At the very genesis of the Indian National Congress was a member of the Imperial Civil Service – a Scotsman named Allan Octavian Hume who worked in British India.
Son of a reformer Joseph Hume, he trained as a surgeon, then as a civil servant in the East India Company College at Haileybury. He was posted in India eight years before the revolt of 1857. When the mutiny broke out, his district Etawa was among the worst affected. As region after region turned on the British, Hume ceased the collection of revenues – avoiding any action that could provoke the locals.
After two years of bloody battles, the era of the East India Company in India was over. Soon, the British Crown would take over affairs in the subcontinent. But Hume never recovered from the shake-up of the revolution – the Indian people had clearly found their rulers lacking. The atrocities committed in war – not least from the British side – demonstrated that a gulf existed between Indians and the British.
Hume was lucky, in that he made his office one of fieldwork over paperwork, as his biographer Willian Wedderburn describes him as “coming into direct contact with all classes of people”. He served the government in various capacities – moving from District Officer to Secretary to the Government of India. But these promotions only emboldened his critique of British policies in India.
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