Book excerpt: In this volume Dr Seal analyses the social roots of the rather confused stirrings towards political organisations of the 1870s and 1880s which brought about the foundation of the Indian National Congress. He is concerned not only with the politicians, viceroys and civil servants but with the social structure of those parts of India where political movements were most prominent at the time. The emphasis of this work is more upon Indian politics than upon British policy: the associations in Bengal and Bombay, the genesis of the Congress and the Muslim breakaway which accentuated the political divisions in India.