The Congress programme during the first phase (1885-1905) was very modest. It demanded moderate constitutional reforms, economic relief, administrative reorganization and defence of civil rights. Also it adopted moderate means of political agitation like filing petitions, memorials etc. before the government and organizing public speeches and discussions around political issues.

The demands and programme

The more important of the demands were:

-      The organisation of the provincial councils.

-      Simultaneous examination for the I.C.S. in India and England,

-      The abolition or reconstitution of the Indian Council.

-      The separation of the Judiciary from the executive.

-      The repeal of the Arms Act

-      The appointment of Indians to the commissioned ranks in the Army.

-      The reduction of military expenditure, and

-      The introduction of Permanent Settlement to other parts of India.

The Congress expressed opinions on all the important measures of the Government and protested against the unpopular ones. These demands were repeated year after year, although there was hardly any response from the Government. During the first twenty years (1885-1905) there was practically no change in the Congress programme. The major demands were practically the same as those formulated at the first three or four sessions.

This phase of the Congress is known as the MODERATE PHASE. During this period the leaders were cautious in their demands. They did not want to annoy the government and incur the risk of suppression of their activities. From 1885 to 1892, their main demand continued to be

Constitutional reforms

Te Congress demanded expansion and reform of the Legislative Councils, the membership of the Councils from elected representatives of the people and also an increase in the powers of these Councils.

The British Government was forced to pass the Indian Councils Act of 1892 but the provisions of this Act failed to satisfy the Congress leaders. They demanded Indian control over the public purse and raised the slogan that that had earlier been raised by the Americans during their War of Independence, ‘No taxation without representation’. By 1905 the Congress put forth the demand for Swaraj or self-rule for Indians within the British Empire on the model of the self-governing colonies like Australia or Canada. This demand was first referred to by G.K. Gokhale in 1905 (at Banaras) and later explicitly stated by Dadabhai Naoroji in 1906 (at Calcutta).

Economic nationalism

A strong point noted by the nationalists during this phase was about the economic drain of India. Dadabhai Naroji described the British rule as an 'everlasting and every day increasing foreign invasion’ that was gradually destroying the country. In the nationalist opinions the British were responsible for the destruction of India’s indigenous industries. The remedy for the removal of India’s poverty was the development of modern industries. The Government could promote it through tariff protection and direct government aid. However after seeing the failure of the Government in this regard the nationalists popularized the idea of Swadeshi or use of Indian goods and boycott of British goods as a means of promoting Indian industries. They demanded:

-      End of India’s economic drain.

-      The reduction of land revenue in order to lighten the burden of taxation on the peasants.

-      Improvement in the conditions of work of the plantation labourers.

-      Abolition of the salt tax and

-      The reduction in the high military expenditure of the Government of India.

The progressive content of these demands and their direct connection with the needs and aspirations of the Indian middle class is clear by these demands. Most of them opposed on grounds both economic and political the large-scale import of foreign capital in railways, plantations and industries and the facilities accorded to these by the Government. By attacking expenditure on the army and the civil service, they indirectly challenged the basis of British rule in India. By attacking the land revenue and taxation policies, they sought to undermine the financial basis of British administration in India. The use of Indian army and revenue for British imperial purposes in Asia and Africa was identified as another form of economic exploitation. Some of them even questioned the propreity of placing on Indian revenues the entire burden of British rule itself. In the form of the drain theory, they impressed upon the popular mind a potent symbol of foreign exploitation of India.

The Indian leaders were concerned with the problem of economic development as a whole rather than economic advancement in isolated sectors. The central question for them was the overall economic growth of India. Developments in different fields were to be considered in the context of their contribution to the economic development of the country. Even the problem of poverty was seen to be one of lack of production and of economic development.

Drain of wealth Theory

The transfer of resources and wealth from India to England without providing ‘any equivalent return’ which began in the second half of the eighteenth century had been christened by Indian ‘non-practicing’ economists like Dadabhai Naoroji, M. G. Ranade, R. C. Dutt as the “economic drain”.

It was in 1867 that for the first time Dadabhai Naoroji in his paper 'England's Debt to India' put forward the idea that Britain was extracting wealth from India as a price of her rule in India, that out of the revenues raised in India, nearly one-fourth went clean out of the country and was added to the resources of England', and that India was consequently 'being bled'. Dadabhai Naoroji dedicated his life to propagation of the drain theory and to launching a roaring campaign against the drain which was considered by him to be the fundamental evil of British rule in India.

