What do you understand by moderates?

Explain moderates
movement?
Ans-
The Moderates were the one who dominate the affairs of the
Indian National Congress from 1885-1905. They were Indians
but in reality British in taste, intellect, opinions and morality.
They believed in patience, steadiness and conciliation. The
leader of the first phase of the National Movement were A.O.
Hume, W.C. Banerjee, Dadabhai Naoroji etc.
They were called moderates because they appeal through
petitions, speeches and articles loudly professing loyalty to the
British Raj.

Indian nationalism arose in the latter half of the 19th century as

a result of various factors like western education, socio-
religious reforms, British policies and so on. In 1885, the Indian
National Congress was formed which played a significant role
in India’s freedom movement.
The time period from 1885 to 1905 can be called the ‘Moderate
Phase’. The leaders of this phase are called moderates.
The Moderate Phase of the Indian National Movement

 Formed in 1885 by Allan Octavian Hume, a retired British

civil servant.
 Other founding members include Dadabhai Naoroji (Born
on September 4, 1825) and Dinshaw Wacha.
 The first session was held in Bombay under the
presidency of Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee in 1885.
 The first session was attended by 72 delegates from
across the country.
 Viceroy of India at the time was Lord Dufferin who gave
his permission to Hume for the first session.
  The Congress was formed with the intention of discussing
problems faced by the people of the country irrespective
of caste, creed, religion or language.
 It was basically a movement of the upper and middle
class, western-educated Indians in its moderate phase.
 The second session of the Congress was held in Calcutta
in 1886 followed by the third in Madras in 1887.
 The moderate phase of the Congress (or the national
movement) was dominated by the ‘moderates’.
 They were people who believed in British justice and were
loyal to them.
Dadabhai Naoroji

Known as the ‘Grand old man of India.’

 He became the first Indian to become a member of the
House of Commons in Britain.
 Authored ‘Poverty and Un-British Rule in India’ which
focused on the economic drain of India because of British
policies. This led to an enquiry on the matter.
Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee

 The first president of the INC.

 Lawyer by profession. First Indian to act as Standing
Counsel.
G Subramania Aiyer

 Founded ‘The Hindu’ newspaper where he criticised

British imperialism.
 Also founded Tamil newspaper ‘Swadesamitran’.

 Co-founded the Madras Mahajana Sabha.

Gopal Krishna Gokhale

 Regarded as Mahatma Gandhi’s political guru.

 Founded the Servants of India Society.

Sir Surendranath Banerjee

  Also called ‘Rashtraguru’ and ‘Indian Burke’.
 Founded the Indian National Association which later
merged with the INC.
 Cleared the Indian Civil Service but was discharged due to
racial discrimination.
 Founded newspaper ‘The Bengalee’.

Other moderate leaders included Rash Behari Ghosh, R C

Dutt, M G Ranade, Pherozeshah Mehta, P R Naidu, Madan
Mohan Malaviya, P. Ananda Charlu, and William Wedderburn.

 Education of the masses and organising public opinion,

make people aware of their rights.
 Indian representation in the Executive Council and in the
Indian Council in London.
 Reform of the legislative councils.
 Separation of the executive from the judiciary.
 Decreased land revenue tax and ending peasant
oppression.
 After 1892, raised the slogan, “No taxation without
representation.”
 Reduced spending on the army.
 Abolishing salt tax and duty on sugar.
 Holding the ICS exam in India along with England to allow
more Indians the opportunity to take part in the
administration.
 Freedom of speech and expression.
 Freedom to form associations.
 Development of modern capitalist industries in India.
 End of economic drain of India by the British.
 Repealing the Arms Act of 1878.
 Increasing spending on education of Indians.
 They believed in peaceful and constitutional methods to
demand and fulfil those demands.
  Used petitions, meetings, resolutions, pamphlets,
memoranda and delegations to voice their demands.
 Their method has been called 3P – Prayers, Petition and
Protest.
 Had complete faith in the British justice system.
 Confined to the educated classes only. Did not try to
employ the masses.
 They aimed only at getting political rights and self-
government under British dominion.
 Indian Councils Act of 1892 was the first achievement of
the INC.
 This Act increased the size of the legislative councils and
also increased the proportion of non-officials in them.
 They were able to sow the seeds of nationalism in the
people.
 They popularised ideals like democracy, liberty and
equality.
 They exposed many draining economic policies of the
British.
 Leaders like Gopal Krishna Gokhale (Born on May
9 1866) and M G Ranade were social reformers too and
opposed child marriage and imposed widowhood.
 This phase of the national movement excluded the
masses and only the educated elites participated in it.
 They did not demand complete independence from foreign
rule.
 They did not understand the power of a mass movement
of people, unlike Gandhi who used this power.
 Drew most of their ideas from western political thinking
which further alienated them from the people.

