Patriots > Early Nationalist and Moderates > Hume Allan Octavian
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."

Author : Pansy Chhaya Ghosh

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