On 26 July 1876, Surendranath Banerjea along with Ananda Mohan Bose initiated…

Concept — Before an all-India party existed, Indian politics was carried by regional political associations: voluntary bodies of the Western-educated middle class that petitioned the colonial government on service, tenancy, press and civil-rights grievances. Naming one of them is a matter of matching three fixed markers carried by the question — the date it was launched, the men who launched it, and the city it was launched in.

Application — The stem fixes all three markers: 26 July 1876, the pair Surendranath Banerjea and Ananda Mohan Bose, and Calcutta. The body launched that day at Albert Hall, Calcutta, by those two men is the Indian Association, later also known as the Indian National Association and as Bharat Sabha. It was set up in the wake of the lowering of the maximum age for the Indian Civil Service examination, kept a deliberately low membership fee so that clerks, teachers and students could join, and built its early campaigns around the civil-service age limit, the Arms Act and the Vernacular Press Act.

Cross-check — Test the same three markers against the other names offered:

• Indian National Congress — founded in 1885 at Bombay, nine years later and in a different city, with A. O. Hume and W. C. Bonnerjee at its first session; it does not match the date or the city in the question.

• Bengal Political Society — no organisation of this name is recorded for 1876; the Bengal association of the earlier generation of landholders is the British Indian Association of 1851.

• Hindoo Patriotic Association — no organisation of this name is recorded; the similar-sounding Hindoo Patriot was a Calcutta weekly newspaper, not a political association founded by these two men.

All three markers of the question — 26 July 1876, Surendranath Banerjea with Ananda Mohan Bose, and Calcutta — meet in one body only, the Indian Association.