A party of Europeans: How Congress was formed to halt a repeat of 1857

In the public life of a nation, when propaganda is sustained for an elongated period, it becomes a myth and the myth becomes a cult, and the cult in turn is kept alive through fiction, fear, intimidation and all of the above. This is the encapsulated history of the myth that it was Mohandas Gandhi and only Gandhi who brought freedom to India. But this myth could not be sustained without falsifying the history of the Congress party itself. This was a task which Gandhi’s staunch loyalist Pattabhi Sitaramaiah performed with the negationist strokes of his pen which authored The History of the Congress. Till date, this remains the official history of the party.

The story is well-known but needs repeating here. The selfsame Pattabhi Sitaramaiah was put up by Gandhi as a puppet candidate against Subhash Chandra Bose during the election of the INC president in 1939. Unfortunately, even the saintly might of the Mahatma could not rescue Pattabhi from a humiliating trouncing by Congress members who overwhelmingly chose Bose. Pattabhi was the ultimate yes-man.

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And so, it is unsurprising to read his version of the history of the Congress party: “It is shrouded in mystery as to who originated the idea of an All-India Congress. Apart from the Great Durbar of 1877 or the International Exhibition in Calcutta which…are supposed to have furnished the model…the idea was conceived in a private meeting of seventeen men after the Theosophical Convention held at Madras in December 1884… Whatever the origin… we come to the conclusion… that the idea was in the air, that the need of such an organisation was being felt, that Mr Allan Octavian Hume took the initiative.”

As early as 1935, Sitaramaiah lied about the very origins of his own party. This is how habitual the Congress deception had already become by then. One of the doyens of Indian history, RC Majumdar narrates the whole truth in his masterly volumes on the history of the Indian freedom movement. He writes, “The Congress was the… culmination of the evolution of… political ideas and organisations [from a recent past]… there was no sudden emergence of this political institution, and there was nothing novel either in its ideas or methods.” 

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And then Majumdar takes Pattabhi Sitaramaiah to task: “[Pattabhi Sitaramaiah’s] statement is very misleading. Neither the Delhi Durbar of 1877 nor the International Exhibition had anything to do with the Congress. The first suggested the idea of the National Conference — not of the Congress — to Surendra Nath Banerji, and the second offered the suitable date for holding it. There is nothing to support the view that the idea of the Congress was conceived by seventeen members of the Theosophical Convention…except a statement of Mrs Beasant which contains glaring errors. Nor is the official historian of the Congress right in his view that the ‘idea was in the air’. It took a definite shape in the two sessions of the National Conference in Calcutta. It is not a little curious that Dr Sitaramayya did not refer to it even as a possible source of the idea of the Congress.”

Apart from RC Majumdar, we have an even more first-hand source. From a former Congress president named Ambica Charan Mazumdar who says that the Calcutta National Conference “anticipated the Congress by two years and in a large measure, prepared the ground for it”. Even The Hindu in its fledgling years characterised the Calcutta National Conference as the “National Congress”, a full two years before the INC was officially established

The fear of AO Hume

The other well-known story is how AO Hume, the retired ICS officer, founded the Congress party to preempt a second national revolt against British rule. As we read the historical sources today, it becomes clear that Hume was indeed scared out of his wits when he learnt the details of the subterranean stirrings of this revolt. In 1878-9, he received intelligence from various parts of India that Swamis, monks, sanyasis, and “religious devotees held in the highest veneration by the people,” who had support among the masses of the “lowest strata of the population…[who] were determined to do something and that something meant violence”.

When this intelligence was compiled, it ran to seven volumes including news reports from British spies. Here is a gist of what was planned as reported in the July 1913 issue of the Modern Review: “[The news] referred to the secretion of old swords, spears and matchlocks, which would be ready when required…What was predicted was a sudden violent outbreak of sporadic crimes, murders of obnoxious persons, robbery of bankers, looting of bazaars….In the existing state of the lowest half-starving classes…the first few crimes would be the signal for hundreds of similar ones…and after the bands had obtained formidable proportions….the educated classes…bitter against the Government would join the movement, assume…the lead, give the outbreak cohesion and direct it as a national revolt.”

In other words, a repeat of 1857.

Only this time, lessons had been learned and strategies had been intricately worked out. In less than twenty-five years. Had this second revolt erupted, the course of Indian history would’ve been permanently altered.

Hume’s foresight is indeed laudable. Borrowing directly from the worst of the Biblical traditions, he spoke in the honeyed tongue of Satan described so powerfully in Paradise Lost. Hume’s performance was one of the pioneering expressions of the haughty precept and practice of the White Man’s Burden. After retiring as the servant of the colonial British Indian Government, he overnight transformed himself as a friend and well-wisher of Indians. And he chose his audience carefully.

On 1 March 1883, he addressed an Open Letter to the graduates of Calcutta University, ironically founded in 1857. It was a heartfelt “appeal” for establishing an Association for the “mental, moral, social, and political regeneration of the people of India.” The appeal was actually a passionate letter and it elicited the desired response. The aforementioned Indian National Union was formed. Its target audience was the deracinated class of Bengali Hindus whose brains by then had thoroughly been blow-dried by English education.

But on the side, Hume wrote this to the viceroy of India, Duffrein: “A safety-valve for the escape of great and growing forces, generated by our own action, was urgently needed, and no more efficacious safety-valve than our Congress movement could possibly be devised.”

The other impact of Hume’s devious scheme was that it effectively, but temporarily halted the surge of the tremendous philosophical, spiritual, intellectual, social, political and nationalist forces that over the previous half-century were shaping up to eventually transform as the New Renaissance of Bharatavarsha. One of the brightest minds of this movement was the indomitable Surendra Nath Banerjee who was respected, admired, and feared even in England. When the formidable British journalist and editor, WT Stead met him in Britain, he made a pun on his name as “Surrender-not Banerjee,” conveying the immense respect he had for this stalwart.

But whom did the infant INC — birthed by Hume — elect as its first president Not Surendra Nath Banerjee but one of the seminal Indian creations of Macaulay. His name was WC Bonnerjee. As we shall see, Bonnerjee was so ashamed of his original name — Umesh Chandra Banerjee — that he mangled it as Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee.

To be continued

The author is the founder and chief editor, The Dharma Dispatch. Views expressed are personal

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