 Dadabhai Naoroji gave six factors that caused external drain. These are:

1.     External rule and administration in India.

2. Funds and labour needed for economic development was brought in by immigrants but India did not draw immigrants.

3.   All the civil administration and army expenses of Britain were paid by India.

4.  India was bearing the burden of territory building both inside and outside India.

5. India was further exploited by opening the country to free trade.

6.  Major earners in India during British rule were foreigners. The money they earned was never invested in India to buy anything, rather they left India along with the money that was earned here.

Not only this but through different services such as railways, India was given a huge amount to Britain. On the other hand ,trade as well as Indian Labour was deeply undervalued, along with this, The East India company was buying product from India with Indian Money and exporting it to Briatin.

Effects of the Drain on India:

1.   Huge drain of resources from India into England had resulted disastrous effects on Indian economy and its people. Huge amount of these resources which could be invested in India were snatched and siphoned off to England.

2.   Huge public debt undertaken by the Government and its payment of interest necessitated increasing tax burden on the people of India, which were highly regressive in nature. As per Dadabhai Naoroji’s estimates, tax burden in India during 1886 was 14.3 per cent of its total income which was very high as compared to 6.93 per cent in England.

3.   Moreover, these tax proceeds were mostly used for making payments to British creditors and not for the social services and welfare activities of Indians. This type of drain of tax proceeds from India impoverished the agriculture, industry and trading activities in India and was largely responsible for stagnant stage of its economy during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Although the British undertook responsibility of maintaining law and order, centralised political and judicial administration, roads, railways, educational set up etc. but the extent of draining out of resources was too excessive leading to stagnation of the economy and poor and miserable condition of Indian masses.

Nature of economic demands

As we have noted earlier, even though their political demands were moderate, their economic demands were radical in nature. The Indian leaders advocated basically anti-imperialist economic policies. They laid stress on basic changes in the existing economic relations that made India a supplier of raw materials and a market for British manufacturers. They criticized the official policies on tariff, trade, transport and taxation. These were regarded as hampering rather than helping the growth of indigenous industry.

Freedom of speech and expression

They also fully recognised the value of the freedom of the press and speech and condemned all attempts at their curtailment. In fact, the struggle for the removal of restrictions on press became the integral part of the nationalist struggle for freedom.

Evaluation of work

Whatever may be the drawback in the demands put forward by the Congress, it was a national body in true sense of the term. There was nothing in its programme to which any class might take exception. Its doors were open to all classes and communities. Its programme was broad enough to accommodate all interests. It may be said that it was not a party, but a movement.

It must be said to the credit of the nationalist leaders that though they belonged to the urban educated middle class they were too broad-minded and free from narrow and sectional class interests. They kept in mind the larger interests of the people in general. Their economic policies were not influenced by the short sighted vision of a job-hungry middle class.

This challenging critique of the financial foundations of the Raj was a unique service that the early Congress leadership rendered to the nation.

The British attitude towards congress

The political tone of the Indian National Congress might have been mild but from the fourth session of the Congress onwards, the government adopted a hostile attitude towards it. Time passed and nothing substantial was conceded to the Congress. Elements hostile to the Congress were encouraged by the British. For example they encouraged the Aligarh movement against the Congress and the British attitude became more hostile to the Congress under Lord Curzon. In an autocratic manner be tried to control the university education and decreed the partition of Bengal. This led to a strong national awakening.

During this period general impression grew that they (the Moderates) were political mendicants, only petitioning and praying to the British Government for petty concessions. As studied earlier, the Moderates had played an important role at a critical period in the history of Indian nationalism.

They succeeded in creating a wide national awakening, in arousing among the people the feeling that they belonged to one common nation the Indian nation. They made the people of India conscious of the bonds of common political, economic, social and cultural interests and of the existence of a common enemy in imperialism and thus helped to weld them in a common nationality. They trained people in the art of political work, popularised among them the ideas of democracy, civil liberties, secularism and nationalism, propagated among them a modern outlook and exposed before them the evils results of British rule. This contribution of the moderates was to serve as the foundation for political action in the coming years.

With changing times, the Moderates also began to alter their position. By 1905 Gokhale had started speaking of self-rule as the goal and in 1906 it was Dadabhai Naoroji who mentioned the word Swaraj as the goal of the Congress.

Even so, the Moderates found themselves in a tight corner with the emergence of extremist leadership within the congress. The British authorities also doubted their bonafides. The extremists were attracting youthful section among the political activists. Extremists came to the centre stage of the Congress.

Extremism in the Indian National scene did not spring up all of a sudden in the first decade of the twentieth century. In fact it had been growing slowly but invisibly since the Revolt of 1857 itself.

