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Unit 9: Establishment of the Indian National Congress: Home Rule Movement, Moderates and Extremists

then, on the basis of this realization, an informed and determined political opinion had to be created. Notes
The arousal, training, organization and consolidation of public opinion was seen as a major task by
the Congress leaders. All initial activity of the early nationalism was geared towards this end.
The first step was seen to be the politicization and unification of the opinion of the educated, and
then of other sections. The primary objective was to go beyond the redressal of immediate grievances
and organize sustained political activity along the lines of the Anti-Com Law League (formed in
Britain by Cobden and Bright in 1838 to secure reform of Com Laws). The leaders as well as the
people also had to gain confidence in their own capacity to organize political opposition to the
most powerful state of the day.
All this was no easy task. A prolonged period of politicization would be needed. Many later
writers and critics have concentrated on the methods of political struggle of the early nationalist
leaders, on their petitions, prayers and memorials. It is, of course, true that they did not organize
mass movements and mass struggles. But the critics have missed out the most important part of
their activity — that all of it led to politics, to the politicization of the people. Justice Ranade, who
was known as a political sage, had, in his usual perceptive manner, seen this as early as 1891.
When the young and impatient twenty-six-year-old Gokhale expressed disappointment when the
Government sent a two line reply to a carefully and laboriously prepared memorial by the Poona
Sarvajanik Sabha, Ranade reassured him: ‘You don’t realize our place in the history of our country.
These memorials are nominally addressed to Government, in reality they are addressed to the
people, so that they may learn how to think in these matters. This work must be done for many
years, without expecting any other result, because politics of this kind is altogether new in this
land.
As part of the basic objective of giving birth to a national movement, it was necessary to create a
common all-India national-political leadership, that is, to construct what Antonio Gramsci, the
famous Italian Marxist, calls the headquarters of a movement. Nations and people become capable
of meaningful and effective political action only when they are organized. They become a people
or ‘historical subjects’ only when they are organized as such. The first step in a national movement
is taken when the ‘carriers’ of national feeling or national identity begin to organize the people.
But to be able to do so successfully, these ‘carriers’ or leaders must themselves be unified; they
must share a collective identification, that is, they must come to know each other and share and
evolve a common outlook, perspective, sense of purpose, as also common feelings. According to
the circular which, in March 1885, informed political workers of the coming Congress session, the
Congress was intended ‘to enable all the most earnest labourers in the cause of national progress
to become personally known to each other.’ W.C. Banerjee, as the first Congress President, reiterated
that one of the Congress objectives was the ‘eradication, by direct friendly personal intercourse, of
all possible race, creed, or provincial prejudices amongst all lovers of our country,’ and ‘the
promotion of personal intimacy and friendship amongst all the more earnest workers in our
country’s cause in (all) parts of the Empire.
In other words, the founders of the Congress understood that the first requirement of a national
movement was a national leadership. The social-ideological complexion that this leadership would
acquire was a question that was different from the main objective of the creation of a national
movement. This complexion would depend on a host of factors: the role of different social classes,
ideological influences, outcomes of ideological struggles, and so on.
The early nationalist leaders saw the internalization and indigenization of political democracy as
one of their main objectives. They based their politics on the doctrine of the sovereignty of the
people, or, as Dadabhai Naoroji put it, on ‘the new lesson that Kings are made for the people, not
peoples for their Kings.
From the beginning, the Congress was organized in the form of a Parliament. In fact, the word
Congress was borrowed from North American history to connote an assembly of the people. The
proceedings of the Congress sessions were conducted democratically, issues being decided through
debate and discussion and occasionally through voting. It was, in fact, the Congress, and not the
bureaucratic and authoritarian colonial state, as some writers wrongly argue, which indigenized,
popularized and rooted parliamentary democracy in India.

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