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Indian Freedom Struggle (1707–1947 A.D.)

Notes that the Congress ‘was a product of Lord Dufferin’s brain,’ he argued that ‘the Congress was
started more with the object of saving the British Empire from danger than with that of winning
political liberty for India. The interests of the British Empire were primary and those of India only
secondary.’ And he added: ‘No one can say that the Congress has not been true to that ideal.’ His
conclusion was: ‘So this is the genesis of the Congress, and this is sufficient to condemn it in the
eyes of the advanced Nationalists.’
More than a quarter century later, R. Palme Dutt’s authoritative work India Today made the myth
of the safety-valve a staple of left-wing opinion. Emphasizing the myth, Dutt wrote that the
Congress was brought into existence through direct Governmental initiative and guidance and
through ‘a plan secretly pre-arranged with the Viceroy’ so that it (the Government) could use it ‘as
an intended weapon for safeguarding British rule against the rising forces of popular unrest and
anti-British feeling.’ It was ‘an attempt to defeat, or rather forestall, an impending revolution.’ The
Congress did, of course, in time become a nationalist body; ‘the national character began to
overshadow the loyalist character.’ It also became the vehicle of mass movements. But the ‘original
sin’ of the manner of its birth left a permanent mark on its politics. Its ‘two-fold character’ as an
institution which was created by the Government and yet became the organizer of the anti-
imperialist movement ‘ran right through its history.’ It both fought and collaborated with
imperialism. It led the mass movements and when the masses moved towards the revolutionary
path, it betrayed the movement to imperialism. The Congress, thus, had two strands: ‘On the one
hand, the strand of cooperation with imperialism against the “menace” of the mass movement; on
the other hand, the strand of leadership of the masses in the national struggle.’ This duality of the
Congress leadership from Gokhale to Gandhi, said Dutt, in fact reflected the two-fold and vacillating
character of the Indian bourgeoisie itself; ‘at once in conflict with the British bourgeoisie and
desiring to lead the Indian people, yet feeling that “too rapid” advance may end in destroying its
privileges along with those of the imperialists.’ The Congress had, thus, become an organ of
opposition to real revolution, that is, a violent revolution. But this role did not date from Gandhiji;
‘this principle was implanted in it by imperialism at the outset as its intended official role.’ The
culmination of this dual role was its ‘final capitulation with the Mountbatten Settlement.
Earlier, in 1939, M.S. Golwalkar, the RSS chief, had also found the safety-valve theory handy in
attacking the Congress for its secularism and, therefore, anti-nationalism. In his pamphlet We
Golwalkar complained that Hindu national consciousness had been destroyed by those claiming
to be ‘nationalists’ who had pushed the ‘notions of democracy’ and the perverse notion that ‘our
old invaders and foes’, the Muslims, had something in common with Hindus. Consequently, ‘we
have allowed our foes to be our friends and with our hands are undermining true nationality.’ In
fact, the fight in India was not between Indians and the British only. It was ‘a triangular fight.’
Hindus were at war with Muslims on the one hand and with the British on the other. What had
led Hindus to enter the path of ‘denationalization,’ said Golwalkar, were the aims and policy laid
down by Hume, Cotton, and Wedderburn in 1885; ‘the Congress they founded as a “safety valve”
to “seething nationalism,” as a toy which would full the awakening giant into slumber, an
instrument to destroy National consciousness, has been, as far as they are concerned, a success.
The liberal C.F. Andrews and Girija Mukerji fully accepted the safety-valve theory in their work,
The Rise and Growth of the Congress in India published in 1938. They were happy with it because it
had helped avoid ‘useless bloodshed.’ Before as well as after 1947, tens of scholars and hundreds
of popular writers have repeated some version of these points of view.
Hume and Secret Reports
Historical proof of the safety-valve theory was provided by the seven volumes of secret reports
which Hume claimed to have read at Simla in the summer of 1878 and which convinced him of the
existence of ‘seething discontent’ and a vast conspiracy among the lower classes to violently
overthrow British rule.
Before we unravel the mystery of the seven volumes, let us briefly trace the history of its rise and
growth. It was first mentioned in William Wedderburn’s biography of A.O. Hume published in
1913. Wedderburn (ICS) found an undated memorandum in Hume’s papers which dealt with the

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