Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Hume, Allan Octavian
HUME, ALLAN OCTAVIAN (1829–1912), Indian civil servant and ornithologist, son of the radical politician, Joseph Hume [q.v.], was born 6 June 1829 and educated at Haileybury College and London University. At the age of twenty he joined the Bengal civil service, and was appointed in 1849 to the North-West Provinces. As district officer of Etawah during the Mutiny he showed the highest courage and resolution in circumstances of great peril, and, when forced to retire from his district, distinguished himself as a soldier in the field. For these services he was awarded the C.B. (1860). He was engaged in district work in the North-West Provinces for eighteen years, until, through the commissionership of customs in those provinces, he found his way to the notice of the viceroy, the Earl of Mayo, and in 1870 was appointed secretary in the revenue and agricultural department of the central government. In 1879, however, after some years of service at Simla and Calcutta, he was sent back to his own province under a cloud. His biographer, Sir William Wedderburn, who shared Hume's political views, declares that his friend's offence was over-boldness in expressing opinions unpalatable to the ruling powers. The official version of the rupture has not been published. Hume became a member of his provincial board of revenue, and retired from the civil service in 1882.
Toward the end of his official career Hume became convinced that India needed a parliamentary system, and that only thus could the economic condition of the masses be bettered and the discontent among the educated classes allayed. On 1 March 1883 he addressed a circular letter to the graduates of the Calcutta University, whom he termed ‘the salt of the land’. He asked them to ‘scorn personal ease and make a resolute struggle to secure greater freedom for themselves and their country, a more impartial administration, a larger share in the management of their own affairs’. The Marquess of Ripon [q.v.] was then viceroy and, in sympathy with the aspirations of educated India, was inaugurating the beginnings of popular control in the shape of municipal and district boards which were to contain a considerable elective element. But before his departure the political atmosphere had been embittered by the Ilbert Bill controversy. In December 1884 Lord Ripon was succeeded by the Earl of Dufferin, with whom, according to Wedderburn, Hume took counsel as to the desirability of organizing a representative body of educated men who would explain popular needs. The viceroy approved of the project, considering that good government would be promoted by the existence of a responsible organization which could claim to voice public opinion. The incident finds no place in the official Life of Lord Dufferin by Sir Alfred Lyall, although there is some support for Wedderburn's account of the viceroy's views [see Sir A. C. Lyall's Life of the Marquess of Dufferin and Ava, 1905, ii, 152]. Dufferin, however, never contemplated any relaxation of the British hold on the supreme administration of India.
When an association of prominent Hindus of the professional classes, under Hume's guidance, convoked the first session of the ‘Indian National Congress’ at Bombay in December 1885, the government adopted an attitude of passive goodwill. Both then and at subsequent sessions various speeches were delivered which breathed a loyal and reasonable spirit. But as the association made way it became a rallying centre not only for men who merely desired the gradual establishment of a parliamentary system, but also for those whose real quarrel was with British rule in any form. Partly through Hume's exertions the movement gained friends in England. In 1888 its leaders embarked on vigorous propaganda of an aggressive nature. Hume admitted that friends had warned him of the danger he incurred of fostering race hatred and arousing passions which would pass beyond his control. But he considered that the whole campaign was inevitable in view of the lack of official response to reiterated demands; and he continued to work for the congress until he left India in 1894. Thereafter, living in England at Upper Norwood, he interested himself in English politics, maintaining correspondence with his friends in India. He lived to see the Morley-Minto reforms, which were in fact the first substantial step taken by England toward the establishment of a parliamentary system in India.
Hume married in 1853 Mary Anne Grindall (who died in 1890), and had one daughter. He was a keen sportsman and a noted ornithologist. Together with Colonel C. H. T. Marshall, of the Indian army, he wrote a standard book, The Game Birds of India, Burmah, and Ceylon (Calcutta, 1879–1881). In 1885 he presented a collection of bird-skins and birds' eggs to the British Museum of Natural History, South Kensington. He also founded and endowed the South London Botanical Institute. For some time in India he was connected with the Theosophical Society, but subsequently separated himself from that body. He died at Norwood 31 July 1912 at the age of eighty-three.
[Sir William Wedderburn, Allan Octavian Hume, 1913; Sir Harrington Verney Lovett, A History of the Indian Nationalist Movement, 1920.]