Indian National Congress

The Indian National Congress (abbreviated INC, and commonly known as the Congress) is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP). It is the largest and one of the oldest democratically-operating political parties in the world.^[5][6][7] The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered centre-left wing in theIndian political spectrum as contrasted to the right-wing socio-religious ultra-nationalist-based Bharatiya Janata Party. Founded in 1885 by members of the occultist movementTheosophical Society—Allan Octavian Hume, Dadabhai Naoroji, Dinshaw Wacha,Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Monomohun Ghose, Mahadev Govind Ranade^[8] and William Wedderburn—the Indian National Congress became a pivotal participant in the Indian Independence Movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants in its struggle against British colonial rule in India.^[9] Afterindependence in 1947, it became the nation's dominant political party, led by the Nehru-Gandhi family for the most part; major challenges for party leadership have only recently formed.^[9]

In the 2009 general elections, the Congress emerged as the single largest party in the Lok Sabha, with 206 of its candidates getting elected to the 543-member house. Consequently it, as a member of a coalition of political organisations called the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), was able to gain a majority and form the government.

History

Main article: History of the Indian National Congress

The history of the Indian National Congress falls into two distinct eras:

• The pre-independence era, when the party was at the forefront of the struggle for independence and was instrumental in the whole of India;
• The post-independence era, when the party has enjoyed a prominent place in Indian politics, ruling the country for 48 of the 60 years since independence in 1947.

In the pre-independence era, the Congress was ideologically divided into two groups, moderate and activist. The moderates were more educated and wanted to win people's faith to lead the nation to independence without fighting; the activists, on the other hand, favoured more revolutionary tactics and sought to make the INC a paramilitary group.^{[citation needed]}

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