To what extent did the role of the Moderates prepare a base for the wider freedom movement? Comment.

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Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

The Moderates prepared the base of the freedom movement to a large extent by supplying its economic critique, an all-India platform and constitutional politics, though not a mass following. Dadabhai Naoroji's drain theory became the intellectual core of later movements from Swadeshi to Gandhian khadi.

**Introduction**

The Extremists mocked the early Congress's "prayer, petition and protest" as mendicancy, yet Bipan Chandra credits the Moderates (1885-1905) with founding the ideology of Indian nationalism. They built its intellectual and organisational base, though not its mass base.

**How the Moderates Laid the Base**

SKETCH: flow | From Moderate base to mass struggle
- Drain critique
- Congress platform 1885
- Swadeshi 1905
- Gandhian mass struggle

1. **Economic critique**: Naoroji's drain theory and R.C. Dutt's Economic History of India proved that British rule impoverished India and armed every later movement, from Swadeshi to khadi.
2. **All-India platform**: The Congress, opening at Bombay in 1885 and meeting each year in a new city, gave every province one forum and a shared political vocabulary.
3. **Political education**: Newspapers such as The Bengalee and protests against Tilak's sedition trial (1897) made civil liberties a national cause.
4. **Constitutional agenda**: Their pressure won the Indian Councils Act, 1892, and Naoroji raised the demand for "Swaraj" at the Calcutta Congress of 1906.

**Where the Moderate Base Fell Short**

1. **Narrow social base**: Educated professionals of the presidencies led, while peasants and workers stayed outside.
2. **Faith in British justice**: Petitions yielded councils without power, and Curzon's Partition of Bengal (1905) exposed the method.
3. **Limited goal**: Self-government within the Empire could not hold the youth, as the Surat split (1907) showed.

**Way Forward**

1. **Continuity, not rupture**: Gandhi called Gokhale his political guru, and constitutionalism ran on into the Constituent Assembly.

**Conclusion**

The Moderates prepared the base to a large extent: the ideas, organisation and constitutional habit of the movement. The Extremists and Gandhi added the mass following and the fearless goal they lacked.

To what extent did the role of the Moderates prepare a base for the wider freedom movement? Comment.

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