The official attitude towards the moderates was not hostile in the early stage of the Congress. At the second session the Congress in 1886 Lord Dufferin, the then Viceroy of India, displayed his cordiality by giving a garden party to the delegates at Calcutta. However the official attitude differed soon after 1887.
Dufferin had suggested to Mr. Hume that the Congress should devote itself to social rather than political affairs. But the Congress leader differences not accept it. The Government became gradually hostile to the development of the nationalist forces among the moderates. British officials began to crtiticise and condemn the National Congress publicly by branding the nationalists as ‘disloyal babus’ and ‘violent villians’. Dufferin himself attacked the National Congress in 1887 by calling it an organization representing only “a microscopic minority of the people”.
On the one hand the Government granted some concessions to appease the moderates and on the other it followed the policy of repression to put down the growth of nationalism. After the fourth session of the congress in 1890 the Government issued a circular forbidding the Government servant to attend the meeting of the National Congress.