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 Organisation was founded in 1885 by Allan Octavian Hume, Dadabhai Naoroji, Dinshaw Wacha, Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, Surendranath Banerjee, Monomohun Ghose, Mahadev Govind Ranade and William Wedderburn.
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.
After independence in 1947, it became the nation's dominant political party in the 15 general elections since independence, the Congress has won an outright majority on six occasions, and has led the ruling coalition a further four times.
The Congress was transformed into a mass movement by Surendranath Banerjea and Sir Henry Cotton during the partition of Bengal in 1905 and the resultant Swadeshi movement. Mohandas Gandhi returned from South Africa in 1915 and with the help of the moderate group led by Ghokhale became president of the Congress and formed an alliance with the Khilafat Movement.
Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel are said to have held the view that the INC was formed only for achieving independence and should have been disbanded in 1947.Social policy of the INC is officially based upon the Gandhian principle of Sarvodaya.