ON THIS DAY · 31 DECEMBER 1885

Founding of the Indian National Congress

28–31 Dec 1885 — At Bombay’s Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, seventy-two delegates met under W. C. Bonnerjee. Most were lawyers, journalists and teachers; the organizer was A. O. Hume, a retired civil servant. Through petitions and resolutions, they sought a larger Indian share in governing India.

The moment in context

The Raj could govern a vast territory with relatively few British officials because it relied on several sources of authority. The Indian Civil Service supplied about a thousand British officers to administer districts, collect land tax and act as judges. Queen Victoria had promised impartial admission to office, but the service examination was held only in London, and its age limit was cut to nineteen in 1876. Only a handful of Indians entered. The princes formed a second support: their semi-independent states and their right to adopt heirs were protected, and Mysore, governed by British commissioners since 1831, was returned to its dynasty in 1881. The third was an army rebuilt with more British troops and recruits from Punjab and Nepal. These arrangements placed power in hands the Raj considered reliable. For educated Indians, the limited access to those hands exposed the distance between the promise of equality and the practice of government.

From British Raj and the early Congress, chapter 2 of Indian Independence & Partition, 1857–1964 (DEC 1885).

The place: Founding of the Indian National Congress — map and full story →

The atlas that shows it

Indian Independence & Partition, 1857–1964

15 CHAPTERS · AN INTERACTIVE SITUATION MAP