Road To Freedom

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• For God and Country
• The Empire Builders
• Tribal Uprisings
• Sepoys on the Move
• British Authority Collapses
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Roll of Honour
• The Trial of the Last Emperor
• English Education
• The Blue Mutiny
• Perishing in Peace
• ‘Rani Ka Hookum’
• Barbarous Britannia
• Return to Swadeshi
• The Delhi Durbar
• Hunger Deaths
• The One-Man Army
• Mamool Raj
• The British Raj in Black and White
• Europeans Take To The Street!
• Pressing On !
• The Battle For A Free Press
• The Battle Lines are Drawn
• Women : Crossing the Threshold
• An Old Man's Dream
• Father of Indian Unrest
• The Monk Who Shook The Nation
• The Battle is Taken to the Legislature!
• Partition of Bengal
• The Great Divide
• The New Spirit of India
• Swadeshi Enterprise
• From Swadeshi to Swaraj
• Gandhi in South Africa
• Heroes and Martyrs
• Revolutionaries Outside India
• Carrot and Stick
• Gandhi in Champaran
• The Gentle Satyagrahi
• Massacre at Jallianwala Bagh
• Jallianwala — The Aftermath
• A People Reject Their Rulers
• The Himalayan Blunder
• Gandhiji Withdraws from Political Activities
• Bardoli
• Saga of Indian Revolutionaries
• A Pinch of Salt!
• Gandhi and Ambedkar
• Leave India to God… or to Anarchy
• Quit India
• The Last War of Independence
• Apostle of Peace
• India Wins Freedom
• The Light Has Gone Out
• Under One Flag

The Battle Lines are Drawn

The Battle Lines are Drawn

Early political organizations in the country were modelled on those in England. One of the first things the Banga-bhasha Prakashika Sabha founded in 1836 discussed at its very first meeting, was the seating arrangements. A member pointed out that at meetings Englishmen sat on chairs with a table in the centre, and each member rose from his seat when addressing the gathering. The member proposed and all others agreed, that the same procedure should be followed in their meetings too. Nationalist leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji, Mahadev Govind Ranade, Womesh Chandra Bannerjee, Surendranath Banerji, and others, were not opposed to British rule as such. Their political thinking, as that of other great leaders like Raja Ram Mohan Roy before them, was moulded by ideas of liberty and equality which were essentially European in origin. They believed that India would benefit from Western education. They did not ask the British to quit the country, they only aspired for the same privileges that the English enjoyed back home. There were a handful of British civil servants like Henry Cotton, William Wedderburn and A.O. Hume who whole-heartedly agreed with this thinking. These Englishmen were openly and unabashedly India lovers. Their attitudes led Indian leaders to think that given time they could win over more Englishmen. "We Indians believe," Dadabhai Naoroji used to say half in jest, "although John Bull is a little thick-headed, once we can penetrate through his head into his brain that a certain thing is right and proper to be done, you may be quite sure that it will be done." To win over public opinion in England, William Adam, a friend of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, had founded The British India Society as early as in 1839 and had launched a journal British India Advocate.

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Towards the end of the 19th century, the political organizations most active were the British Indian Association in Calcutta, the Bombay Presidency Association, Sarvajanik Sabha in Pune and Mahajan Sabha in Madras. Though these organisations were in touch with each other, they lacked the ability to work jointly for the national or public good.
Ganesh Vasudev Joshi of Sarvajanik Sabha, Pune, dreamt of an All-India organisation. So did Surendranath Banerji who convened the National Conference in Calcutta in 1883. In Madras, a group of eminent public figures including Annie Besant and Raghunatha Rao initiated a move to establish an All-India organization. All these leaders readily responded when A.O. Hume convened the Indian National Congress to meet in Mumbai in the last week of December 1885.
The Congress, which elected Womesh Chandra Bannerjee as its president and A.O. Hume as the secretary, caught the imagination of the people. Other political organisations of the day either merged with the Congress or participated in its programmes even while retaining their regional identity.
The INC aimed to promote fellow-feeling and friendship between people working for the common good all over the country and to nurture and develop feelings of national unity.
Though Englishmen like A.O. Hume were associated with the founding of the Congress, the British reaction was definitely hostile. The London Times described the Congress as a party of lawyers, school masters and newspaper editors. "That they can talk and that they can write, we are in no doubt at all," wrote the leading daily from London in one of its editorials. "But that they can govern wisely, or that they can enforce submission to their rule, wise or unwise, we are not equally sure." The editorial concluded with a warning to the newly formed Congress: "…It was by force that India was won, and it is by force that India must be governed....If we were to withdraw, it would be in favour not of the most fluent tongue or of the strongest arm but the sharpest sword."
The battle lines were being drawn!