were not ulama
continued to be active in the Congress after the Allahabad session of 1888. The
largest number of Muslim Congress activists in the pre-1909 period were lawyers,
most of whom probably had professional relations with Hindu lawyers in the
Congress.

Peasants

●​ It was otherwise with Hume's 1887 campaign among villagers. His distribution of two
vernacular pamphlets in rural areas led to a serious contretemps with other Congress
leaders in 1888. His appeal for peasant support heightened the concern about
Hume's autocratic personality and his practice of acting without consulting other
leaders.
●​ Hume's decision to distribute pamphlets in the villages in 1887 was aimed at
expanding the social base of the Congress. This was necessary, he explained, in
view of the government's autocracy and unresponsiveness to educated Indians.
●​ Hume's appeal for peasant support of the Congress was pre sented in two pamphlets
published in twelve different languages. One was written by Viraraghava Chariar, the
other by Hume him self. Many thousands were distributed.
●​ The general message was nonrevolutionary: it said that if genuinely representative
institu tions were given exclusive power to pass laws and impose taxes, government
in India would be less callous toward popular needs and therefore less
impoverishing. However, the tone of the two pamphlets was harsher than that of most
speeches in the Congress and the audience was different
●​ Hume had failed to obtain advance approval from the top Congress leadership for his
short-lived campaign. Although local associations, such as the Sarvajanik Sabha of
Poona and the Indian Association of Calcutta, had conducted similar activities, they
had not provoked as strong a government reaction as the Congress received in
1888. The government responded with a sharp attack on Hume and the Congress –
publicl objections that the pamphlets on the grounds that they misrepresented
government policies and were designed to arouse hatred of British officials among
the masses.
●​ although they rejected a suggestion that the Congress session should formally
repudiate the pamphlets.73 The rebuff to Hume was indirect and not widely
publicized, and it came after he had shifted his attention to the management of the
approaching Allahabad Congress which faced a formidable opposition from officials,
Muslims, and Hindu notables.
●​ By 1892, it had become clear that Hume had been shut out of official circles. He was
regarded as a dangerous troublemaker rather than a man whom viceroys consulted
with profit on Indian attitudes. It was also evident that prior to the 1892 general elec
tion, Hume had not succeeded in his efforts to build a body of Liberal Members of
Parliament to work effectively on behalf of Indian reform. And under Hume's direction
 the response of Muslims to the Congress had been mostly negative and of edu cated
Hindus often halfhearted.
●​ At the 1892 Allahabad Congress, Pandit Bishambar Nath said "the children of the soil
have learnt to stand upon their feet"88 and the president, W. C. Bonnerjee, declared
the Congress "had out grown its dependence on one individual."