It was the end of one
chapter and the beginning of another, for now
he bagan to work in India for India which resulted
in the establishment of the Indian National Congress.
He had great hopes on the educated, and on 1 March
1883 he addressed a circular letter to the graduates
of the Calcutta University asking them to "scorn
personal case and make a resolute struggle to
secure greater freedom for themselves and their
country". For this purpose he started an organisation
in March 1883 and called it the Indian National
Union.
From the official report of the first session
of the Congress, written by Hume himself, we come
to know that it was decided apparently by Hume
himself to call the conference of the Indian National
Union by the name Congress when due to the outbreak
of cholera the venue was changed from Poona to
Bombay. From the very beginning Hume wanted the
Congress to be an all-India organisation primarily
for political purposes.
In the circular letter issued in 1885, he stated,
"The conference will be composed of delegates,
leading politicians well acquainted with the English
language, from all parts of Bengal, Bombay and
Madras presidencies. The direct objectives of
the conference will be: (1) to enable all the
most earnest laborers in the cause of national
progress to become personally known to each other;
(2) to discuss and decide upon the political operations
to be undertaken during the ensuring year.
Indirectly the conference will form the germ of
a Native Parliament and, if properly conducted,
will constitute in a few years an unanswerable
reply to the assertion that India is still wholly
unfit for any form of representative institution."
Thus, we find that Hume gave more stress to political
objectives while the other leaders of the Congress,
including W. C. Bonnerjee, the first president,
gave more emphasis on social ones. The same conclusion
is drawn from a letter written by Hume to B. M.
Malabari on 1 February 1885.
Malabari had presented two notes on child marriage
and widow -marriage to the Government of Lord
Ripon in 1884. But Hume considered that mere social
reform was a sheer waste of time and energy as
long as Indians were deprived of political power.
The proceedings of the first Congress bore the
mark of the father of the Congress as Hume was
called, for no social question was taken up and
all the resolutions passed were concerned directly
with political subjects.
From Lord Dufferin's letter to Lord Reay, Governor
of Bombay, it seems that Hume met Lord Dufferin
at least seven to eight months prior to the meeting
of the Congress. "He (Hume) is clever and gentlemanlike,"
writes Lord Dufferin to Lord Reay on 17 May 1885,
"but seems to have a bee in his bonnet. Ripon
told me he knew a good deal of the Natives and
advised me to see him from time to time which
I have done both with pleasure and profit.
At his last interview he told me that he and his
friends were going to assemble a political convention
of delegates." Lord Dufferin advised Hume to create
body of persons to perform the functions which
Her Majesty's Opposition did in England.
The second Congress session which met in Calcutta
was a big affair compared to the previous one.
Due to Hume's influence, leading members of the
landed aristocracy including the Maharaja of Cooch
Behar, Maharaja of Darbhanga, Rajas of Hathwa
and Dumraon, Maharaja Jatindra Mohan Tagore and
Maharshi Debendra Nath Tagore made handsome donations.
In 1887 Hume and the leaders of the Congress made
a determined effort to establish mass contact
through the distribution of a catechism written
in Tamil by Veer Raghava Charia. The little sympathy
which the British officials had towards the Congress
vanished. In a letter to Lord Cross dated 3 December
1888 Dufferin said that many persons had been
watching with wonder the "immunity extended to
what in its (Government's) views are the insubordinate
proceedings of the Congress-wallahs, such as Mr.
Hume's foolish threats of insurrection and dissemination
of the libels and calumnies contained in the Tamil
Catechism and similar publications."
Sir Auckland Colvin, Lt. Governor of North-Western
Province and Oudh, sent a strong letter of protest
to Hume against the catechism.Perhaps as a result
of the above catechism, the third session of the
Congress which met in Madras in 1887 was attended
by more commoners than before. Writing to the
editor of the Indian Mirror Hume remarked, "At
the last Congress (Madras 1887) there were many
delegates and even several speakers, who were
only acquainted with their own vernaculars."
The fourth session of the Congress which met in
Allahabad in 1888 almost doubled its number of
delegates from 607 to 1248 and fulfilled Hume's
dream of a representative body, within a short
period of its existence.But Hume was not satisfied
with the establishment of the Congress in India.
He wanted to get a hearing to the British public.
Soon after laying the foundation of the Congress,
Allan Octavian Hume went to England to consult
his friends as to the "best means of getting a
hearing" for such an organisation both from "the
British Parliament |
and Public".