Demands of Moderates
  They plea for the extension of legislative council that leads
to the popular control of administration.
 Removal of restriction on freedom of the press and the
speech.
 Abolition of arms act which breaches the freedom of
people
 Separation of judiciary from executive
 Supporter of Democracy and Nationalism
 Exploitative relation of British could be exempted.
Achievements of Moderates
 They represented the most aggressive forces of the time
which transform the Indian political notion.
 They succeeded to burn the flame of political awareness
and leadership among the lower middle, middle class and
intelligentsia.
 They spread the idea of democracy and civil liberty
 They sowed the seed of nationalism and laid the
foundation of the National Movement.

1.Moderates aimed at administrative and constitutional reforms.

This is the simple moderates meaning.
2. Moderates wanted more Indians in the administration and not to
an end of British rule.
3. Most of the moderate leaders were loyal to British. Many of them
held high ranks under the British government. There are many
moderates in Indian national movement.
4. Moderates believed in constitutional means and worked within
the framework of the law. Their methods including passing
resolutions, persuasion, sending petitions and appeals.
5. Moderates believed in cooperation and reconciliation.
6. Moderates received their support from the intelligentsia and
urban middle class. Moderates had a narrow social base.
7. Moderate leaders had faith in the British sense of justice and fair
play.
8. Most of the moderate leaders were inspired by the ideas of
western philosophers like Mill, Burke, Spencer, and Bentham.
Moderates imbibed western ideas of liberalism, democracy, equity,
and freedom.
9. Moderates Believed political connections with Britain to be in
India’s social, political and cultural interests.
Moderate leaders-A.O. Hume. W.C. Banerjee. Surendra Nath
Banerjee, Dadabhai Naoroji, Froze Shah Mehta. Gopalakrishna
Gokhale. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya. Badruddin Tyabji. Justice
Ranade and G.Subramanya Aiyar
The Moderates believed that the British basically wanted to be just
to the Indians but were not aware of the real conditions.
Agitation against Economic Policies
Three names stand out among the large number of Indians who
initiated and carried out the economic analysis of British rule during
the years 1870-1905.
The tallest of the three was Dadabhai Naoroji, known in the pre-
Gandhian era as the Grand Old Man of India. His near contemporary,
Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, taught an entire generation of
Indians the value of modern industry-al development. Romesh
Chandra Dutt, a retired ICS officer, published The Economic History
of India at the beginning of the 20th century in which he examined in
minute detail the entire economic record of colonial rule since 1757.
These three leaders along with G.V. Joshi, G. Subramaniya Iyer, G.K.
Gokhale, Prithwis Chandra Ray and hundreds of other political
workers and journalists analysed every aspect of the economy and
subjected the entire range of economic issues and colonial economic
policies to minute scrutiny.
 They raised basic questions regarding the nature and purpose of
British rule. Eventually, they were able to trace the process of the
colonialization of the Indian economy and conclude that colonialism
was the main obstacle to India’s economic development. They clearly
understood the fact that the essence of British imperialism lay in the
subordination of the Indian economy to the British economy. They
delineated the colonial structure in all its three aspects of
domination through trade, industry and finance. They were able to
see that colonialism no longer functioned through the crude tools of
plunder and tribute and mercantilism but operated through the
more disguised and complex mechanism of free trade and foreign
capital investment.
The early Indian national leaders were simultaneously learners and
teachers. They organized powerful intellectual agitations against
nearly all the important official economic policies. The nationalist
economic agitation started with the assertion that Indians were poor
and were growing poorer every day. Dadabhai Naoroji made poverty
his special subject and spent his entire life awakening the Indian and
British public to the ‘continuous impoverishment and exhaustion of
the country’ and ‘the wretched, heart-rending, blood-boiling
condition of India.’ Day after day he declaimed from public platforms
