Rise of Nationalism: Moderates and Extremists

Why this matters for CAPF

This note covers the institutional birth of organised nationalism, the period from the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885 to the eve of the Gandhian era in 1917. It is heavily tested in Paper I as static facts (founding details, the Moderate-versus-Extremist contrast, the Swadeshi dates, the Surat split, the session-to-president matching) and it supplies the opening movement for the freedom-struggle essay in Paper II (see theme freedom struggle). The chapter also explains the structural roots of communal politics (separate electorates, the Muslim League) that culminate in partition, so it links forward to towards independence acts and partition. Master the chronology, the two-wing contrast, and the named leaders, and this becomes a high-scoring, low-ambiguity topic.

This account follows the NCERT modern-India coverage and the standard reference treatment in Spectrum's "A Brief History of Modern India."

Core narrative

Factors behind the rise of nationalism

Several forces converged to produce a national consciousness in the second half of the nineteenth century.

• Political and administrative unification of the subcontinent under a single power, with a uniform law, currency, and administration.
• Modern communications: the railways, the telegraph, the postal system, and a growing English-language press that connected the educated across regions.
• Western education and ideas of liberty, nationalism, and self-government, producing a politically conscious middle class.
• Economic exploitation: the drain of wealth, deindustrialisation, and recurring famines, theorised by early economic nationalists such as Dadabhai Naoroji, R. C. Dutt, and M. G. Ranade.
• The reform movements (see socio religious reform movements), which fostered self-respect and a critical reading of society.
• Racial arrogance and discriminatory British policy, sharply illustrated by the Ilbert Bill controversy (1883), which the European community resisted because it would let Indian judges try Europeans.

Pre-Congress associations

Organised political activity preceded the Congress through regional associations: the Landholders' Society (1838), the British Indian Association (1851, Calcutta), the East India Association (1866, London, by Dadabhai Naoroji), the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (1870), the Indian Association of Calcutta (1876, by Surendranath Banerjee and Ananda Mohan Bose), the Madras Mahajan Sabha (1884), and the Bombay Presidency Association (1885).

Foundation of the Indian National Congress (1885)

The Indian National Congress was founded in 1885 by Allan Octavian Hume, a retired British civil servant, with the encouragement of Viceroy Lord Dufferin. The first session was held in December 1885 at the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay, presided over by Womesh Chandra (W. C.) Bonnerjee, with 72 delegates. The original "safety valve" theory (that Hume founded the Congress to provide a harmless outlet for discontent) is debated; nationalist historians stress the genuine Indian initiative behind it.

The Moderate phase (1885 to 1905)

For its first twenty years the Congress was dominated by the Moderates.

• Leaders: Dadabhai Naoroji (the "Grand Old Man of India", who advanced the Drain of Wealth theory in Poverty and Un-British Rule in India and was the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons, in 1892), Gopal Krishna Gokhale (founder of the Servants of India Society in 1905 and Gandhi's political mentor), Pherozeshah Mehta, Surendranath Banerjee (the "Indian Burke"), W. C. Bonnerjee, Dinshaw Wacha, and Madan Mohan Malaviya.
• Beliefs and methods: faith in the essential justice of British rule, a demand for reform through prayers, petitions, resolutions, and constitutional agitation (the "three Ps", later derided as "political mendicancy"), and a call for a larger Indian share in the administration and the legislative councils.
• Demands: Indianisation of the civil service and a simultaneous ICS examination in India, expansion of the legislative councils, reduction of military spending, and redress of economic grievances.
• Achievement: the Indian Councils Act 1892, which modestly enlarged the legislative councils and allowed indirect election (without using the word "election").

The partition of Bengal and the Swadeshi movement (1905)

Lord Curzon partitioned Bengal in 1905, the partition taking effect on 16 October 1905. Officially justified as administrative convenience for an unwieldy province, it was in effect designed to divide Hindus and Muslims (the new East Bengal had a Muslim majority) and to weaken the strong Bengali nationalist base. The reaction was the Swadeshi and Boycott movement, the first mass political agitation of the period.

• Boycott of British goods, courts, schools, and titles, and the promotion of swadeshi (Indian) goods and industries.
• National education: the Bengal National College (with Aurobindo Ghosh as its principal) and a network of national schools.
• Revival of indigenous handicrafts and the encouragement of Indian enterprise.
• Cultural mobilisation: the song "Vande Mataram" (from Bankim Chandra Chatterjee's Anandamath) became the movement's anthem; Rabindranath Tagore composed songs and proposed Raksha Bandhan as a symbol of Hindu-Muslim unity.

The agitation, sustained pressure, and the threat of unrest forced the British to annul the partition of Bengal in 1911, when the capital was also shifted from Calcutta to Delhi.

The Extremists (Assertives) and the Surat split (1907)

A new, assertive school grew impatient with the Moderates' methods. The Extremist trio was "Lal-Bal-Pal": Lala Lajpat Rai (Punjab), Bal Gangadhar Tilak (Maharashtra), and Bipin Chandra Pal (Bengal), joined by Aurobindo Ghosh.

• Goal: swaraj (self-rule), not merely reform. Tilak's slogan, "Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it", captured the new mood.
• Methods: passive resistance, boycott, swadeshi, and national education; a readiness for self-sacrifice and direct action.
• Tilak built mass feeling through the Ganapati festival (from 1893) and the Shivaji festival (from 1895) and through his newspapers Kesari (Marathi) and Maratha (English).

The differences over methods and goals came to a head at the Surat session of 1907, where the Congress split into the Moderate and the Extremist wings amid open disorder. The split weakened the movement; the two wings reunited only at the Lucknow session of 1916.