Ideological basis of extremism

The nationalist ideas behind the Revolt of 1857, according to the Extremists, were Swadharma and Swaraj. Attachment to rationalism and western ideals had almost alienated the ‘Liberal’ (Moderate) school from the masses in India. That is why despite their high idealism, they failed to make any effective impact on the people. In due course a section was bound to come to fill this gap. In the place of adoration and imitation of all things western, there was a movement by the eighties of the nineteenth century urging people to look to their ancient civilization. An under-current of this type had existed earlier but during the Revolt of 1857 it had suddenly burst into open. However, the educated community by the large had kept itself aloof from the main current of Indian life and remained untouched by this trend. The historic task of bridging the gulf between the educated few and the general people was accomplished by Paramahamsa Ramakrishna and his English-educated disciple, Swami Vivekananda, Swami Dayananda, who was well-versed in Vedic literature and the Arya Samaj founded by him also played a vital role in this direction. The Eclectic Theosophical Society of Annie Besant too made a contribution. These social reform movements gave impetus to political radicalism. There was instinctive attachment to native culture, religion and polity. The political radicals who derived inspiration from their traditional cultural values were ardent nationalists who wanted to have relations with other countries in terms of equality and self respect. They had tremendous sense of self respect and wanted to keep their heads high. They opposed the moderates who were considered by them to be servile and respectful to the British. They thought that a trial of strength between the ruler and the ruled was inevitable, and argued for building a new India of their dreams in which the British had no contribution to make.

Three groups of the extremists

       The Maharashtra group, headed by B.G. Tilak;

       The Bengal group represented by B.C. Pal and Aurobindo Ghosh

       The Punjab group led by Lala Lajpat Rai.

The Bengal Extremists were greatly influenced by the ideas of Bankim Chandra, who was a liberal conservative like Edmund Burke. He wanted no break with the past which, he thought, might create more problems than it would solve. He was opposed to precipitate reforms imposed from above. In his view, reforms should wait on moral and religious regeneration which should be based on fundamentals of religion. Bankim blazed the trail for the Extremists in his contemptuous criticism of the Moderates.

This nationalism of the Extremists was emotionally charged. The social, economic and political ideals were all blended in this inspiring central conception of nationalism. Carrying this message to the West Vivekananda generated tremendous self-confidence and will-power. Aurobindo even raised patriotism to the pedestal of mother worship. He said in a letter, “I know my country as my mother. I adore her. I worship her.”

Aurobindo was very much attracted by the teachings of Dayananda who was hardly influenced by any ideas from the West. He credited Dayananda with more definite work for the nation than any other reformer. Bankim Chandra, Dayananda and Vivekananda had thus prepared the ideological ground on the basis of which the Extremists drew up their political programme.

Extremists in action

Tilak resented any interference by an alien government into the domestic and private life of the people. He quarreled with the reformers over the Age of Consent Bill in 1891. He introduced the Ganpati festival in 1893 and 1894. Tilak threw a challenge to the National Social Conference in 1895 by not allowing it to hold its session in the Congress pavilion in Poona (The National Social Conference was under the influence of Moderate Wing). In the same year the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha was captured by the Extremists from the Moderates. The Shivaji festival was first held on 15 April 1896 and with the foundation of the Deccan Sabha on November 4, 1896, the division between the Extremists and the Moderates in Maharashtra was complete, but it was not so all-over India. Pal, for example, the leader of the Bengal Extremists was still in the camp of the Moderates.

Because of the soft and vacillating policy it pursued, Lajpat Rai also was not interested in Congress programme. Between 1893 and 1900 he did not attend any meeting of the Congress. He felt during this period that the Congress leaders cared more for fame and pomp than for the interests of the country.