and in the Press that the Indian ‘is starving, he is dying off at the
slightest touch, living on insufficient food.’
The early nationalists did not see this all-encompassing poverty as
inherent and unavoidable, a visitation from God or nature. It was
seen as man-made and, therefore, capable of being explained and
removed. The problem of poverty was, moreover, seen as the
problem of increasing of the ‘productive capacity and energy’ of the
people, in other words as the problem of national development. This
approach made poverty a broad national issue and helped to unite,
instead of divide, different regions and sections of Indian society.
Economic development was seen above all as the rapid development
of modern industry.
The early nationalists accepted with remarkable unanimity that the
complete economic transformation of the country on the basis of
modern technology and capitalist enterprise was the primary goal of
all their economic policies. The early nationalists did not see this all-
encompassing poverty as inherent and unavoidable, a visitation from
God or nature. It was seen as man-made and, therefore, capable of
being explained and removed. The problem of poverty was,
moreover, seen as the problem of increasing of the ‘productive
capacity and energy’ of the people, in other words as the problem of
national development. This approach made poverty a broad national
issue and helped to unite, instead of divide, different regions and
sections of Indian society. Economic development was seen above all
as the rapid development of modern industry.
The early nationalists accepted with remarkable unanimity that the
complete economic transformation of the country on the basis of
modern technology and capitalist enterprise was the primary goal of
all their economic policies. Industrialism, it was further believed,
represented, to quote G.V. Joshi, ‘a superior type and a higher stage
of civilization;’ or, in the words of Ranade, factories could ‘far more
effectively than Schools and Colleges give a new birth to the activities
of the Nation.’
Modern industry was also seen as a major force which could help
unite the diverse peoples of India into a single national entity having
common interests. Consequently, because of their whole-hearted
devotion to the cause of industrialization, the early nationalists
looked upon all other issues such as foreign trade, railways, tariffs,
currency and exchange, finance, and labour legislation in relation to
this paramount aspect. At the same time, nearly all the early
nationalists were clear on one question: However great the need of
India for industrialization, it had to be based on Indian capital and
not foreign capital.
Constitutional Reforms
The Moderates demanded the expansion and reform of the
Legislative Council. The members of the councils should be directly
elected by the people. They raised the slogan, “No taxation without
representation.” Later on they put forward the claim of a raj or self-
government within the British Empire. The demands of the
Moderates were to be articulated strictly through constitutional
channels of agitation, to prove to the colonial government that the
Indian elite were now ready for representative government. Since
British rule was considered providential, there was no question of
disturbing the order that had been painstakingly established in the
colony. The agitations were carried on through pamphlets,
newspapers and speeches, where arguments were made, critiquing
specific issues on which reforms were sought. Within this discourse,
there were frequent professions of loyalty emphasizing the debt that
the colony owed its rulers, and this politics of ‘mendicancy’ was
strongly critiqued by Extremists later.
The nature of this agitation was also intermittent. In its early years,
the existence of the Congress was confined to the annual session,
and for the rest of the year most leaders were busy with their
personal careers.
Administrative Reforms
One of the first political associations of an all-India character, the
Congress’ primary demand was for greater native participation in the
colonial government. Demands voiced by Dadabhai Naoroji in 1885
included the need to hold the Indian Civil Service examination
simultaneously in London and India, and ensure that the maximum
age for taking the examination was not reduced, adoption of a
system of un-covenanted services, increase in representation of
Indians in legislative councils, reduction in military charges and civil
expenditure. They wished for the Indian colony to be placed directly
