Read the passage and answer the following question :
The significance of the first phase for the party system in India is that almost all political parties or their antecedent organizations can be traced back to the freedom movement in India. The Indian National Congress (INC) founded in 1885 was of course, the aggregation of the crucible for practically all political parties that came to be formed since the last quarter of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. The Congress was, in fact, first formed as a pressure group for lobbying support for participation of Indians in British Indian administration and governance. It gradually acquired the role of a mass movement beginning with the partition of Bengal in 1905 and the Swadeshi movement to annul it and especially since the 1920s with the advent of Gandhi on the Indian national scene in the wake of the Jalianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar. The Congress in reality was a national platform with which all other political organizations of the period had cooperative or conflictual relationships at various points in time. Even the Muslim League and the Scheduled Castes Federation had periods of reconciliation and pacts with this organization of central importance in British India, to say nothing of the Communists, Socialists, Hindu Mahasabha and Akali Dal who had more of cooperative interaction with Congress than conflictual during the freedom struggle. It is for these reasons that this phase of party system growth in India may be appropriately characterized as the "Movement Party System".
What were the primary demands of the Indian National Congress during its initial years of establishment?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Lobbying support for participation of Indians in the British Indian Administration and Governance
The passage says the Congress, founded in 1885, was first formed as a pressure group for lobbying support for participation of Indians in British Indian administration and governance; only later did it become a mass movement.
Option (1) Purna Swaraj — Incorrect. Purna Swaraj means complete independence; the passage does not give it as a demand of the early Congress.
Option (2) To instill the feeling of nationalism among youths for their mother country India — Incorrect.
Option (3) Establishment of more educational institutions in India that focused on the traditional Indian knowledge — Incorrect.
NCERT (2026-27): “Congress as social and ideological coalition You have already studied the history of how Congress evolved from its origins in 1885 as a pressure group for the newly educated, professional and commercial classes to a mass movement in the twentieth century. This laid the basis for its eventual transformation into a mass political party and its subsequent domination of the political system.…” |