How the INC began, every session from 1885 to 1948, the Moderates-Extremists split, the Quit India Movement, and the final road to 15 August 1947.
By the last quarter of the 19th century, an English-educated Indian middle class had begun organising politically through regional bodies — the British Indian Association (1851), the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (1870), the Indian Association (1876) and the Bombay Presidency Association (1885). The Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, gave this scattered activity a single all-India platform for the first time.
Historians remain divided on why it came into being: the "safety-valve" thesis holds that Allan Octavian Hume and sympathetic colonial officials wanted a controlled outlet for educated Indian discontent, to head off wider upheaval; the nationalist thesis instead treats Congress as the natural, self-generated culmination of decades of Indian political awakening, with Hume playing only a facilitating role. The first session was held in Bombay, December 1885, at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, with 72 delegates; Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee presided as first president, under Viceroy Lord Dufferin. The original venue was to have been Poona, shifted to Bombay after a cholera outbreak. Commonly cited founders: Hume, Dadabhai Naoroji, and Dinshaw Edulji Wacha.
| Year | Venue | President | Key Fact |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1885 | Bombay | W.C. Bonnerjee | Founding session |
| 1887 | Madras | Badruddin Tyabji | First Muslim President |
| 1888 | Allahabad | George Yule | First Englishman to head the INC |
| 1906 | Calcutta | Dadabhai Naoroji | "Swaraj" articulated as a goal for the first time |
| 1907 | Surat | Rash Behari Ghosh | Open split — Moderates vs Extremists |
| 1911 | Kolkata | Bishan Narayan Dhar | Jana Gana Mana sung publicly for the first time |
| 1916 | Lucknow | A.C. Majumdar | Lucknow Pact — Moderates & Extremists reunify with the League |
| 1917 | Kolkata | Annie Besant | First woman President |
| 1920 | Nagpur | C. Vijayaraghavachariar | Non-Cooperation formally adopted |
| 1924 | Belgaum | Mahatma Gandhi | His only term as INC President |
| 1929 | Lahore | Jawaharlal Nehru | Purna Swaraj resolution; 26 Jan fixed as Independence Day |
| 1931 | Karachi | Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel | Fundamental Rights & National Economic Policy resolutions |
| 1937 | Faizpur | Jawaharlal Nehru | First rural session of the INC |
| 1937–39 | Haripura / Tripuri | Subhas Chandra Bose | Re-elected at Tripuri against Gandhi's preferred candidate; resigned, formed the Forward Bloc |
| 1946 | Meerut | J.B. Kripalani | Last session before Independence |
| 1948 | Jaipur | Pattabhi Sitaramayya | First session after Independence |
| Moderates | Extremists |
|---|---|
| Constitutional, petition-based methods; worked within the colonial legal framework | Favoured direct mass action — boycott, Swadeshi, passive resistance — alongside constitutional means |
| Sought gradual, incremental reform | Demanded Swaraj as an immediate, non-negotiable goal |
| Placed faith in British fair play | Distrusted British intentions; stressed self-reliance |
| Support base: lawyers, journalists, professionals | Sought to widen the movement's base among the wider population |
| Naoroji, Mehta, Gokhale, S.N. Banerjee | Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal, Aurobindo Ghosh |
The rift came to a head at the 1907 Surat Session — the election of Rash Behari Ghosh as President triggered a walkout that split the party — and was healed at the 1916 Lucknow Session, which also produced the Lucknow Pact with the Muslim League, Congress's first acceptance of separate electorates for Muslims in the interest of unity.
On 8 August 1942, the All India Congress Committee, meeting in Bombay, passed the Quit India resolution; Gandhi's call to the nation was summed up as "Do or Die." The entire top Congress leadership was arrested within hours, leaving the movement to be carried forward in a largely spontaneous, often underground fashion by local leaders, students and workers. Short-lived parallel/underground administrations emerged in some areas — notably Ballia (UP), Satara (Maharashtra) and Tamluk (Bengal) — alongside widespread sabotage of communication lines and government property. It was the last of the great pan-Indian mass movements launched by Congress under Gandhi's direct leadership before independence.
The Indian National Army (INA) trials of 1945–46 at the Red Fort, and the public sympathy they generated, together with the Royal Indian Navy Mutiny of February 1946, signalled the rapidly weakening hold of colonial authority. The Cabinet Mission (1946) proposed a loose federal structure for a united India; when this framework broke down, an Interim Government was formed under Jawaharlal Nehru later that year. Escalating communal tension — including the Direct Action Day of August 1946 — culminated in the Mountbatten Plan and the transfer of power on 15 August 1947, accompanied by the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan.
This document (per its own note) merges and consolidates content from multiple original source note-sets into a single, non-duplicated reference — reflecting the same approach taken here.
