Question

Short notr in Allan Octavian Hume​

Answer 1

Answer:

A. O. Hume was born in St Mary Cray, Kent, now a part of Greater London. He was the grandson of an East India Company director, and the seventh child of the radical Benthamite politician Joseph Hume — a Scotsman who had served as a doctor and intelligence officer in India. Naturally, in view of the Bentham connection, the boy was sent to University College School, moving on from there to the East India College, Haileybury. After two years young Hume returned to University College London, this time to the hospital for medical training. He then went out to Calcutta with the Bengal Civil Service.

A. O. Hume was born in St Mary Cray, Kent, now a part of Greater London. He was the grandson of an East India Company director, and the seventh child of the radical Benthamite politician Joseph Hume — a Scotsman who had served as a doctor and intelligence officer in India. Naturally, in view of the Bentham connection, the boy was sent to University College School, moving on from there to the East India College, Haileybury. After two years young Hume returned to University College London, this time to the hospital for medical training. He then went out to Calcutta with the Bengal Civil Service.At first Hume climbed steadily up the career ladder, proving himself altogether worthy of his genetic heritage and liberal background. An energetic, outspoken administrator, he pursued what now seems an admirably enlightened path — for example, introducing free primary school education in Etawah, the town of present-day Uttar Pradesh then under his jurisdiction. By 1870 he had risen to become Director-General of Agriculture in the central government. But he was having problems with his colleagues, and now his reformist policies became more controversial. "Untainted by racism," as Edward C. Moulton so aptly puts it, he again took up cudgels for the rural poor, and was eventually demoted, retaliating by taking the government to task in Agricultural Reform in India (1879). His main contribution to Indian life, however, was in founding the Indian National Congress (INC). He had long sympathized with those who suffered under what he regarded as mistaken policies, and appealed to the graduates of Calcutta University, in an open letter of 1883, to "organise an association for the mental, moral, social, and political regeneration of the Indian people" (Majumdar et al, 881). The idea took off, and after some initial developments the first meeting of the INC was held in 1885. Hume had his supporters, of course, and it is very important to remember that such people existed among the more exploitive sahibs and memsahibs of the British Raj.