Among the persons he met were John Bright, Lord
Ripon and R. T. Reid. In a letter to Hume, Reid,
who was a member of Parliament, gave some practical
advice on coaching British members about Indian
subjects and on securing a seat for an Indian
in the House of Commons. "You must have coadjutors
in parliament," he said, for "if you have a few
men like yourself busy in England, they will find
friends inside the House." Hume was also fully
alive to giving publicity in the British press.
Thus in 1885 he arranged with the Manchester Guardian,
the Manchester Examiner, the Leeds Mercury, the
Scotsman, the Glasgow Daily Mail, etc. to publish
news from India.But it was not possible before
1887 to establish a Congress organisation in England.
Dadabhai Naoroji, who had been the president of
the Congress in 1886 and who the next year was
in England, agreed to act as agent for the Congress.
In 1888, W. C. Bonnerjee, the president of the
first Congress, together with Eardley, Norton,
another prominent member of the Congress, joined
Dadabhai in England and William Wedderburn took
the lead in setting up on 27 July 1889 a strong
Congress Agency in London with William Digby,
a former editor of the Madras Times, as a part-time
secretary.
Thus the first step towards Congress propaganda
in England was taken under the guidance of Hume
and Dadabhai Naoroji. A sum of Rs. 45,000 was
voted for its maintenance by the annual session
of the Congress, as the Congress Agency in London
began to be called, started a journal, the India,
for purpose of informing the British electorate
of Indian grievances. But Hume was not satisfied.
He was farsighted and wanted implementation of
the reforms advocated by the Congress.
In 1892 Hume addressed a circular letter to every
member of the Congress on 16 February. It was
marked "private and confidential", but the Morning
Post of Allahabad published it. In it Hume pointed
out that poverty, injustice and despair might
drive the people to take recourse to revolution.
He also implored the members of the Congress to
make handsome contributions so that a deputation
might be sent to Great Britain so as to awaken
the British public to a sense of duty to India.
But the talk of revolution frightened P. M. Mehta,
D. E. Wacha, W. C. Bonnerjee and others and they
stopped the circulation of the letter. W. C. Bonnerjee,
in his presidential address in 1892, brought in
a note of caution when he said, "The Congress
movement is only to some extent, and I may say
only a limited extent, due to the influence which
Mr. Hume has exercised on us."
But there were others who disagreed with him.
Eardley Norton remarked that the letter "breathed
nothing but a simple strain of the purest loyalty
to the Queen", while G. K. Gokhale paid Hume a
great tribute when he stated, "All that the Indian
National Congress had done during the seven years
of its existence was principally Mr. Hume's work."
Gokhale was right in his estimate of Hume, for
had Hume lost his influence over the Congress
almost all its leaders would not have pressed
him to continue as Secretary till 1893. He left
India in 1894, but even then was elected secretary
year after year till he relinquished the post
in 1906 at the age of 77. It is interesting to
note that in 1903 a series of articles entitled
"A Call to Arms" were written and published.
The articles, written by William Wedderburn, W.
C. Bonnerjee, Dadabhai Naoroji and Allan Octavian
Hume, all members of the British Committee of
the Congress, were meant to encourage the supporters
and the friends of the Congress movement in India.
Hume, now an old man, deplored the lack of a spirit
of sacrifice in the leaders of the day and remarked:
"You meet in Congress, you glow with a momentary
enthusiasm, you speak much and eloquently and
the sentiments you propound are highly creditable
to you. But when the Congress closes, everyone
of you broadly speaking goes off straight to his
own private business."
Instead he advised his friends to make the entire
year "one great continuous Congress demonstration".
Hume with his great influence could have become
the President of the Congress any time but he
preferred to remain in the background, and during
the last eighteen years of his life he carried
on the work of the Congress from England.India
and Indians for whom he worked realised his greatness
and did not fail to express their gratitude to
him.
At a memorial meeting held in the Town Hall, Calcutta,
on 28 August 1912, Rash Behari Ghosh said that
in founding the Congress, Hume showed the highest
form of courage. At Bankipore session in December
1912, the Congress placed on record that Allan
Octavian Hume was the father and founder of the
Indian National Congress. "He taught us how to
fight bloodless battles of constitutional re-form.
Well may we, our children and our children's children
remember the name of Mr. Allan Hume through succeeding
generations with gratitude and reverence." |