Indian National Congress (political party)

The Indian National Congress (INC) is a major political party in India. It is a center-left party that supports democratic socialist policies. Along with the center-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the INC is one of the two largest political parties in India.

The INC was founded in 1885 primarily by British civil servant Allan Octavian Hume and a group of Indians who sought to rid India of British imperialism. The INC promoted Indian nationalism and supported principles such as social progress and the advancement of human rights. In the early decades of the twentieth century, the party was notably led by Mahatma Gandhi, who called for India's nonviolent separation from the United Kingdom, and Jawaharlal Nehru, who became the first INC prime minister of independent India in 1947.

The INC remained a mainstay in national Indian politics for the next few decades, but its defeat in the 1977 general election signaled a change in India's political direction, and the party struggled to win national elections from that point. In the twenty-first century, the INC competes for parliamentary seats primarily with the BJP.

Background

The INC was born out of Indian dissatisfaction with the British Raj, the rule of India established by the United Kingdom in 1858. The British Crown had founded the Raj after the unsuccessful Indian Rebellion of 1857, in which Indian soldiers tried to overthrow the British East India Company, which had been governing India on behalf of the British government.

One of the central figures in the founding of the INC was Allan Octavian Hume, a British civil servant who had been assigned to an administrative position in India in the late 1840s. The 1857 rebellion touched Hume in a profound way. He noted with horror the violence committed by British forces against the Indian people during the revolt, which, in turn, angered Indians even more. Hume frequently traveled among Indians as part of his work. His contact with Indians from a range of backgrounds eventually taught him that the Indian people had grown dissatisfied with their British rulers and sought a change in national leadership. Hume began publicly criticizing British policies in India, and this infuriated the British government. This falling out caused Hume's career to stall, and Hume left his government post in 1882.

Several theories purport to explain why Hume began working with Indians in the 1880s to begin an Indian independence movement. One theory suggests the governor-general, or viceroy, of India directly requested that Hume do this to provide Indians with a forum for expressing their discontent with British rule. This would likely prevent another violent rebellion. Another theory asserts that Hume became involved in Indian nationalist politics only because Indian activists believed the presence of a British citizen in their group would lend them more credibility with the British Crown.

In the early 1880s, Hume challenged the intellectual leaders of Calcutta, then the capital of British India, to begin their own political movement that would produce freedom for India, a fair national government, and the right of Indians to determine their own futures. Hume's efforts successfully motivated a group of Indian political leaders to form the Indian National Congress in 1885, with Hume himself counted as a founding member. The party held its first session that December in the city of Bombay. The meeting's seventy-two attendants included Hume—the only European present—and Indian political scholars Dadabhai Naoroji, Surendranath Banerjee, and Dinshaw Edulji Wacha.

Overview

The INC's platform at this point was one of liberal nationalism. This ideology called for an independent India to exist as an open democracy in which the government worked to reform society and advance human rights. The party quickly became popular, eventually attracting more than 15 million members during the British Raj era. Indians so strongly supported the INC because, at the time, it was the only political representation they had in a country ruled by the British.

Several notable Indians joined the INC in the late 1910s. One of these was Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi, a leader of the Indian independence movement who famously engaged in a campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience against British rule in India until his assassination in 1948. Gandhi directly influenced the lawyer Jawaharlal Nehru, who joined the INC in 1919. Nehru became president of the INC in 1928. The British government imprisoned him numerous times into the 1930s for civil disobedience.

INC delegates met with the British government repeatedly in the 1930s and 1940s to discuss terms of Indian independence. Negotiations were often contentious. Finally, in 1947, the United Kingdom agreed to partition British India into the independent countries of India and Pakistan. Nehru, as leader of the INC, became the first prime minister of India that year. Over the next seventeen years, he implemented various democratic socialist policies and began the process of industrializing the country. Nehru died in 1964.

Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, became prime minister in 1966, but her authoritarian rule disquieted the Indian people, and she was voted out of office in the general election of 1977. The INC had lost power after thirty consecutive years at the top of India's government. Indira Gandhi served as prime minister again from 1980 to 1984, and she was assassinated that year. Her son Rajiv Gandhi was the INC prime minister of India from 1984 to 1989.

The INC remained one of India's major political parties in the twenty-first century. Its central value was Indian nationalism—the belief that all Indians were one people, despite their differences of religion, language, or other traditions. The party also supported religious freedom, democratic government, and social justice programs that helped women, the poor, and other historically disadvantaged groups so all Indians could live with dignity.

India's 2014 general election was a resounding defeat for the INC, as the Indian people had become impatient with the party's failures to limit government corruption and economic inflation. As a result, the Bharatiya Janata Party—with its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi—swept to power that year. INC candidate Rahul Gandhi, vice president of the INC and son of Rajiv Gandhi, claimed responsibility for his party's loss. He said the INC's leaders would contemplate what the defeat meant for the future of the party.

The party continued to perform poorly in subsequent years, even failing to gather enough seats to form the official opposition. However, in the 2024 general election, the party seemed to be regaining momentum. The party nearly doubled its standing from the previous election, capturing 99 seats. The party remained under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, who though pleased with the general elections, expressed frustration in some regional elections and questioned the country's election system.

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