Explanation:

• Statement 1 is not correct: The early congress nationalists were unwilling to take up the question of labour versus the indigenous employers. Most of the nationalists denied the need for any Government legislation to regulate working conditions and actively opposed the Factories Act of 1881 and 1891. Similarly, strikes in Indian textiles mills were generally not supported. They were opposed to factory reforms like the Mining Bill, which proposed to improve the living condition of women and children and restrict their employment under a certain age.

• Also, they had a differential attitude towards the workers employed in Europeans enterprises and those employed in Indian enterprises. One major reason was at this time when the anti-imperialist movement was in its very infancy, the nationalists did not wish to weaken the common struggle against British rule by creating any divisions within the ranks of the Indian people. Dadabhai Naoroji, in the very second session of the Indian National Congress (1886), made it clear that the Congress ‘must confine itself to questions in which the entire nation has direct participation, and it must leave the adjustment of social reforms and other class questions to class Congresses.

Statement 2 is correct: The scenario completely altered when the question was of Indian labour employed in British-owned enterprises. Here the nationalists had no hesitation in giving full support to the workers. The Indian National Congress and the nationalist newspapers began a campaign against the manner in which the tea plantation workers in Assam were reduced to virtual slavery, with European planters being given powers, through legislation to arrest, punish and prevent the running away of labour.