The Muslim League and the road to Lucknow

The All India Muslim League was founded in 1906 at Dhaka, under Aga Khan and Nawab Salimullah, to safeguard Muslim political interests; it welcomed the partition of Bengal and sought separate representation. The Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 conceded separate electorates for Muslims (see towards independence acts and partition).

The Lucknow Pact and the Home Rule Leagues (1916)

• Lucknow session (1916): a double landmark. The Moderates and Extremists reunited (Tilak having returned from imprisonment), and the Congress and the Muslim League concluded the Lucknow Pact (1916), in which the Congress accepted separate electorates for Muslims in return for a joint scheme of constitutional demands for self-government. It was the high point of Hindu-Muslim political cooperation.
• Home Rule Leagues (1916): two Leagues demanded self-government within the British Empire on the Irish model. Bal Gangadhar Tilak founded the Indian Home Rule League at Poona in April 1916; Annie Besant founded the All India Home Rule League at Madras in September 1916. The agitation spread political awareness across the country and energised the movement on the eve of the Gandhian era (see gandhian era and mass movements).

Static facts to memorise

Security and nation-building angle

The institutional turn of these decades, a national party, a national press, regional associations, national schools, and the economic critique of colonial rule, created the organisational and intellectual machinery of the freedom struggle. The British countered with the same instrument they had used in 1857: division. The partition of Bengal (1905) was an early attempt to split a nationalist base along communal lines, and the grant of separate electorates in 1909 institutionalised communal representation, a structural cause of the politics that ended in partition. The Lucknow Pact (1916) shows the alternative path of Hindu-Muslim cooperation that the later movement struggled to sustain. For the state-building story, this is where the demand for self-government and constitutional rights, later codified in the Constitution, first takes organised political form.

How CAPF asks it

Common formats: founding facts of the Congress (founder, first president, place, delegate count); Moderate-versus-Extremist contrast and leader-to-wing matching; the cause and year of Swadeshi; the Surat split year; session-to-president matching; who founded the two Home Rule Leagues.

Authored practice:

Common confusion

• Founder of the Congress (A. O. Hume) versus first president (W. C. Bonnerjee): both are asked together and swapped.
• Partition of Bengal (1905, Curzon) versus its annulment (1911); the capital shift to Delhi also dates to 1911.
• Surat split (1907) versus Lucknow reunion (1916): the gap is the divided phase.
• Lucknow Pact (1916, Congress-League) versus the Lucknow session itself: the Pact and the reunion happen at the same session.
• Moderate phase (to 1905) versus Extremist ascendancy (1905 onward); place a leader in the right wing.
• Tilak's slogan "Swaraj is my birthright" is Extremist, not Moderate.

Memory hook

• Extremist trio: "Lal-Bal-Pal" (Lajpat Rai, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal).
• 1916 double: "Reunion and Pact at Lucknow" (Moderates and Extremists reunite; Congress and League sign the Lucknow Pact, both in 1916).
• Home Rule order: "Tilak first (April, Poona), Besant second (September, Madras)."
• Bengal bracket: "Partitioned in 05, annulled in 11" (1905 to 1911).
• Methods: "Moderates pray and petition; Extremists boycott and resist."

Night before

• INC founded 1885 by A. O. Hume; first session Bombay, December 1885, under W. C. Bonnerjee, 72 delegates.
• Moderates (1885 to 1905): Naoroji, Gokhale, Mehta, Banerjee; petitions and constitutional means; Act of 1892.
• Naoroji: Drain of Wealth theory, Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, first Indian MP (1892).
• Gokhale: Servants of India Society (1905); Gandhi's mentor.
• Bengal partition 1905 (Curzon), Swadeshi and Boycott, "Vande Mataram"; annulled 1911, capital to Delhi.
• Extremists: Lal-Bal-Pal plus Aurobindo; goal swaraj; Tilak's slogan and his Ganapati and Shivaji festivals.
• Surat split 1907; reunion at Lucknow 1916; Lucknow Pact 1916 (Congress accepts separate electorates).
• Muslim League founded 1906 at Dhaka; Home Rule Leagues 1916 (Tilak at Poona, Besant at Madras).

Glossary

• Indian National Congress: the national political party founded in 1885, the central body of the freedom struggle.
• Moderates: the early Congress leaders who sought reform through constitutional means (1885 to 1905).
• Extremists (Assertives): the later wing demanding swaraj through boycott and passive resistance.
• Drain of Wealth: Naoroji's theory of the unilateral transfer of India's wealth to Britain.
• Swadeshi: the use and promotion of Indian-made goods as a form of protest and self-reliance.
• Boycott: the refusal to use British goods, schools, courts, and titles.
• Swaraj: self-rule, the Extremists' and later the national movement's central demand.
• Surat split: the 1907 division of the Congress into Moderate and Extremist wings.
• Lucknow Pact: the 1916 Congress-League agreement accepting separate electorates and joint demands.
• Home Rule League: the 1916 organisations of Tilak and Besant demanding self-government on the Irish model.
• Separate electorate: a system in which Muslims voted only for Muslim candidates, conceded in 1909.
• Vande Mataram: the song from Anandamath that became the Swadeshi anthem.
• Ilbert Bill: the 1883 measure to let Indian judges try Europeans, resisted by the European community.
• Servants of India Society: Gokhale's body (1905) for training public workers.

Related notes

• socio religious reform movements
• revolt of 1857
• gandhian era and mass movements
• towards independence acts and partition
• theme freedom struggle
• Index
• syllabus index