Lord Dufferin and the Indian National Congress, 1885–1888

Abstract

In the spring of 1884 shortly before his viceroyalty came to an end, Lord Ripon wrote in an urgent manner to Lord Kimberley, then Secretary of State for India, about one of the more critical questions of policy confronting the Government of India: “You may rely upon it that there are few Indian questions of greater importance in the present day than those which relate to the mode in which we are to deal with the growing body of Natives educated by ourselves in Western learning and Western ideas.” Ripon was pointing to the existence of a new class of English-educated Indians within British-Indian society and to the failure of the Government of India to acknowledge this class and to absorb its talents and influence within the structure of British-Indian administration. That this problem begged for a realistic solution by 1884 and that it would continue to do so in the years ahead, he had no doubts whatsoever; it had been left too long to fester in a mode both damaging to the class itself and dangerous to British rule. In short, the English-educated Indian class had become a question of policy.Simply stated, as the opportunities for Western collegiate education expanded and the avenues leading towards entry into the East India Company's service became available, the doors either failed to open or were placed out of the reach of the educated Indians seeking entry. By 1850, with the new class in existence in limited numbers in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, and Delhi and with additional graduates appearing annually to swell its ranks, frustrations began to emerge as the graduates found themselves unable to secure the public employment which the Charter Act of 1833 had implied was to be their just right.