Rise of Indian Nationalism & Early INC (1858–1905) — Complete UPSC Notes

1. Background — Post-1858 Conditions

The Crown takeover after 1858 reshaped India in three ways that, paradoxically, made nationalism possible:

1.1 Political Unification

For the first time in centuries the entire subcontinent was under a single political authority, governed by a single set of laws (the Indian Penal Code 1860, Code of Criminal Procedure 1861, the Indian Evidence Act 1872, the Indian Contract Act 1872). A common administrative framework — Provincial Civil Service, district collectors, magistrates — created a uniform field of grievances and a uniform vocabulary for articulating them.

1.2 Communications Revolution

• Railways: From the 1853 Bombay–Thane line to ~40,000 km by 1905. Mass movement of goods, people, and ideas across the subcontinent.
• Telegraph: ~70,000 km of telegraph lines by 1900.
• Postal system: The Indian Post Office Act 1854 unified rates; the half-anna postcard (1879) became the political circular of choice.
• Newspapers & printing: By 1905, there were ~1,300 newspapers in English and the vernaculars.

1.3 A New Middle Class

Western-educated lawyers, journalists, doctors, teachers, government clerks — concentrated in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and the new university towns of Allahabad and Lahore — formed the social base of the nationalist movement. By 1882 there were ~5,000 graduates in India; by 1907 ~58,000. Many were drawn from the older service-gentry castes — Brahmins, Kayasthas, Khatris in the north; Brahmins, Chitpavans in the west; Brahmins, Vellalas in the south. This class read the same English-language press, debated the same liberal ideas, and increasingly chafed at the racial ceiling barring them from the higher Civil Service.

2. Factors in the Rise of Indian Nationalism

2.1 Economic Discontent

From the 1860s onward, a steady drumbeat of economic critique mounted against colonial rule: deindustrialisation of handicrafts, recurring famines (1860–61, 1865–66, 1868–70, 1873–74, 1876–78 the Great Madras Famine ~5 million dead, 1896–97, 1899–1900 ~9 million dead), heavy land revenue, the "Home Charges" (military pensions, India Office expenses, dividends to Company stockholders, debt servicing) remitted to Britain. The cumulative figure of the "drain" became the central indictment.

2.2 Western Education & the Liberal Tradition

Macaulay's Minute (1835) and Wood's Despatch (1854) had created a generation steeped in Burke, Mill, Bentham, Spencer, and Garibaldi. The very ideas the British used to justify their rule — representative government, the rule of law, liberty, free trade — were turned against them. Surendranath Banerjee called this "the unintended consequence of Macaulay's experiment".

2.3 Press & Literature

• English papers: The Hindu (1878, Madras, G. Subramania Iyer), Amrita Bazar Patrika (Sisir Kumar Ghosh, 1868, switched to English 1878 to escape the Vernacular Press Act), Bombay Chronicle, Indian Mirror, Bengalee (Surendranath Banerjee).
• Vernacular: Kesari (Marathi, Tilak 1881), Maratha (English, Tilak 1881), Sudharak (Gokhale-Agarkar), Som Prakash, Sanjivani, Hindustani.
• Novels & literature: Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Anandamath (1882) gave Vande Mataram; Bharatendu Harishchandra in Hindi; Lakshminath Bezbaroa in Assamese; Subramania Bharati in Tamil — all preached cultural pride.

2.4 Rediscovery of the Past

Orientalist scholarship (the Asiatic Society, Max Müller, William Jones) and Indian responses (Dayanand's "back to the Vedas", Vivekananda's Chicago speech 1893, Tilak's Orion and The Arctic Home in the Vedas) restored pride in ancient achievement and provided cultural ammunition.

2.5 Racial Discrimination

The systematic exclusion of Indians from clubs, first-class railway carriages, hotels, and senior administrative posts. The maximum age limit for the ICS was lowered from 21 to 19 in 1878 (Salisbury) — making it almost impossible for Indians to compete since the examination was held only in London. This was a defining grievance for the early Congress.

2.6 The Ilbert Bill Controversy (1883)

Viceroy Lord Ripon (1880–84) attempted to remove the racial bar that prevented Indian district magistrates and sessions judges from trying cases involving European British subjects. The "white mutiny" of British residents in India that followed — and the partial climb-down by the Government — was a wake-up call. Surendranath Banerjee said the agitation "taught us the value of organisation". If the British community could organise and force government to retreat, so could Indians.

2.7 Lytton's Reactionary Regime (1876–80)

Lord Lytton's tenure provided multiple flashpoints — see Section 9.

3. Pre-Congress Political Associations

3.1 The Two National Conferences (1883, 1885)

Surendranath Banerjee's Indian Association convened the First National Conference at Calcutta on 28–30 December 1883 — predating the INC by exactly two years. The Second National Conference (December 1885) coincided almost exactly with the INC's founding session in Bombay; the two streams merged when the Indian Association joined the INC in 1886.

4. A.O. Hume & the Founding of the Indian National Congress, 1885

4.1 Allan Octavian Hume — The Man

A.O. Hume (1829–1912) was a retired ICS officer (joined 1849, served in Etawah during 1857, retired 1882). A polymath — Theosophist, ornithologist (he founded the journal Stray Feathers and his collection became the basis of the British Museum's Indian bird section), liberal reformer, and admirer of Indian civilisation. He had been Secretary in the Revenue, Agriculture and Commerce Department; was sidelined by Viceroy Lytton; and after retirement settled at Simla devoted to political work.

