Indian National Congress

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Congress

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. Hume was also a prominent member of the Theosophical Society. 

The Congress was founded by Indian and British members of the Theosophical Society movement, most notably A.O. Hume. It has been suggested that the idea was originally conceived in a private meeting of seventeen men after a Theosophical Convention held at Madras in December 1884. Hume took the initiative, and it was in March 1885 that the first notice was issued convening the first Indian National Union to meet at Poona the following December.

Indian National Congress - 

the idea was born in (current Besant Nagar) 

Adyar, Madras.

In the following decades, the 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, heading the central government for a total of 49 years. It has been led by the Nehru-Gandhi family for the most part, with major challenges for party leadership emerging only since 2010.

In the most recent general elections in 2009, the Congress emerged as the single largest party in the Lok Sabha, with 206 of its candidates getting elected to the 543-member house. Consequently it, as the leader of a coalition of political parties called the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), was able to gain a majority and form the government.