Political Associations & the Birth of the Indian National Congress

Why This Chapter Matters

Every SSC and RRB paper that touches modern history loves this chapter. The founding year of the Indian National Congress, the name of its first president, the venue of the first session, and the founder A.O. Hume are among the most repeated GK facts in the entire syllabus. Expect 1 to 2 questions from this zone in SSC CGL/CHSL GA sections, and RRB NTPC has asked the pre-Congress associations (Indian Association, British Indian Association, Poona Sarvajanik Sabha) with their founders again and again.

The sub-topics that repeat most: founder-and-year of each pre-Congress association, the Ilbert Bill controversy (1883), A.O. Hume and the Indian National Union, details of the 1885 Bombay session (venue, president, number of delegates), the safety-valve theory, and "firsts" among early Congress presidents (first Muslim president, first English president, first session Gandhi attended). Learn the 1885–1905 presidents table cold. It is pure marks.

1. Why Political Associations Appeared Before 1885

By the 1830s, English education had produced a small class of Indians in the Presidency towns who read newspapers, understood British law, and wanted a say in how India was run. Their early bodies were local, elite, and loyal in tone. They petitioned; they did not agitate. But each decade the demands grew sharper, and by the 1870s a new generation led by lawyers and journalists was building associations with wider membership and all-India ambitions.

Three background pressures pushed this process along:

• Racial discrimination in jobs, courts, and daily life. The Indian Civil Service was open in theory but closed in practice; the exam was held only in London, and in 1876 the maximum age was cut from 21 to 19, making it even harder for Indians.
• Economic grievances, sharpened by the drain-of-wealth critique of Dadabhai Naoroji and the famines of the 1860s and 1870s.
• Repressive laws under Viceroy Lytton (1876–1880): the Vernacular Press Act, 1878 (gagged Indian-language newspapers) and the Arms Act, 1878 (Indians needed a licence to carry arms; Europeans did not). The Vernacular Press Act was repealed by Ripon in 1882, but the resentment it created did not fade.

2. Early Associations of Bengal (1838–1876)

Bengal, the oldest seat of British power and English education, produced the first political bodies.

Landholders' Society (Zamindari Association), 1838

Founded in Calcutta in 1838, with Dwarkanath Tagore among its leading figures. It is counted as the first organised political association of modern India. Its concern was narrow: protecting zamindari interests. But it used the modern method of petitioning and thus started constitutional politics in India.

British India Society, 1839

Founded in London in 1839 by William Adam, a friend of Raja Rammohan Roy. Its purpose was to inform the British public about Indian conditions. It shows an early pattern: pleading India's case in Britain itself, a method the Moderates later perfected.

Bengal British India Society, 1843

Founded in Calcutta in 1843, with George Thompson associated with it. It aimed to collect and spread information about the condition of the people, going a step beyond pure zamindari interest.

British Indian Association, 1851

In 1851 the Landholders' Society and the Bengal British India Society merged to form the British Indian Association in Calcutta. Raja Radhakanta Deb was its first president and Debendranath Tagore its secretary. It sent a petition to the British Parliament before the Charter Act of 1853, asking for a separate legislature for India and Indian representation in it. Some of its suggestions were partly reflected in the Act. It remained a body of zamindars and gradually lost touch with the new middle class.

3. Associations of Bombay and Madras (1852–1885)

The other two Presidencies followed Bengal in 1852, a date exams like because two associations share it.

Association	Year	Place	Key founder(s)
Madras Native Association	1852	Madras	Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty
Bombay Association	1852	Bombay	Jagannath Shankarseth
East India Association	1866	London	Dadabhai Naoroji
Poona Sarvajanik Sabha	1870	Poona	M.G. Ranade, G.V. Joshi
Indian Association	1876	Calcutta	Surendranath Banerjee, Ananda Mohan Bose
Madras Mahajana Sabha	1884	Madras	M. Viraraghavachariar, G. Subramania Iyer, P. Ananda Charlu
Bombay Presidency Association	1885	Bombay	Pherozeshah Mehta, K.T. Telang, Badruddin Tyabji

East India Association, 1866

Founded in London in 1866 by Dadabhai Naoroji. It discussed Indian questions and lobbied British public men. Naoroji used it to present his drain theory to British audiences. SSC often frames this as "Which association was founded by Dadabhai Naoroji in London?"

Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, 1870

Founded in 1870 at Poona, with Mahadev Govind Ranade as the guiding force and Ganesh Vasudev Joshi among the founders. It acted as a bridge between the government and the people of the Deccan, sent famine relief workers, and later gave the Congress some of its ablest Maharashtra leaders.

Indian Association, 1876 — the most important pre-Congress body

Founded in Calcutta on 26 July 1876 by Surendranath Banerjee and Ananda Mohan Bose. This is the single most asked pre-Congress association. Remember its profile:

• It deliberately kept a low membership fee to draw in the middle class, unlike the zamindar-dominated British Indian Association.
• It ran the first genuinely all-India agitation: the campaign against the reduction of the ICS age limit (1877–78) and for simultaneous ICS exams in India and England. Banerjee toured north India for this, the first political tour of its kind.
• It campaigned against the Vernacular Press Act and the Arms Act.
• It called an All India National Conference in Calcutta in December 1883, and a second one in December 1885. The second session ran at the same time as the first Congress session in Bombay, after which the Conference merged its stream into the Congress.

Surendranath Banerjee himself is a story exams use. He cleared the ICS in 1869, was dismissed on a technical ground, and turned to public life. In 1883 he became the first Indian journalist to be imprisoned, jailed for contempt of court over an article in his paper The Bengalee.

4. The Ilbert Bill Controversy, 1883

Viceroy Ripon (1880–1884) was the most liberal Viceroy of the century. Under him, Courtenay Ilbert, the Law Member, introduced a bill in 1883 to remove a racial anomaly: Indian district magistrates and sessions judges could not try European British subjects in criminal cases in the mofussil (countryside), even though Indians of the same rank in the Presidency towns could.

The European community in India, especially the tea and indigo planters of Bengal, erupted. They formed a Defence Association, raised funds, insulted Ripon in the Anglo-Indian press, and threatened agitation. The government backed down. The amended Act of 1884 was a compromise: a European tried by an Indian magistrate could demand a jury at least half of whom were Europeans.

The lesson Indians drew was sharp and double-edged:

1. The British would sacrifice even a modest reform to white racial feeling.
2. Organised agitation works. If the white community could bend the government by uniting, Indians could try the same method on an all-India scale.

The Ilbert Bill controversy is therefore treated as a direct trigger for the founding of an all-India political body. SSC frames it as "The Ilbert Bill controversy took place during the tenure of which Viceroy?" Answer: Ripon.

5. A.O. Hume and the Founding of the Congress, 1885

Allan Octavian Hume was a retired ICS officer (retired 1882) and a noted ornithologist. In March 1883 he wrote an open letter to the graduates of Calcutta University, asking fifty of them to come forward and start a movement for the mental, moral, social, and political regeneration of India.

In 1884 Hume founded the Indian National Union. The plan was to hold its first conference at Poona in December 1885. An outbreak of cholera at Poona forced a shift to Bombay.

The first session, Bombay, December 1885

Detail	Fact
Dates	28–31 December 1885
Venue	Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay
Delegates	72
President	Womesh Chunder (W.C.) Bonnerjee
Founder / General Secretary	A.O. Hume
Viceroy at the time	Lord Dufferin
Name "Indian National Congress" suggested by	Dadabhai Naoroji

Hume served as the first General Secretary of the Congress and held the post till 1892. Note the president trap: Hume, the founder, was never Congress president in 1885. The president was W.C. Bonnerjee, a Calcutta barrister. Exams set this trap every year.

The early aims declared at Bombay were modest: promote friendly relations between nationalist workers of different provinces, develop a feeling of national unity above religion and province, record educated opinion on public questions, and place Indian demands before the government constitutionally.

British reaction

Viceroy Dufferin was initially not hostile; Hume had met him while planning the body. But by 1888 Dufferin publicly mocked the Congress as representing only a "microscopic minority" of Indians. Government servants were later discouraged from attending sessions. The honeymoon, such as it was, ended within three years.

6. The Safety-Valve Debate

Why did a retired British officer found India's national party? The classic explanation is the safety-valve theory: Hume, tipped off by secret police reports about seething mass discontent, created the Congress as a controlled outlet so that educated Indians would vent grievances constitutionally instead of leading a violent upheaval. The theory rests on William Wedderburn's biography of Hume, published in 1913, which mentioned volumes of secret reports Hume had supposedly seen.