4.2 The Open Letter, 1883

On 1 March 1883 Hume issued an "Open Letter to the Graduates of the Calcutta University" calling on educated Indians to organise themselves into a body that could become the political conscience of India. The response was enthusiastic.

4.3 The Bombay Session, December 1885

The first session of the Indian National Congress was held at the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay, from 28 to 31 December 1885. Originally scheduled for Poona, the venue was shifted because of a cholera outbreak.

• Attendance: 72 delegates from across British India — lawyers (the majority), journalists, teachers, merchants, landholders.
• President: Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee (W.C. Bonnerjee), Calcutta barrister.
• General Secretary: A.O. Hume.
• Patron: The session opened with Viceroy Lord Dufferin's blessing (Dufferin had encouraged Hume to organise an "Indian counterpart to Her Majesty's Opposition" — a fact later weaponised by the Safety Valve thesis).

4.4 The Nine Resolutions of 1885

1. Appointment of a Royal Commission to enquire into the working of Indian administration.
2. Abolition of the India Council in London.
3. Reform of the Legislative Councils — admit elected Indian members, expand functions.
4. Simultaneous holding of the ICS examination in India and England.
5. Reduction of military expenditure.
6. Condemnation of the annexation of Upper Burma (1885).
7. Establishment of military, naval, and revenue colleges in India.
8. Re-imposition of import duties on cotton.
9. Continuation of Congress as an annual all-India body.

4.5 Early Presidents — A Roster

5. The "Safety Valve" Debate

One of the longest-running controversies in Indian historiography concerns Hume's true motive for founding the Congress.

5.1 The Safety Valve Thesis

The phrase "safety valve" comes from William Wedderburn's 1913 biography of Hume, which cited "seven volumes of secret reports" (never produced) showing that Hume had been alarmed by signs of an impending peasant uprising and had organised the Congress to provide a constitutional outlet for educated discontent — preventing a second 1857. The thesis was popularised by Lala Lajpat Rai in Young India (1916) — "Congress was a product of Lord Dufferin's brain" — and developed by R.P. Dutt in India Today (1940): "The Congress was started under official British patronage as a quasi-official body to provide a safety valve for the growing discontent of the educated classes."

5.2 The Counter-View (Bipan Chandra)

Bipan Chandra and the Nationalist school have substantially rebutted the safety-valve thesis:

• The "seven volumes of secret reports" have never been found in any archive; the story is almost certainly Wedderburn's hagiographical embellishment.
• The leading Indian founders — Banerjee, Bonnerjee, Mehta, Telang, Tyabji, Naoroji — were not Hume's puppets; they had been independently organising for a decade.
• Hume used Dufferin's tacit approval as a "lightning conductor" — the safety valve was a device used by the Indian leaders to disarm official suspicion, not a trap set for them.
• Within five years the Congress was attacking the British government on every major policy; if it was a safety valve, it leaked.

5.3 The Consensus Position

Hume had multiple motives — fear of revolt, liberal sympathy for Indian aspirations, personal grievance against Lytton, theosophical universalism. The Indian founders had their own motives — and used Hume's official respectability strategically. The Congress was not a colonial creation; it was an Indian movement that found in Hume a useful British liberal ally.

6. The Moderates — Leaders, Methods, Ideology (1885–1905)

6.1 Who They Were

• Dadabhai Naoroji (1825–1917) — the "Grand Old Man"; INC President thrice (1886, 1893, 1906); first Indian MP in the House of Commons (Liberal, Finsbury Central, 1892–95); author of Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901).
• Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee (1844–1906) — Calcutta barrister; first INC President.
• Surendranath Banerjee (1848–1925) — "Rashtraguru"; founder of Indian Association 1876; led ICS-age agitation; INC President 1895 & 1902.
• Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866–1915) — Ranade's protégé; INC President 1905 (Banaras); founder of Servants of India Society 1905; Gandhi's "political guru".
• Mahadev Govind Ranade (1842–1901) — High Court judge, Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, Indian National Social Conference 1887; mentor to a generation.
• Pherozeshah Mehta (1845–1915) — "Lion of Bombay"; INC President 1890.
• Romesh Chandra Dutt (1848–1909) — ICS, INC President 1899; The Economic History of India (1902).
• Dinshaw Edulji Wacha (1844–1936) — Parsi, finance specialist, INC President 1901.
• Anandamohan Bose, Madan Mohan Malaviya, William Wedderburn, A.O. Hume, Henry Cotton — pillars of the early movement.

6.2 Ideology

• Faith in the British connection — believed British rule was a "providential dispensation" that could be reformed from within.
• Constitutional methods — petitions, memorials, resolutions, deputations, journalism, electoral participation in Britain.
• Gradualism — work for incremental reforms; long-term goal of self-government within the empire (Naoroji's 1906 Calcutta presidential speech first used Swaraj in this dominion-status sense).
• Educated leadership — focus on the western-educated middle class; mass mobilisation deemed premature.
• "Prayer and petition" — caricatured by their critics; in their own view, building the intellectual case so the British Parliament would do the right thing.

