The Emergence of The Indian National Congress

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Dr SR. Mehrotra (b. 1931) is former Professor of History, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla and Jawaharlal Nehru Professor, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak. He has also taught at the universities of Saugor, London, Wisconsin, and Rabindra Bharati. He was a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla and a Visiting Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge. He is the author of India and the Commonwealth 1885-1929 (1965), The Commonwealth and the Nation (1978), Towards India's Freedom and Partition (1979) and A History of the Indian National Congress Volume One, 1885-1918 (1995). The present work was first published in 1971.

Professor Mehrotra is currently engaged in writing a second volume on the history of the Indian National Congress, dealing with the period 1919 to 1947, and in editing, in collaboration with Professor EC. Moulton of the University of Manitoba, the papers of Allan Octavian Hume (1829-1912).

Eight years ago I undertook to write a comprehensive history of the Indian National Congress. I had not long been at work on the subject when it became clear to me that the emergence of an organization like the Congress in a country of India's size and schisms represented a fairly advanced stage of political development. How was this stage reached? I decided to devote the opening chapter of my projected history of the Congress to answering this question. What was intended to be a chapter has grown into the present volume.

I have written a conventional political history. All that I promise my readers is plenty of new facts and some new interpretations of facts already known. I regret the multiplicity and length of the quotations in the book, but I hope they have imparted an air of authenticity and contemporaneity to my account and may prove useful to those who do not have easy access to the sources which I have consulted. I have drawn heavily on the contemporary press and in the process become more and more convinced of the truth contained in Macaulay's remark: 'The only true history of a country is to be found in its newspapers.'

My greatest debt is to Professor C.H. Philips, Director of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, who first aroused my interest in the history of the Indian National Congress and has also kindly read this book in typescript and made several valuable suggestions. I would like to thank the staff of the following institutions for their help and courtesy: the India Office Library; the British Museum; the Public Record Offices in Belfast, Edinburgh and London; the National Library of Ireland, Dublin; the Cambridge University Library; the Bodleian and the Christ Church Library, Oxford; the Leeds Public Libraries Archives; the Church Missionary Society, London; the National Library and the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad, Calcutta; the National Archives of India, New Delhi; the State Record Offices in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras; the Aligarh Muslim University Library, the Asiatic Society Library, Bombay; the Fergusson College Library, the Kesari-Mahratta Library, and the Servants of India Society's Library, Poona; the Theosophical Society Library, Adyar; the British Indian Association and the Indian Association, Calcutta; the Bombay Presidency Association; and the Madras Mahajana Sabha. My thanks are due also to the proprietors of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the Hindu, and the Tribune for allowing me to consult the back files of their newspapers. For permission to use the papers of S.H. Chiplonkar, I am indebted to Mr. S.B. Bhat of Dhulia. I am grateful to Professor N.R. Phatak and Mr. B.N. Phatak of Bombay for nobly responding to my many calls for help. To my friends Mr. F.A. Eustis II and Dr. R. Suntharalingam, with whom I have discussed the numerous controversial issues of nineteenth-century Indian history over the years, my obligation is immense.