Foundation Of The Indian National Congress : The Reality
In the last chapter we began the story of the foundation of the Indian National Congress. We could not, however, make much headway because the cobwebs had to be cleared, the myth of the safety-valve had to be laid to rest, the mystery of the ‘missing volumes’ had to be solved, and Hume’s mahatmas had to be sent back to their resting place in Tibet. In this chapter we resume the more serious part of the story of the emergence of the Indian National Congress as the apex nationalist organization that was to guide the destiny of the Indian national movement till the attainment of independence. The foundation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 was not a sudden event, or a historical accident. It was the culmination of a process of political awakening that had its beginnings in the 1860s and 1870s and took a major leap forward in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The year 1885 marked a turning point in this process, for that was the year the political Indians, the mod...