6.3 Methods

1. Annual Congress sessions as platform for resolutions.
2. British Committee of the INC in London (1889) with its journal India.
3. Naoroji's election to Parliament (1892, Liberal MP for Finsbury Central) — pioneer of the "appeal to the British electorate" strategy.
4. Press campaigns in English and vernaculars.
5. Deputations to Britain at the time of every major imperial event (e.g., 1889 deputation on ICS age limit).

7. Moderate Demands & Achievements (1885–1905)

7.1 Constitutional Demands

• Expansion of Legislative Councils with elected Indian members.
• Greater Indian representation in the executive.
• Separation of judicial and executive functions.
• Indian control of public finance (the budget).

7.2 Civil Service Demands

• Simultaneous ICS examination in India and Britain — first raised 1885; achieved only in 1922.
• Raising of the maximum age limit (Lytton had lowered it to 19 in 1878; restored to 21 in 1892, 22 in 1906).

7.3 Economic Demands

• Reduction of land revenue, permanent settlement of revenue.
• Abolition of salt tax and other regressive taxes.
• Reduction of military expenditure; opposition to "imperial" wars charged to Indian revenue.
• Re-imposition of protective tariffs (especially against Lancashire cotton).
• Indianisation of services and railway management.
• Provision for technical and industrial education.

7.4 Civil Rights

• Repeal of the Arms Act 1878 and the Vernacular Press Act 1878.
• Right of assembly and association.
• Trial by jury for Indians.

7.5 What the Moderates Achieved

1. Built the all-India institutional framework — the Congress became the only nationwide political body.
2. Produced the economic critique — Drain Theory, deindustrialisation thesis — that demolished the moral case for British rule.
3. Indian Councils Act 1892 — limited concession but the principle of indirect election and the right to discuss the budget were conceded.
4. Raised the ICS age limit to 21 (1892) and 22 (1906).
5. Trained a political generation — Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Jinnah all began as Moderates.

7.6 Why They Were Found Wanting (by 1905)

• Narrow social base — restricted to English-educated professionals.
• "Three Ps" (Petition, Prayer, Protest) yielded thin results.
• British government's increasingly contemptuous response — Curzon famously called the Congress "tottering to its fall" and looked forward to "assisting it to a peaceful demise".
• Refusal to embrace mass mobilisation left them outflanked when Bengal exploded in 1905.

8. The Economic Critique — Naoroji's Drain Theory

8.1 Dadabhai Naoroji

Born 4 September 1825 in a Parsi priestly family in Bombay; educated at Elphinstone Institution; Professor of Mathematics; partner in Cama & Co (first Indian firm in Britain). His political life spanned 60 years. Key writings:

• "England's Debt to India" (paper to the East India Association, London, 1867) — first formal statement of the drain.
• Poverty of India (1876) — quantified per capita income at Rs 20 per year.
• Poverty and Un-British Rule in India (1901) — the consolidated indictment.

8.2 The Drain Theory — In Essence

Britain extracted from India, every year, a substantial portion of her national product as "unrequited transfers" — payments for which no equivalent goods or services flowed back to India. This drain operated through:

• "Home Charges" — pensions of British officials and military men paid in England; India Office expenses; debt servicing; payments for stores purchased in Britain.
• Salaries and savings of British officials remitted home.
• Profits of British capital invested in Indian railways, plantations, mines, banking.
• Trading profits of British firms (managing agencies).

8.3 Naoroji's Estimate

Naoroji estimated the annual drain at ~£30 million in the 1870s — roughly half of India's annual revenue. Subsequent estimates by Subramaniam Iyer and R.C. Dutt confirmed the order of magnitude. The consequence: capital that should have gone into Indian agriculture, industry, and human development was instead financing Britain's industrialisation and overseas adventures.

8.4 R.C. Dutt — The Economic History of India

Romesh Chandra Dutt's two-volume work (Vol I 1902, Vol II 1904) systematised the deindustrialisation argument: from 1757 to 1857 British policy had killed Indian handicrafts; from 1857 to 1900 it had failed to substitute industrial development. Famines were the visible result of structural impoverishment.

8.5 Why the Drain Theory Mattered

Before Naoroji, the British case rested on a moral claim — "we govern India for India's good". The drain theory turned this on its head: British rule was impoverishing India, by a measurable amount, every year. Every famine, every revenue increase, every railway concession could now be slotted into a single explanatory framework. The drain theory became the unifying intellectual core of Indian nationalism for the next forty years.

9. Government Repression & the Press Acts

9.1 Lytton's Reactionary Trio (1876–80)

• Royal Titles Act 1876 — Queen Victoria proclaimed Kaiser-i-Hind at the Delhi Durbar, 1 January 1877. Held in the middle of the Great Madras Famine — the contrast outraged Indian opinion.
• Vernacular Press Act 1878 ("Gagging Act") — empowered the government to demand security from publishers/printers of vernacular newspapers; censorship of pre-publication proofs; confiscation of presses for "seditious" content. Aimed openly at Amrita Bazar Patrika, Som Prakash, Bharat Mihir, Hindu Patriot. Repealed by Ripon in 1882.
• Arms Act 1878 — disarmed Indians; Europeans (and Anglo-Indians) exempted from licensing — a racially explicit law.
• Lowering of ICS age limit to 19 (1878).
• Cotton Duties Act 1879 — abolition of import duties on British cotton goods to please Lancashire, against Indian fiscal interest.

