Indian associations on the eve of the emergence of the Indian National Congress (1860s - 1880s)

The aim of the article is to study the epoch of the regional patriotic associations in India (the 1860s-1880s), which was the time of rejection of the ideology and practice of national freedom fighters in the Great Mutiny (1857-1859). In the study, it was found that at this time the main object of the nationalists was the rights of Indians in the administration, not the national independence. A new generation of Indian nationalists understood that this can only be achieved by peaceful, "constitutional" methods, by creating public associations that could draw the attention of the British authorities to the shortcomings in the governance of the country. Bengal was the main center of political development in India in the 1870s. In 1875, S.K. Ghosh and A.M. Bose founded the Indian League, which had a wide social basis. Internal frictions in the League became the reason of the split in 1876, when Bose and S. Banerjea created the Indian Association. Banerjee counted on the fact that the Indian Association would become the center of the All-Indian movement, but the ideal of a national organization with headquarters in Calcutta was not achievable due to factional differences, a large territory and a multitude of different nationalities and religions in the country. Ripon's appointment to the General-Governor's post in 1880 was the reason of the patriotic rise in the country and an intensive development of the associations in the provinces. With Ripon's rise to power, many British liberals living in India, including A.O. Hume and W. Wedderburn, were drawn into Indian politics. Since that time, the role of the main center of the national movement passed on to Bombay. The Bombay leaders were supported by Ripon, and the Anglo-Indian opposition to the national movement did not exert a serious influence on social and political life in Bombay. The author came to a conclusion that by the mid-1880s the idea of unification among Indian nationalists at both regional and national levels became evident. The growth of national self-awareness in India demonstrated the ineffectiveness of disparate and uncoordinated actions to the leaders of local political organizations. However, the centripetal tendencies in the national movement that emerged back in the 1870s were constrained by the search for an organizational form capable to unite people of different nationalities, religion, social status and adequately reflect the needs of different regions of India. Negative experience of regional patriotic associations, therefore, was analyzed by the leaders of the INC and helped them to transform the Congress into the leading political organization of India.

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