Positions to remember:

• Wedderburn (1913): source of the safety-valve story.
• Lala Lajpat Rai accepted and used the theory to attack the early Congress, in his Young India (1916), arguing the Congress was born of a desire to protect British rule, not to end it.
• Extremist critics coined the mirror phrase that the Congress was a "lightning conductor": the Moderates used Hume as a lightning conductor to draw away official suspicion while they built a national platform. This counter-image is associated with G.K. Gokhale's remark that no Indian could have founded such a body in 1885 without the government crushing it; a British founder gave it cover.
• Modern historians (the mainstream exam position) reject the safety-valve story as myth. The Congress was the natural climax of fifty years of association-building described above. Hume was a channel, not a cause. The secret seven-volume reports were never found.

For MCQs, the safe line is: safety-valve theory is linked to Hume and Wedderburn; Lajpat Rai used it critically; modern historians reject it.

7. Early Congress Sessions and Presidents, 1885–1905

The Congress met every December in a different city. Learn the table below; it feeds directly into "match the session" and "who presided" questions.

Year	Place	President	Point to remember
1885	Bombay	W.C. Bonnerjee	First session, 72 delegates
1886	Calcutta	Dadabhai Naoroji	436 delegates; National Conference merged in
1887	Madras	Badruddin Tyabji	First Muslim president
1888	Allahabad	George Yule	First English (European) president
1889	Bombay	William Wedderburn	First women delegates attended
1890	Calcutta	Pherozeshah Mehta	Kadambini Ganguly, first woman to address the Congress
1891	Nagpur	P. Ananda Charlu	—
1892	Allahabad	W.C. Bonnerjee	Second term
1893	Lahore	Dadabhai Naoroji	Second term
1894	Madras	Alfred Webb	Irish MP as president
1895	Poona	Surendranath Banerjee	—
1896	Calcutta	Rahimtullah M. Sayani	Vande Mataram sung first time at a session, by Rabindranath Tagore
1897	Amraoti	C. Sankaran Nair	Youngest president till then
1898	Madras	Ananda Mohan Bose	—
1899	Lucknow	Romesh Chandra Dutt	Author of Economic History of India
1900	Lahore	N.G. Chandavarkar	—
1901	Calcutta	Dinshaw E. Wacha	Gandhi attended a Congress session for the first time
1902	Ahmedabad	Surendranath Banerjee	Second term
1903	Madras	Lal Mohan Ghosh	—
1904	Bombay	Henry Cotton	—
1905	Banaras	Gopal Krishna Gokhale	Held amid the anti-partition Swadeshi upsurge

Firsts worth isolating, because SSC asks them as standalone questions:

• First president: W.C. Bonnerjee (1885).
• First Muslim president: Badruddin Tyabji (1887, Madras).
• First English president: George Yule (1888, Allahabad).
• First woman to address a session: Kadambini Ganguly (1890, Calcutta). She was also one of the first two women graduates of Calcutta University.
• President twice in this period: Bonnerjee, Naoroji, and Surendranath Banerjee each presided twice by 1905. Naoroji would preside a third time in 1906 (Calcutta).
• Gandhi's first Congress: 1901, Calcutta, under Dinshaw Wacha.

8. What the Early Congress Asked For

The demands of 1885–1905 were moderate in content and tone. Group them in three baskets:

Constitutional: expansion of legislative councils with more elected Indian members; this pressure contributed to the Indian Councils Act, 1892 (details in the next chapter).

Administrative: simultaneous ICS examinations in India and England; raising the ICS age limit back; separation of the judiciary from the executive; repeal of the Arms Act; more Indians in higher posts.

Economic: cut military expenditure; end the drain of wealth; reduce land revenue; abolish the salt tax; protect Indian industry.

The method was the "three P's" of coaching-room shorthand: petition, prayer, protest, all within the law. The Congress at this stage was a three-day annual gathering, not a mass movement. That transformation begins with the partition of Bengal in 1905, which the next two chapters cover.