Open conflict and split

Tilak was unpopular with the Moderate group in Bombay. He was a shrewd tactician waiting for the opportunity to show his hand. The unity forged at the Benaras Congress (1905) with the Bengal Extremists proved advantageous to Tilak at the Calcutta Congress (1906). Gokhale also had his premonitions about the Calcutta Congress. He apprehended trouble. This mutual distrust did not augur well for the Congress. To begin with there was controversy over the Presidentship. Pal and Aurobindo wanted Tilak to be the President, but the Moderates were in no mood to accept him. To have their way the latter resorted to an extraordinary maneuver, and without consulting the Reception Committee, wired Dadabhai Naoroji to accept the presidentship. After the latter’s acceptance, the Extremists were presented with a fait accompli. Thus having failed in their attempt to get Tilak installed as President, the Extremists-Tilak, Aurobindo, Pal, Ashwini Kumar Dutt, G.S. Khaparde etc. - formed themselves into a pressure group to press their points. The Extremists were in majority and they had substantial local support. There was much heat in the atmosphere and the meeting of the Subjects Committee was stormy. Resolutions were discussed and amended under pressure from the Extremists. Pherozeshah Mehta was the target of their special fury. Mehta, M.M. Malaviya and Gokhale were heckled and booed. Ultimately a compromise was hurriedly made, and the resolutions on the partition of Bengal, Swadeshi and Boycott were re-phrased and secured a smooth passage in the open session. There was however, no union of the minds and hearts among the antagonists. The danger was averted for the time being but a festering sore was left.

Though the Extremists had failed to get Tilak elected the President of the Calcutta Congress (1906), they were satisfied with what they had achieved there. They had emerged as a strong, coherent and powerful force. They had thwarted what they believed to be determined attempts to water down the Congress programme. The Moderates left Calcutta with mixed feelings of bewilderment, humiliation and dismay. What worried them most was the “rough behaviour” adopted by the Extremists.

Both the Moderates and the Extremists participated in the Swadeshi movement; but there were real differences between the views of the Moderates and Extremists on Swadeshi. To Tilak, Pal and Aurobindo boycott had double implications. Materially it was to be an economic pressure on Manchester, producing thereby a chain reaction on the Government of India. Spiritually it was a religious ritual of self-punishment. Swadeshi had primarily an economic message for Gokhale the message of industrial regeneration which he had imbibed from Ranade. To Surendranath the Swadeshi movement was in spirit a protectionist movement. It appealed to the masses because they had the sense to perceive that it would “herald the dawn of a new era of material prosperity for them”. To Tilak and Lajpat Rai it was a moral training in self-help, determination and sacrifice was well as a weapon of `political agitation’. To Aurobindo Swadeshi was not `secularity of autonomy and wealth’, but a return to the faith in India’s destiny as the world-saviour. Thus Swadeshi had a far richer and meaningful content for the Extremists than for the Moderates.

Differences of Temperament and ideology and clash of personalities were to create bitter feelings among the rival groups. Persistent criticism by the Extremists alarmed the Moderates. The latter were afraid that the former had already captured Bengal, Maharashtra, Berar and the Punjab and there was danger of the rest of the country also being lost to them.

At Calcutta it has been decided to hold the next session of the Congress at Nagpur where the Moderates thought that they would be in majority. The election of the Congress President for the ensuing session (1907) developed into an occasion for trial of strength between the Moderates and the Extremists. The Moderates were determined not to allow Tilak to hold the presidential chair.

The Moderates were unanimous on the exclusion of Tilak but not on who should be elected. Gokhale had his eyes fixed on Rash Behari Ghosh, a renowned lawyer and powerful orator. But the Moderates found themselves unnerved at Nagpur and Pherozeshah Mehta changed the venue to Surat where he thought he would have his way. The Extremists did not like this. The tense atmosphere and the intemperate language used by both sides pointed to the inevitability of the coming crisis at Surat. Rash Behari Ghosh was elected the Congress President. The relations between the two groups worsened still further. In the meeting there was open conflict to the proposal of Ghosh being elected as President. Tilak was not allowed to express his views in the matter. This was a signal for pandemonium and the two groups formally split.

Consequences of the split

But whoever may be responsible for the split and whatever may be its cause, it was a great national calamity. Gokhale was aware of this great disaster. The British bureaucracy was in jubilation. Lord Minto, the Viceroy, exultingly told Lord Morley, the Secretary of State that the ‘Congress Collapse’ (Surat split) was ‘a great triumph for us’. But Morley knew better. Almost prophetically he told the Viceroy that, the immediate collapse notwithstanding, the Extremists would eventually capture the Congress. The split did immense harm to the Congress in particular and the national movement in general. It can be said that the Moderates were the brain of the Congress and the nation and the Extremists were the heart; the former were the ‘law’ and the latter ‘impulse’. The unified action of the two was absolutely necessary for the proper functioning of the organisation and growth of national movement. Without the extremists, the Moderates were to achieve little. For about a decade, the Moderates were not in a position to show the kind of strength that was needed to seriously oppose the British. It was only after 1916, with the re-entry of the Extremists in the Congress and exit of the Moderates from it that the Congress could be reactivised. But then it was a new story. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Gokhale’s political disciple, associating himself with the programme of the Extremists, with his emphasis on the synthesis of the reason and faith, law and impulse, representing the abiding strength of the Indian people was to activise and rejuvenate the congress and carry a new phase of action.