9.2 Later Repressive Measures

• Newspapers (Incitement to Offences) Act 1908 (Minto) — Tilak imprisoned six years in Mandalay under this.
• Indian Press Act 1910 — required publishers to deposit large security; forfeitable for "objectionable" content; ~1,000 papers and presses affected.
• Defence of India Act 1915 — wartime emergency powers, the model for Rowlatt 1919.

9.3 The Bal Gangadhar Tilak Sedition Trials

Tilak was prosecuted three times for sedition under Section 124-A IPC:

• 1897 — for articles in Kesari on the Chapekar brothers' assassination of Rand (Plague Commissioner) and Ayerst. Sentenced to 18 months.
• 1908 — for articles in Kesari on the Muzaffarpur bombing (Prafulla Chaki, Khudiram Bose). Sentenced to 6 years' transportation to Mandalay (Burma), where he wrote Gita Rahasya.
• 1916 — sedition prosecution that he successfully defeated (defended by M.A. Jinnah).

10. Lord Curzon's Viceroyalty (1899–1905)

George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925), Viceroy from January 1899 to November 1905, was a man of formidable ability and equally formidable arrogance. He undertook the most ambitious programme of reform of any Viceroy since Dalhousie — and managed simultaneously to alienate every Indian political constituency.

10.1 The Reforms

• Police — Police Commission 1902 under Sir Andrew Fraser; reorganised provincial police; new Criminal Investigation Departments.
• Education — Indian Universities Act 1904; tightened government control over universities, reduced the number of fellows; deeply resented as a curb on academic autonomy.
• Agriculture — Cooperative Credit Societies Act 1904; Imperial Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa, Bihar (1905).
• Famine — Famine Commission 1901 (MacDonnell).
• Railways — Railway Board 1905; separated railway accounts from general finance.
• Archaeology — Archaeological Survey reorganised under John Marshall (1902); Ancient Monuments Preservation Act 1904. (Curzon's lasting positive legacy.)
• Commerce — Department of Commerce & Industry created 1905.
• Frontier — Created North-West Frontier Province (1901), separating Pashtun areas from Punjab.

10.2 The Controversies

• Calcutta Corporation Act 1899 — reduced elected Indian members; resented as an attack on local self-government.
• Official Secrets Act 1904 — expanded the definition of "sedition" and "official secrets".
• Indian Universities Act 1904 — Gokhale called it "a retrograde measure".
• Curzon's contempt for Indians — his Convocation address at Calcutta University (1905): "Truth took a high place in the moral codes of the West before it had been similarly honoured in the East." The remark provoked an immediate storm.
• Younghusband Expedition to Tibet (1903–04) — embarrassing imperial adventurism.
• Quarrel with Kitchener over the Military Member of the Viceroy's Council — Curzon resigned in November 1905 when London sided with Kitchener.
• And, above all — the Partition of Bengal, 16 October 1905.

11. Partition of Bengal — 16 October 1905

11.1 The Official Justification

The Bengal Presidency in 1905 had a population of ~78 million and an area of ~189,000 square miles — too large for effective administration, the government argued. Splitting it would improve administrative efficiency, especially of the neglected eastern districts.

11.2 The Real Motives

Indian nationalists — and many British observers — saw through the administrative pretext to the political design:

• Weaken Bengali political consciousness — Bengal was the heart of the nationalist movement; dividing it would split the Bengali Hindu intelligentsia.
• Create a Muslim-majority province — East Bengal & Assam would have ~31 million people of whom ~18 million were Muslims, giving the British a Muslim political counter-weight against Hindu nationalism. Lord Curzon at Dacca (18 February 1904) promised the new province would "invest the Mohammedans in Eastern Bengal with a unity which they have not enjoyed since the days of the old Mussalman viceroys".
• Divide and rule — the explicit communal calculus was, as Risley (Home Secretary) wrote in a confidential note (6 December 1904): "Bengal united is a power; Bengal divided will pull in several different ways… one of our main objects is to split up and thereby weaken a solid body of opponents to our rule."

11.3 The Plan

• Bengal proper: Western districts + Bihar + Orissa = ~54 million, of whom ~9 million were Bengali-speaking Hindus and the rest Hindi/Oriya speakers.
• Eastern Bengal & Assam: Dacca + Chittagong + Rajshahi + Mymensingh divisions + Assam = ~31 million, ~18 million Muslims, ~12 million Hindus. Capital: Dacca.

11.4 The Reaction

The Partition was announced in July 1905 and took effect on 16 October 1905. The protest was immediate and unprecedented:

• 20 July 1905 — first mass meeting at Calcutta Town Hall.
• 7 August 1905 — Town Hall meeting passed the Boycott Resolution.
• 16 October 1905 — observed as a day of mourning. Shops closed; people fasted; bathed in the Ganga; tied rakhi on each other's wrists (Tagore's "Rakhi Bandhan" idea) as a symbol of Hindu-Muslim and Bengali unity. Tagore's "Amar Sonar Bangla" was written for this day (later the national anthem of Bangladesh).

12. The Swadeshi Movement (1905–1908) — Methods & Spread

The agitation that began as a protest against Partition rapidly broadened into a programme of national reconstruction — the Swadeshi-Boycott Movement, the first mass-political movement in modern Indian history.

