The Indian National Congress ( pronunciation ) (INC, often called the Congress), is one of two major political parties in India; the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. Congress is one of the largest and oldest democratically run political parties in the world. The party was founded in 1885 during the British Raj; its founders include Allan Octavian Hume (a prominent member of the Theosophical Society), Dadabhai Naoroji and Dinshaw Wacha. In the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries, Congress became a pivotal participant in the Indian Independence Movement, with over 15 million members and over 70 million participants in its opposition to British colonial rule in India.