Founded in 1885 under the guidance of British civil servant Allan Octavian Hume, the Indian National Congress (INC), popularly known as the Congress, is the country’s oldest political party. Today it is one of the two major national political parties, other being the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and operates on the ideology of Gandhian Socialism and Social Democracy. Its political position is centre-left in contrast to BJP which is the right-wing nationalist party. Members of the Theosophical Society, namely Dadabhai Naoroji, Surendranath Banerjee, M.G. Ranade, Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, Dinshaw Wacha, Monomohun Ghose and William Wedderburn, headed by A.O. Hume, established the Indian National Congress to obtain greater share of Indians in the British government. Liberal nationalism became the war-cry of the Congress, drawing to it more than 15 million members and triple the number of participants in the anti-imperialist struggle. Though it began as a political party, the INC was symbolic of the largest vehicle of the Indian National Movement in the pre-independence era, being the sole representative of the people of the country and representing social reform causes and human progress. The Congress is credited with a number of historic demands and movements of the freedom struggle. With Mahatma Gandhi adorning the centre stage of Indian freedom struggle, a number of other members of the Congress joined the freedom struggle.
Founded in 1885 under the guidance of British civil servant Allan Octavian Hume, the Indian National
24, Akbar Road, New Delhi 110001
 24, Akbar Road, New Delhi ? 110011.