12.1 Phases

1. August–October 1905 — Moderate phase: petitions, prayer meetings, boycott resolution at Calcutta Town Hall (7 Aug). Surendranath Banerjee, K.K. Mitra, Pherozeshah Mehta.
2. October 1905–1907 — Mass phase: spread to all districts of Bengal; bonfires of Manchester cloth; student volunteers; samitis (Anushilan, Dawn Society, Sadhana Samaj); Tagore's songs.
3. 1907 onward — Extremist phase: spread beyond Bengal under Tilak, Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal; turn towards political extremism and revolutionary violence.

12.2 Geographic Spread

• Bengal — the epicentre.
• Bombay Presidency — Tilak organised parallel agitations; the Shivaji Festival (since 1895) and Ganpati Festival (since 1893) became Swadeshi platforms.
• Punjab — Lala Lajpat Rai & Ajit Singh; agrarian unrest (Colonisation Act, canal water rates); Lajpat Rai & Ajit Singh deported to Mandalay in May 1907.
• Madras — Chidambaram Pillai (Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company 1906, Tuticorin); Subramania Bharati's Tamil poetry; Bipin Chandra Pal's lecture tour.
• Delhi, United Provinces — Madan Mohan Malaviya, Sundaralal.

12.3 The Constructive Programme

• Swadeshi enterprises: Bengal Chemical & Pharmaceutical Works (P.C. Ray, 1893; expanded after 1905); Bengal Iron Works; National Tannery; Calcutta Pottery Works; Swadeshi Steam Navigation Co (V.O. Chidambaram Pillai, Tuticorin, 1906); Swadeshi cotton mills.
• National Education: National Council of Education founded 15 August 1906 at Calcutta; Bengal National College opened 14 August 1906 with Aurobindo Ghosh as Principal; Bengal Technical Institute 1906 (became Jadavpur University). Goal: education in the mother tongue, with Indian content and discipline.
• National Volunteer Corps (samitis) — Anushilan Samiti (Calcutta 1902, P. Mitra), Dawn Society (Satish Chandra Mukherjee), Suhrid Samiti (Mymensingh), Sadhana Samiti, Brati Samiti. Combined physical training, swadeshi propaganda, and (in some cases) revolutionary preparation.
• Cultural revival: Tagore's Amar Sonar Bangla, Banglar Mati Banglar Jal; Rajanikanta Sen; Mukunda Das's jatra; Nandalal Bose & Abanindranath Tagore's swadeshi school of painting.

13. Boycott — Forms & the Constructive Programme

The Boycott was the negative counterpart to the constructive Swadeshi. Where Swadeshi was about building Indian alternatives, Boycott was about refusing British goods, services, and institutions.

13.1 Forms of Boycott

• Economic boycott — refusal to buy Manchester cloth, Liverpool salt, English sugar, Burmah Shell kerosene; public bonfires of foreign goods (the most famous at Calcutta on the eve of 16 October 1905).
• Educational boycott — students withdrew from government schools and colleges; the National Council of Education (15 Aug 1906) was the institutional response.
• Judicial boycott — refusal to take cases to government courts; arbitration tribunals (nyaya panchayats) at the village level.
• Boycott of titles, honours, government employment.
• Social boycott of those who continued to use British goods — barbers refused to shave them, priests refused to officiate at their ceremonies, washermen refused their clothes. This shaded into coercion and was controversial even at the time.

13.2 The Constructive Programme

• Indigenous industry — see Section 12.3.
• National education — Bengal National College (Aurobindo, 1906), Bengal Technical Institute (1906 → Jadavpur University), DAV institutions, Khalsa College Amritsar, Tilak's Fergusson College (Pune 1885 with Agarkar & Gokhale).
• Indian banking & insurance — Punjab National Bank (1894, Lala Lajpat Rai), Bank of India (1906), Central Bank of India (1911, Sorabji Pochkhanawala).
• Atmashakti ("self-strength") — Tagore's term for cultural and moral self-reliance.

13.3 Limitations & Decline

• Mass mobilisation reached urban Hindu Bengalis most effectively; Muslim peasants of east Bengal were less drawn — and were actively cultivated by the new East Bengal & Assam government and by Nawab Salimullah of Dacca.
• Communal tensions surfaced; the use of Hindu religious idiom (Kali pujas, Vande Mataram from Anandamath with its Hindu-revivalist context) alienated Muslims.
• Government repression — meetings banned, leaders deported (Lajpat Rai & Ajit Singh May 1907; Aurobindo arrested 1908; Tilak transported 1908).
• Internal split in the Congress at Surat 1907.
• By 1908 the movement had lost momentum; the partial annulment in 1911 was a victory but came too late to revive the mass character of 1905–07.

14. The Rise of Extremism — Tilak & Lal-Bal-Pal

14.1 Why Extremism Emerged

• Two decades of Moderate "prayer and petition" had yielded thin results — the IC Act 1892 fell far short of expectations.
• Famines of 1896–97 and 1899–1900 — millions dead, no British response commensurate with the scale.
• Curzon's contemptuous, reformist-imperialist style alienated even Moderates.
• International examples: Ethiopia's defeat of Italy at Adwa (1896); Japan's victory over Russia at Tsushima (May 1905) — a non-European power had defeated a European Great Power. The "white man's burden" looked less impregnable.
• Partition of Bengal was the proximate spark.

