ESLORA DE FLOTACION (Lwl)

It is customary to discuss the first twenty years in the history of the Congress—its Moderate phase—as a single bloc, and certainly a broad uniformity in objectives and methods of activity seems fairly obvious over the entire period. The Congress met at the end of each year for three days in what became great social occasion as well as a political assembly, heard and applauded a long Presidential address and numerous speeches (almost always in English), and dispersed after passing a roughly similar set of resolutions dealing with three broad types of grievances— political, administrative and economic. The principal political demand was reform of Supreme and Local Legislative Councils to give them greater powers (of budget discussion and

interpellation, for instance) and to make them representative by including some members elected by local bodies, chambers of

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commerce, universities, etc. Thus the immediate perspective fell far short of self-government or democracy, and as late as 1905, Gokhale's presidential address asserted that the educated were the 'natural leaders of the people', and explained that political rights were being demanded 'not for the whole population, but for such portion of it as has been qualified by education to discharge properly the responsibilities of such association'. There was however also an expectation that freedom would gradually broaden from precedent to precedent on the British pattern, till India entered the promised but distant land of what Naoroji in 1906 described with considerable ambiguity as 'Self-Government or Swaraj like that of United Kingdom or the colonies'. Among administrative reforms, pride of place went to the demand for Indianization of services through simultaneous ICS examinations in England and India—a demand raised not really just to satisfy the tiny elite who could hope to get into the ICS, as has been sometimes argued, but connected with much broader themes. Indianization was advocated as a blow against racism; it would also reduce the drain of wealth in so far as much of the fat salaries and pensions enjoyed by white officials were being remitted to England, as well as help to make

administration more responsive to Indian needs. Other administrative demands included

separation of the judiciary, extension of trial by jury, repeal of the Arms Act, higher jobs in the army for Indians, and the raising of an Indian volunteer force—demands which evidently combined pleas for racial equality with a concern for civil rights. The economic issues raised were all bound up with the general poverty of India-drain of wealth theme. Resolutions were repeatedly passed calling for an enquiry into India's growing poverty and famines, demanding cuts in Home Charges and military expenditure, more funds for technical education to promote Indian industries, and an end to unfair tariffs and excise duties. The demand for extension of the Permanent Settlement was also related to the drain of wealth argument, for over-assessment was held to be responsible for forced sale by peasants leading to the export surplus. That the early Congress was not concerned solely with the interests of the English-educated professional groups, zamindars, or industrialists is indicated by the numerous resolutions on the salt tax, treatment of Indian coolies abroad, and the sufferings caused by forest administration. 91

Resolutions condemning forest laws were passed every year between 1891 and 1895. In addition, the Indian Association launched a campaign exposing the horrors of indentured labour in Assam tea gardens in the late 1880s, and its assistant secretary Dwarkanath Ganguli even went to the Assam plantation area at considerable personal risk to bring back information about the slave labour conditions prevailing there. The Congress, however, refused to take this up on the ground that it was a local issue.

What made the Moderate Congress increasingly a target of criticism was not so much its

objectives as its methods and style of functioning. The keynote here had been struck by Naoroji's phrase, 'un-British rule'—and the early Congress concentrated on building-up through petitions, speeches and articles a fool proof logical case aimed at convincing, not so much the 'sun-dried' bureaucrats of British India, but the presumably liberal-minded public opinion of the land of Cobden, Bright, Mill and Gladstone. Even these politics of what Extremists were to describe as 'mendicancy', moreover, were tried out in a rather intermittent manner. Politics remained for the

bulk of the Moderates very much a part-time affair—the Congress was not a political party, but an annual three-day show, plus one or two secretaries, and the local associations which were quite numerous on paper were no more than tiny coteries, usually of lawyers, which met occasionally to 'elect' among themselves the Congress delegates for the year or to pass resolutions on some immediate grievances, and otherwise enjoyed long spells of complacent hibernation.

All this is well-known; the more interesting question is why this should have been so. The answer perhaps lies in the nature and social composition of the early Congress leaders and participants. The Moderate leaders tended to be Anglicized in their personal life and highly successful men in their professions. The first bred ambivalent attitudes towards Englishmen, with criticism of specific policies balanced by general admiration and even a belief in the

'providential' nature of British rule. The second meant little time left over for political activity; as Wacha complained to Naoroji on 18 November 1887, 'Pherozeshah is nowadays too busy with his professional work.. . . They are already rich enough. ... Mr Telang too remains busy. I wonder how if all remain busy in the pursuit of gold can the progress of the country be advanced?'

Success also bred complacency, a belief 92

that things would improve gradually, since after all some concessions like the 1892 Council Act had been obtained. Above all, many top Congressmen had developed a highly elitist life-style (Mehta travelled in a special railway saloon, Gandhi recalls J. Ghoshal asking him to button his shirt for him during the Calcutta Congress in 1901, and even the less Anglicized Ranade visited Simla in 1886 with 25 servants), and this often led to feelings of mingled contempt and fear of the 'lower orders', and a dependence on the British for law and order which must have been strengthened by the revivalist frenzies and communal riots of the 1890s. Thus Wacha in his Shells from the Sandy of Bombay recalled the blowing from British guns of 1857 rebels without the slightest sympathy; Mehta in 1874 was mobbed during a Parsi-Muslim clash by what he described as 'this beggarly rabble and scum of the Mahomedan population'; Surendranath during a temperance campaign in 1887 found the lower classes utterly alien; and food rioters at Nagpur in 1896 chose a Congress leader's house as a principal target—no doubt because he was also a landlord and moneylender. Recent research, as we have seen, is bringing out the connections between the early Congress professional intelligentsia and propertied groups—a few

industrialists in Bombay, commercial magnates like the Tandons of Allahabad, landholders or tenureholders practically everywhere. Such groups were not likely to support radical

programmes or unrestrained mass agitation.