Moderates and extremists: an analysis

There was much in common between the Moderates and the Extremists. But they also shared certain differences in political perspective and methods.

Differences

Tilak remarked that the Old (Moderate) and New (Extremist) parties agreed on the point that appeals to the bureaucracy were useless. But the Old party believed in appeals to the British nation, the New Party did not. Like the Moderates, Tilak also believed that under the British rule, the industries had been ruined and wealth drained out of the country, and Indians reduced to the lowest level of poverty. But the way out was not through petitioning. The extremists believed that Indians should have the key of their own house and Self Government was the goal. Extremists wanted the Indians to realize that their future rested entirely in their own-hands and they could be free only if they were determined to be free.

Tilak did not want Indians to take to arms; rather they should develop their power of self-denial and self-abstinence in such a way as not to assist the foreign power to rule over them. Tilak advised his countrymen to run their own courts, and to stop paying taxes when time came. He asserted, “Swaraj is my birthright and I will have it”.

The philosophical radicalism of Aurobindo went even further. According to him the existing condition of the Government in India suffered from corrupt western influences. To escape it, she must get rid of these conditions and seek refuge in her own superior civilization. The work of nationalism, he added would be to:

i)     win Swaraj for India so that the existing unhealthy condition of political life, full of germs of the social and political malaise which was overtaking Europe, might be entirely and radically cured, and

ii)    Ensure that the Swaraj when gained would be a Swadeshi Swaraj and not an importation of the European variety. This is why, in his opinion, the movement for Swaraj found its first expression in an outburst for Swadeshi sentiment directed not merely against foreign goods, but against foreign habits, dress, manners and education and sought to bring the people to their own civilization.

From the foregoing it may appear that though the Extremists used much stronger and sharper language, but as far as the goals were concerned they were substantially not very different from the moderates. As referred earlier, Gokhale in his Presidential Address (Benaras, 1905) and Dadabhai Naoroji in his Presidential speech (Calcutta, 1906) had respectively advocated self-government and Swaraj as the goal of the Congress. The differences were related to the methodology for achieving the goals.

Personality clash

Besides these differences of attitude and emphasis mentioned above, the controversy between the Moderates and the Extremists raged round the personality of Tilak.  Both Tilak and Gokhale hailed from Poona. Tilak was militant, who would influence on public opinion through his paper; the Mahratta and the Kesari. Gokhale was gentle and soft-spoken. He had wonderful mastery over Indian financial problems and was at his best in the imperial Legislative Council being an expert in exposing the hallow claims of the Government. He had established at Poona the Servants of India Society with a view to training a band of dedicated workers who were expected to give their all to the service of the motherland. The members of the Society had to take an oath of poverty, had to observe strict code of conduct. They were given only a subsistence allowance and had to perform hard duty.

The difference between Gokhale and Tilak may be traced back to an earlier period. There had been intense clash of personalities at Poona from the beginning of the nineties of the last century. A quarrel ensured between Tilak and G.G. Agarkar although they had been co-workers in the Deccan Education Society. Ultimately Tilak was pushed out of the Society. Thereafter there had been a constant tussle between the followers of Tilak on the one hand and his opponents on the other. The opponents rallied round Mahadev Govind Ranade and Gokhale, backed in Congress affairs by Pherozeshah Mehta from Bombay. Gokhale enjoyed the support of the Congress establishment. As the Moderates were losing their popularity and the Extremists were capturing the imagination of the country because of the growth of the new spirit, the conflict between the two contending groups in Maharashtra and Poona also became more pronounced.

There was ferment, all over India. The Bande Mataram under Aurobindo was not only challenging the right of the British Government to rule India, but also the right of the veteran leaders to speak for India. Outside Bengal Tilak was the first to recognize the potential of the ferment in Bengal. The Partition of Bengal was to him not so much a British blunder as Indian opportunity to build up strength. He extended support to the anti-partition movement and encouraged the emerging Extremist leaders in Bengal. Gokhale had seen this alliance growing since the Banaras Congress (1905). This Tilak-Pal alliance caused a deep concern not only to the Government, but also to many Congress Leaders. Tilak was regarded as a dissident, if not a rebel. Pherozeshah Mehta, D.E. Wacha and the whole Bombay Group distrusted him since the controversies raging in the 1890s. The differences were partly temperamental. For at least 15 years there had been a cold war between the Congress Establishment headed by Mehta on the one hand and Tilak on the other.