14.2 The Extremist Critique of Moderates

• Begging methods could yield only crumbs from the imperial table.
• The British did not understand petitions — they understood pressure.
• Self-government, not reform of foreign rule, must be the aim.
• Mass mobilisation — not the narrow educated middle class — was the path forward.
• Pride in indigenous culture, not imitation of the West.

14.3 Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) — "Lokmanya"

• Born at Ratnagiri 23 July 1856; Chitpavan Brahmin; educated at Deccan College Pune.
• Co-founded the Deccan Education Society (1884) and Fergusson College (1885) with Agarkar, Chiplunkar, Gokhale.
• Launched Kesari (Marathi) and Maratha (English) in 1881.
• Revived the Ganpati festival (1893) and inaugurated the Shivaji festival (1895) — turned Hindu religious and historical symbols into political platforms.
• 1897: First sedition trial — 18 months.
• "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it" — Lucknow 1916 (sometimes attributed to earlier — the famous formulation in this exact wording dates from his post-Mandalay period).
• 1908–14: Six years' transportation to Mandalay (Burma) — wrote Gita Rahasya.
• 1916: Founded Indian Home Rule League (April 1916, Belgaum); reunited with Congress at Lucknow.
• Died at Bombay, 1 August 1920 — on the very day Gandhi launched Non-Cooperation.

14.4 Lala Lajpat Rai (1865–1928) — "Punjab Kesari"

• Born Dhudike (Ferozepur) 28 January 1865; Hindu reformer (Arya Samajist); founded Punjab National Bank (1894); active in famine relief.
• Led the Punjab agitation 1906–07 against the Colonisation Bill and canal water rates.
• Deported to Mandalay May 1907 with Ajit Singh; released after six months.
• Founded Servants of the People Society (1921); led the boycott of the Simon Commission at Lahore on 30 October 1928; assaulted by Superintendent of Police James A. Scott — died of injuries 17 November 1928.

14.5 Bipin Chandra Pal (1858–1932)

• Born Sylhet 7 November 1858; Brahmo, journalist; lecture tours through southern India 1907 made the Bengal agitation a national one.
• Edited New India (1901), Bande Mataram (1906, with Aurobindo).
• Drifted from political extremism after 1908; opposed Gandhi's Non-Cooperation in 1920.

14.6 Aurobindo Ghose (1872–1950)

• Born Calcutta 15 August 1872; educated at St. Paul's London and King's College Cambridge; ICS qualified (1890) but failed the riding test.
• Returned to India 1893; Baroda State service; wrote the New Lamps for Old articles in Indu Prakash 1893–94 attacking Moderates.
• Joined Bengal politics 1905; Principal of Bengal National College 1906; edited Bande Mataram (1906–08).
• Alipore Bomb Case (1908–09) — arrested after the Muzaffarpur bomb; acquitted (defended by C.R. Das).
• Withdrew from politics; settled at Pondicherry 1910; turned to spiritual philosophy; died 5 December 1950.

15. The Surat Split — December 1907

15.1 Background — The 1906 Calcutta Compromise

At the Calcutta Congress (December 1906), Dadabhai Naoroji presided (his third presidency) and held the Moderates and Extremists together with a delicately worded compromise. Four resolutions were passed which were Extremist in substance: (i) Swaraj as the goal (defined as "self-government as in the colonies"), (ii) Boycott, (iii) Swadeshi, (iv) National Education. The split was deferred, not avoided.

15.2 The Surat Session — 26–27 December 1907

The 1907 session was originally to be held at Nagpur (Extremist-friendly). The Moderates engineered a shift to Surat, where Pherozeshah Mehta's influence was strong, and put up Rashbehari Ghosh (a Moderate) as president against the Extremists' choice of Lala Lajpat Rai. The Extremists came to Surat determined to ensure that the four Calcutta resolutions would not be diluted.

15.3 The Split

On 27 December 1907, as Ghosh was about to deliver his presidential address, fighting broke out on the dais — chairs were thrown, Pherozeshah Mehta and others injured, the session adjourned sine die. The Moderates reconvened a rump "Convention" and adopted a creed restricting Congress to "constitutional means" — explicitly excluding the Extremists. The Extremists were locked out.

15.4 Consequences

• The Congress weakened for almost a decade. Membership fell; sessions were poorly attended.
• The government exploited the split — Minto and Morley fast-tracked the 1909 reforms knowing the Congress would not unite to demand more.
• The Extremists were politically isolated — Tilak transported to Mandalay (July 1908); Aurobindo retired from politics 1910; Lajpat Rai left for the United States 1914–20.
• Revolutionary nationalism filled the vacuum — Anushilan and Yugantar in Bengal, Abhinav Bharat in Maharashtra, India House in London.
• Reunification: The Lucknow Session (December 1916) under Ambika Charan Mazumdar reunited Moderates and Extremists — Tilak returned to Congress; the Lucknow Pact with the Muslim League was signed.

16. Revolutionary Nationalism — Phase I (1905–1917)

The collapse of the Surat compromise and the deportation of Extremist leaders pushed a younger, more militant generation towards revolutionary violence. The first phase of Indian revolutionary nationalism — distinct from the later Bhagat Singh phase — drew on the Italian Carbonari, the Russian populists, and Irish Fenianism for inspiration.

