The Indian National Congress Meets for the First Time

On 28 December 1885, seventy-two delegates from across India assembled at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Bombay to inaugurate the Indian National Congress. The meeting had originally been planned for Poona under the name of the Indian National Union, but an outbreak of cholera in that city forced organizers to relocate the gathering. The assembly marked the start of an organised, all-India political movement. Historians debate how far Viceroy Lord Dufferin supported the idea.

The initiative grew out of earlier efforts to establish a coordinated, pan-Indian political body. In 1883, Allan Octavian Hume, a retired British civil servant, published an open letter addressed to graduates of the University of Calcutta. Hume advocated for a formal civic forum that would allow educated Indians to secure a larger role in public administration and conduct structured dialogue with the colonial government. Hume took on the duties of general secretary for the newly founded assembly, while Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee, a Calcutta barrister, was chosen as its first president.