under the control of the British parliament. What Moderates
envisaged for India was dominionstatus, even though, in the initial
sessions of the Congress there was no demand for ‘home rule’.
Defence of Civil Rights
The moderate leaders wanted greater representation only for the
western-educated elite, even though they claimed to represent the
interests of the country as a whole. Gokhale had described his ilk as
‘natural leaders’ of the country, on account of their education. But
even in the Moderate phase there were moments of great mass
euphoria – Surendranath Banerjee’s arrest in 1883 had been greeted
by the first open air political meeting in Calcutta supported strongly
by students, the Indian association had organized huge meetings
with riots in the countryside before the passing of the Rent Act in
1885, and a furor had followed the Age of Consent Bill in 1890-91.
But their relationship with the masses remained ambivalent and
short-lived. After the Tenancy Bill was passed in 1885, the mass
meetings were used by leaders of the Indian Association to lecture
peasants on the desirability of elective legislatures for the country. J.
R. McLane points out that there was an attempt to garner mass
support but also a fear of mass participation and popular violence.
Moderate leaders felt alienated from rural people even as they
toured the countryside and in the event of a communal riot or grain
riot, they felt just as vulnerable as Europeans and looked to the
police or sepoys for protection violence from its Sanskrit root,
“himsa”, meaning injury. In the midst of hyper violence, Gandhi
teaches that the one who possess nonviolence is blessed. Blessed is
the man who can perceive the law of ahimsa (nonviolence) in the
midst of the raging fire of ahimsa all around him. We bow in
reverence to such a man by his example. The more adverse the
circumstances around him, the intense grow his longing for
deliverance from the bondage of flesh which is a vehicle of
ahimsa.Gandhi objects to violence because it perpetuates hatred.
When it appears to do ‘good’, the good is only temporary and cannot
do any good in the long run. A true nonviolence activist accepts
violence on himself without inflicting it on another. This is heroism,
and will be discussed in another section. When Gandhi says that in
the course of fighting for human rights.
Methods of Indian Moderates
To achieve their goals, the Moderates worked on a two-pronged
methodology; one, create a strong public opinion to arouse
consciousness and national spirit and then educate and unite people
on common political questions; and two, persuade the British
Government and British public opinion to introduce reforms in India
on the lines laid out by the nationalists. For this purpose, a British
committee of the Indian National Congress was established in
London in 1899 which had India as its organ. Dadabhai Naoroji spent
a substantial portion of his life and income campaigning for India’s
case abroad. In 1890, it was decided to hold a session of the Indian
National Congress in London in 1892, but owing to the British
elections of 1891 the proposal was postponed and never revived
later. The Moderate leaders believed that political connections with
Britain were in India’s interest and that the time was not ripe for a
direct challenge to the British rule. Therefore, it was considered to be
appropriate to try and transform the colonial rule to approximate to
a national rule.
Demands of the Moderates
1. Demand for wider powers for the councils and training in self-
government.
2. Removal of poverty by the rapid development of agriculture and
modern industries.
3. Indianization of the higher administrative services.
4. Freedom of speech and press for the defence of their civil rights.
Weakness
The basic weakness of the Moderates lay in their narrow social base.
Their movement did not have wide appeal. The area of their
influence was limited to the urban community. As they did not have
the support of the masses, they declared that the time was not ripe
for throwing challenge to the foreign rulers. It can be said that the
programmes and policies of the Moderate leaders fought for their
narrow interests. Their programmes and policies championed the
cause of all sections of the Indian people and represented nation-
wide interests against colonial exploitation.
conclusion
Hence, we can say that the Moderates were acting like Safety-
Valve between the masses and Britisher’s. But over the time
their Indian blood rejuvenated and their leadership urges then
to overthrow British by an Institutional method.