16.1 Bengal — Anushilan & Yugantar

• Anushilan Samiti — Calcutta 1902, founded by Pramatha Mitra; Sister Nivedita and Aurobindo's brother Barindra were associated. Dacca branch (1906) under Pulin Behari Das became the most active.
• Yugantar — newspaper 1906, edited by Barindra Ghose and Bhupendranath Datta (Vivekananda's younger brother).
• Muzaffarpur Bombing, 30 April 1908 — Khudiram Bose (18) and Prafulla Chaki (19) threw a bomb at a carriage they believed carried the hated magistrate Kingsford; they killed two English women (Mrs and Miss Kennedy) instead. Chaki shot himself; Khudiram was captured, tried, and hanged on 11 August 1908 at Muzaffarpur — the youngest revolutionary martyr.
• Alipore Bomb Case (1908–09) — Aurobindo, Barindra, and others tried; Aurobindo acquitted; the public prosecutor Ashutosh Biswas and the approver Naren Goswami were both assassinated by revolutionaries during the trial.
• Other actions: Rashbehari Bose's bomb attack on Viceroy Hardinge in the Delhi Conspiracy (23 December 1912) at Chandni Chowk — Hardinge wounded; bomb-maker Basanta Kumar Biswas hanged.

16.2 Maharashtra — Chapekar & Abhinav Bharat

• Chapekar Brothers (Damodar, Balkrishna, Vasudev) assassinated W.C. Rand (Plague Commissioner) and his escort Lt. Ayerst at Pune, 22 June 1897. All three hanged.
• Abhinav Bharat — founded 1904 at Nashik by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and his brother Ganesh.
• Nashik Conspiracy Case — A.M.T. Jackson, District Magistrate of Nashik, was shot dead by Anant Lakshman Kanhere on 21 December 1909; the pistol had been smuggled in by Savarkar from London. Kanhere, Karve, and Deshpande hanged; Savarkar arrested in London 1910, brought to India in chains, given two life sentences and sent to the Cellular Jail, Andamans (1911–24).

16.3 Punjab — Anglo-Sikh / Ghadar Pre-history

• Agitation against Colonisation Act and canal water rates 1906–07 (Lajpat Rai & Ajit Singh).
• Ajit Singh founded Bharat Mata Society (1907); later went into exile, returned only at independence.

16.4 London — India House & Madame Cama

• Shyamji Krishna Varma founded India House (1905) at Highgate, London, as a hostel for Indian students and a centre for political work; launched The Indian Sociologist.
• Savarkar joined India House in 1906; wrote The Indian War of Independence 1857 there (published 1909, banned).
• Madanlal Dhingra assassinated Sir Curzon Wyllie, the political ADC to the Secretary of State, at the Imperial Institute, London, on 1 July 1909; hanged at Pentonville on 17 August 1909.
• Madame Bhikaiji Cama at the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, 22 August 1907, unfurled the first version of the Indian national flag (a horizontal tricolour of green, gold, and red with eight lotuses, Vande Mataram, sun and crescent).

16.5 The Ghadar Movement (1913–1917)

• Ghadar Party founded at San Francisco on 15 November 1913 by Lala Hardayal, Sohan Singh Bhakna, Kartar Singh Sarabha, Bhai Parmanand. Newspaper Ghadar in Urdu, Punjabi, English, Gujarati.
• Made up mostly of Punjabi (largely Sikh) Indian immigrants on the US west coast and in Canada.
• The Komagata Maru incident (Vancouver, May–July 1914, returning to Calcutta 27 September 1914 where police firing at Budge Budge killed 19) radicalised expatriate opinion.
• Ghadar Mutiny plan — return to India during the First World War, foment mutiny in the army (especially Punjab regiments). 21 February 1915 set as the date of an all-India rising; Rashbehari Bose in India was the link. The plan was betrayed by Kirpal Singh; mass arrests followed.
• Lahore Conspiracy Case (1915): 24 hanged (including Kartar Singh Sarabha, 19, sometimes called the "Bhagat Singh of Punjab"); 27 transported for life.
• Rashbehari Bose escaped to Japan (1915) where he later organised the Indian Independence League.

17. The Muslim League 1906 & the Communal Question

17.1 Background — Sir Syed & the Aligarh Tradition

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan had urged Muslims to keep away from the Congress, arguing that representative institutions would mean permanent Hindu majority rule, and that Muslim interests lay in loyalty to the British and in modern education (see Modern Topic 06 §11). The Aligarh school carried this position into the 1900s — particularly under Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk (Mehdi Ali).

17.2 The Simla Deputation, 1 October 1906

A 35-member delegation of Muslim notables led by the Aga Khan III (Aga Sultan Mahomed Shah) met Viceroy Lord Minto at Simla on 1 October 1906 and submitted a memorial asking for:

• Separate electorates for Muslims at all levels of representation.
• Weightage — representation in excess of population share, to reflect Muslims' "political importance" and military service.
• Reserved Muslim seats in services and universities.

Minto's reply was sympathetic; in private correspondence Lady Minto crowed that the deputation had achieved "nothing less than the pulling back of sixty-two millions of people from joining the ranks of the seditious opposition". The Simla Deputation has been called a "command performance" by some nationalist historians (suggesting it was orchestrated by the government itself, with Archbold of Aligarh as middleman) — though others (Francis Robinson, Aligarh's Muslims) emphasise the genuine autonomous concerns of the Muslim elite.