Quick Revision — One-Line Facts

• Landholders' Society (1838), Calcutta is the first organised political association of modern India; Dwarkanath Tagore was a leading founder.
• British India Society (1839) was founded in London by William Adam.
• Bengal British India Society was founded in 1843.
• British Indian Association (1851): first president Radhakanta Deb, secretary Debendranath Tagore; petitioned before the Charter Act of 1853.
• Madras Native Association (1852) was founded by Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty.
• Bombay Association (1852) was founded by Jagannath Shankarseth.
• East India Association (1866, London) was founded by Dadabhai Naoroji.
• Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (1870): guiding spirit M.G. Ranade, co-founder G.V. Joshi.
• Indian Association (26 July 1876, Calcutta): founders Surendranath Banerjee and Ananda Mohan Bose.
• The Indian Association held All India National Conferences in 1883 and 1885 at Calcutta.
• Madras Mahajana Sabha was founded in 1884; Bombay Presidency Association in 1885 (Mehta, Telang, Tyabji).
• The ICS age limit was reduced from 21 to 19 in 1876.
• Vernacular Press Act (1878) and Arms Act (1878) were passed under Lytton; the press act was repealed by Ripon in 1882.
• Surendranath Banerjee, editor of The Bengalee, was the first Indian journalist jailed (1883, contempt of court).
• The Ilbert Bill (1883) was introduced under Viceroy Ripon by Law Member Courtenay Ilbert; the 1884 compromise allowed Europeans a half-European jury.
• A.O. Hume, retired ICS officer and ornithologist, wrote his open letter to Calcutta University graduates in March 1883.
• Hume founded the Indian National Union in 1884; it became the Indian National Congress.
• The first session shifted from Poona to Bombay because of a cholera outbreak.
• First session: 28–31 December 1885, Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay, 72 delegates.
• First Congress president: W.C. Bonnerjee; Viceroy at the time: Dufferin.
• The name "Indian National Congress" was suggested by Dadabhai Naoroji.
• Hume was the Congress's first General Secretary (till 1892).
• Dufferin later dismissed the Congress as a "microscopic minority" (1888).
• The safety-valve theory comes from Wedderburn's 1913 biography of Hume; Lala Lajpat Rai used it critically in Young India (1916); modern historians reject it.
• First Muslim Congress president: Badruddin Tyabji (1887); first English president: George Yule (1888).
• Kadambini Ganguly was the first woman to address a Congress session (1890, Calcutta).
• Vande Mataram was first sung at a Congress session in 1896 (Calcutta) by Rabindranath Tagore.
• Gandhi first attended the Congress in 1901 (Calcutta), president Dinshaw Wacha.
• The 1905 Banaras session was presided over by Gopal Krishna Gokhale.

Memory Tables

Table 1: Pre-Congress associations — year, place, founder

Year	Association	Place	Founder(s) / key figures
1838	Landholders' Society	Calcutta	Dwarkanath Tagore
1839	British India Society	London	William Adam
1843	Bengal British India Society	Calcutta	George Thompson
1851	British Indian Association	Calcutta	Radhakanta Deb (president), Debendranath Tagore (secretary)
1852	Madras Native Association	Madras	Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty
1852	Bombay Association	Bombay	Jagannath Shankarseth
1866	East India Association	London	Dadabhai Naoroji
1870	Poona Sarvajanik Sabha	Poona	M.G. Ranade, G.V. Joshi
1876	Indian Association	Calcutta	Surendranath Banerjee, Ananda Mohan Bose
1884	Madras Mahajana Sabha	Madras	Viraraghavachariar, G. Subramania Iyer, Ananda Charlu
1885	Bombay Presidency Association	Bombay	Pherozeshah Mehta, K.T. Telang, Badruddin Tyabji

Table 2: The 1885 founding — one-glance card

Question exams ask	Answer
Founder of INC	A.O. Hume (retired ICS, 1882)
Forerunner body	Indian National Union, 1884
Original venue planned	Poona (shifted due to cholera)
Actual venue	Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay
Dates	28–31 December 1885
Delegates	72
First president	W.C. Bonnerjee
Name suggested by	Dadabhai Naoroji
Viceroy	Lord Dufferin
First General Secretary	A.O. Hume

Table 3: "Firsts" among early Congress presidents (1885–1905)

First	Person	Year, place
First president	W.C. Bonnerjee	1885, Bombay
First Muslim president	Badruddin Tyabji	1887, Madras
First English president	George Yule	1888, Allahabad
First woman to address a session	Kadambini Ganguly	1890, Calcutta
Vande Mataram first sung	Rabindranath Tagore (session of Rahimtullah Sayani)	1896, Calcutta
Gandhi's first session	President: Dinshaw Wacha	1901, Calcutta

Practice MCQs

Q1. The first session of the Indian National Congress (1885) was held at which place? (a) Calcutta (b) Bombay (c) Poona (d) Madras

Q2. Who was the president of the first session of the Indian National Congress? (a) A.O. Hume (b) Dadabhai Naoroji (c) W.C. Bonnerjee (d) Surendranath Banerjee

