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History Optional PYQ Master Pack · Model answer

Why has the ‘safety valve theory’ related to the foundation of the Indian National Congress been thoroughly discredited by recent researchers? Analyze.

  • UPSC 2025
  • Early Indian Nationalism

The "safety-valve theory" holds that the Indian National Congress (1885) was deliberately engineered by the colonial state — through A.O. Hume and Viceroy Lord Dufferin — to provide a controlled outlet for mounting popular discontent and thereby forestall a second 1857-style uprising.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of the History Optional PYQ Master Pack.

What the full answer covers

  • The Origins of the Theory
  • Political Uses Across the Ideological Spectrum
  • The Evidentiary Case Against the Theory
  • Reassessing Hume's Role and the Real Origins of Congress

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