17.3 Founding of the All-India Muslim League

The All-India Muslim League was founded at Dacca on 30 December 1906, at the conclusion of the annual session of the Muhammadan Educational Conference. Founding figures: Nawab Salimullah of Dacca (host), Aga Khan, Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk. The first session was held at Karachi (1907); Aga Khan was permanent president 1908–13.

17.4 The League's Original Aims

1. Promote loyalty to the British government.
2. Protect and advance the political rights and interests of the Muslims of India.
3. Prevent the rise of prejudice against any other community.

17.5 Separate Electorates — The Long Consequence

The grant of separate electorates in the Indian Councils Act 1909 institutionalised the constitutional principle that Muslims and Hindus voted as separate electorates for separate seats. Gandhi later called this "the rakhi of vivisection"; it was the constitutional mechanism that, extended and consolidated by the 1919 and 1935 Acts, made Partition in 1947 conceivable.

18. The Morley-Minto Reforms — Indian Councils Act, 1909

Worked out by John Morley (Secretary of State, a Liberal and admirer of Gladstone) and Viceroy Lord Minto from 1907 onward, in the wake of Bengal unrest and Surat split. The Act was passed in May 1909.

18.1 Principal Provisions

• Expansion of Legislative Councils:
  • Central Legislative Council: 16 → 60 members (additional members).
  • Provincial Councils enlarged — Bengal, Madras, Bombay, UP, Bihar & Orissa, CP, Punjab.
• Non-official majority in the Provincial Councils (but only on paper — the non-officials included nominated members).
• Official majority retained at the Centre.
• Indirect election introduced — local bodies elected provincial council members; provincial council members elected to the central council. Limited franchise based on property, income, education.
• Separate electorates for Muslims — at all tiers, with weightage. Also separate communal electorates for landlords, universities, chambers of commerce.
• Expanded discussion powers — members could discuss the budget (but not vote on it), ask supplementary questions, move resolutions on matters of public importance (non-binding).
• Indians in Executive Councils — Satyendra Prasanna Sinha (S.P. Sinha) appointed Law Member to the Viceroy's Executive Council in 1909 — first Indian in the executive. Two Indians (Krishna Govinda Gupta, Syed Hussain Bilgrami) appointed to the Council of India in London.

18.2 Limitations

• No real legislative power transferred to Indians — the official-nominated majority at the Centre and the irrevocable veto of the Governor-General kept ultimate control with the executive.
• The electorate was tiny (about 0.5% of the adult population) and elaborately layered through indirect election.
• Separate electorates institutionalised communal representation — by far the most damaging legacy.
• Resolutions were non-binding; members could not vote down the budget.

18.3 Reception

• Moderates welcomed the Act cautiously as a step forward; Gokhale called it "a great act of statesmanship".
• Extremists (in exile or imprisonment) dismissed it as inadequate.
• Muslim League welcomed separate electorates.
• Within four years the limitations were obvious — the Act could not contain rising demands; Home Rule (1916) and Montagu's Declaration (20 August 1917) would have to go further.

19. Delhi Durbar 1911 & the Reversal of Partition

King George V — the only reigning British monarch ever to visit India during the Raj — held the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911, at which two major announcements were made:

19.1 Reversal of the Partition of Bengal

The 1905 partition was annulled. The Bengali-speaking districts (East & West Bengal) were reunited; Bihar and Orissa were separated into a new province of Bihar & Orissa; Assam was made a separate Chief Commissioner's Province. The nationalist movement counted this as a great victory — but the communal logic that had divided Bengal in 1905 was preserved in modified form.

19.2 Transfer of Capital from Calcutta to Delhi

The imperial capital was shifted from Calcutta to Delhi — symbolic recovery of the Mughal centre of north Indian sovereignty by the British, and a deliberate move away from the city that had been the heart of the Swadeshi agitation. New Delhi was designed by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker (begun 1912; formally inaugurated 13 February 1931). Surendranath Banerjee called the transfer "the British government's response to Bengal's politicisation — a slap and a sweet in the same hand".

19.3 Aftermath

• Delhi Conspiracy, 23 December 1912 — Viceroy Hardinge bombed at Chandni Chowk during his ceremonial entry into Delhi; wounded but survived.
• Surendranath Banerjee's Indian Press Act 1910 agitation continued.
• The new constitutional dispensation of 1909 + the reversal of partition + the Indian elite's wartime co-operation hopes culminated in the Lucknow Pact (December 1916) and Montagu's 20 August 1917 declaration committing the British government to "the progressive realisation of responsible government in India" — the beginning of the next phase, covered in Modern Topic 09.

20. Historiography of Indian Nationalism

20.1 The Verdict for UPSC

For a Mains answer the safe formulation: The early Indian nationalist movement was a genuine response to the political-economic conditions of colonial rule; it was simultaneously limited by its narrow social base (educated middle class), by its Hindu cultural idiom (which complicated cross-community mobilisation), and by its constitutional methods (which yielded only token reform). Its great achievement was to construct the intellectual and institutional infrastructure — the Drain Theory, the Congress, the press — that the mass-political phase after 1919 would build upon.

Previous Year Questions (Theme-aligned)