Q3. The Indian Association (1876) was founded by Surendranath Banerjee along with: (a) Ananda Mohan Bose (b) Dwarkanath Tagore (c) M.G. Ranade (d) Pherozeshah Mehta

Q4. The Ilbert Bill controversy (1883) took place during the tenure of which Viceroy? (a) Lytton (b) Dufferin (c) Ripon (d) Lansdowne

Q5. Who was the first Muslim president of the Indian National Congress? (a) Rahimtullah Sayani (b) Badruddin Tyabji (c) Syed Ahmad Khan (d) M.A. Jinnah

Q6. The East India Association was founded in London in 1866 by: (a) William Adam (b) A.O. Hume (c) Dadabhai Naoroji (d) William Wedderburn

Q7. How many delegates attended the first session of the Indian National Congress? (a) 54 (b) 72 (c) 96 (d) 436

Q8. The safety-valve theory of the Congress's origin is based on the biography of A.O. Hume written by: (a) Lala Lajpat Rai (b) William Wedderburn (c) G.K. Gokhale (d) Henry Cotton

Q9. Match the following associations with their founders: A. Bombay Association — 1. Jagannath Shankarseth B. Madras Native Association — 2. Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty C. Poona Sarvajanik Sabha — 3. M.G. Ranade (a) A-1, B-2, C-3 (b) A-2, B-1, C-3 (c) A-3, B-2, C-1 (d) A-1, B-3, C-2

Q10. Which of the following statements about the first Congress session is NOT correct? (a) It was held at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College (b) The Viceroy at the time was Lord Dufferin (c) A.O. Hume presided over the session (d) It was originally planned to be held at Poona

Q11. Arrange the following in correct chronological order of founding:

1. Indian Association 2. Landholders' Society 3. British Indian Association 4. Madras Mahajana Sabha (a) 2, 3, 1, 4 (b) 3, 2, 1, 4 (c) 2, 1, 3, 4 (d) 3, 1, 2, 4

Q12. Kadambini Ganguly, the first woman to address a Congress session, did so in which year? (a) 1885 (b) 1889 (c) 1890 (d) 1896

Q13. Which Viceroy described the Congress as representing only a "microscopic minority" of Indians? (a) Ripon (b) Dufferin (c) Curzon (d) Elgin II

Q14. Consider the following statements about the Indian Association (1876):

1. It kept a low membership fee to attract the middle class.
2. It led the agitation against the reduction of the ICS age limit.
3. It organised the All India National Conference in Calcutta in 1883. Which of the statements are correct? (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3

Q15. Mahatma Gandhi attended a session of the Indian National Congress for the first time in 1901. Who presided over that session? (a) Dinshaw E. Wacha (b) Romesh Chandra Dutt (c) N.G. Chandavarkar (d) Surendranath Banerjee

Answer Key

Q	Answer	One-line reason
Q1	(b)	First session was at Bombay, December 1885, after the Poona plan was dropped due to cholera.
Q2	(c)	W.C. Bonnerjee presided; Hume was founder and General Secretary, not president.
Q3	(a)	Banerjee and Ananda Mohan Bose founded the Indian Association at Calcutta on 26 July 1876.
Q4	(c)	Courtenay Ilbert introduced the bill in 1883 under the liberal Viceroy Ripon.
Q5	(b)	Badruddin Tyabji presided over the 1887 Madras session.
Q6	(c)	Dadabhai Naoroji founded the East India Association in London in 1866.
Q7	(b)	72 delegates attended the 1885 Bombay session; 436 attended in 1886.
Q8	(b)	William Wedderburn's 1913 biography of Hume is the source of the safety-valve story.
Q9	(a)	Shankarseth–Bombay Association, Chetty–Madras Native Association, Ranade–Poona Sarvajanik Sabha.
Q10	(c)	Hume never presided in 1885; the president was W.C. Bonnerjee.
Q11	(a)	Landholders' Society 1838, British Indian Association 1851, Indian Association 1876, Madras Mahajana Sabha 1884.
Q12	(c)	She addressed the Calcutta session of 1890, presided over by Pherozeshah Mehta.
Q13	(b)	Dufferin used the phrase in 1888, mocking the Congress's narrow base.
Q14	(d)	All three are correct features of the Indian Association's work.
Q15	(a)	The 1901 Calcutta session, Gandhi's first, was presided over by Dinshaw E. Wacha.