[2] Until the age of eleven he was privately tutored growing up at the town house at 6 Bryanston Square in London and at their country estate, Burnley Hall in Norfolk.

[12] It was only nine years after his entry to India that Hume faced the Indian Rebellion of 1857 during which time he was involved in several military actions[13][14] for which he was created a Companion of the Bath in 1860.

Noting that there was very little reading material with educational content, he started, along with Koour Lutchman Singh, a Hindi language periodical, Lokmitra (The People's Friend) in 1859.

Rebel troops were constantly passing through the district, and for a time it was necessary to abandon headquarters ; but both before and after the removal of the women and children to Agra, Hume acted with vigour and judgment.

The steadfast loyalty of many native officials and landowners, and the people generally, was largely due to his influence, and enabled him to raise a local brigade of horse.

In a daring attack on a body of rebels at Jaswantnagar he carried away the wounded joint magistrate, Mr. Clearmont Daniel,[20] under a heavy fire, and many months later he engaged in a desperate action against Firoz Shah and his Oudh freebooters at Hurchandpur.

He wrote, in 1859, that education played a key role in avoiding revolts like the one in 1857: … assert its supremacy as it may at the bayonet's point, a free and civilized government must look for its stability and permanence to the enlightenment of the people and their moral and intellectual capacity to appreciate its blessings.

The department had charge on land revenue, settlements, advances for works in agricultural improvement, horticulture, livestock breeding, silk, fiber, forests, commerce and trade, salt, opium, excise, stamps, and industrial art.

[33] In spite of the humiliation of demotion, he did not resign immediately from service and it has been suggested that this was because he needed his salary to support the publication of The Game Birds of India that he was working on.

[41] The Indian postal department issued a commemorative stamp with his portrait in 1973 and a special cover depicting Rothney Castle, his home in Shimla, was released in 2013.

[43][44] There were agrarian riots in the Deccan and Bombay, and Hume, according to some early writers like Pattabhi Sitaramayya, suggested that an Indian Union would be a good safety valve and outlet to avoid further unrest.

[45][46][47] After retiring from the civil services and towards the end of Lord Lytton's rule, Hume observed that the people of India had a sense of hopelessness and wanted to do something, noting "a sudden violent outbreak of sporadic crime, murders of obnoxious persons, robbery of bankers and looting of bazaars, acts really of lawlessness which by a due coalescence of forces might any day develop into a National Revolt."

"[48] On 1 March 1883, Hume wrote a letter to the graduates of the University of Calcutta:[35] If only fifty men, good and true, can be found to join as founders, the thing can be established and the further development will be comparatively easy.

... And if even the leaders of thought are all either such poor creatures, or so selfishly wedded to personal concerns that they dare not strike a blow for their country's sake, then justly and rightly are they kept down and trampled on, for they deserve nothing better.

If you the picked men, the most highly educated of the nation, cannot, scorning personal ease and selfish objects, make a resolute struggle to secure greater freedom for yourselves and your country, a more impartial administration, a larger share in the management of your own affairs, then we, your friends, are wrong and our adversaries right, then are Lord Ripon's noble aspirations for your good fruitless and visionary, then, at present at any rate all hopes of progress are at an end and India truly neither desires nor deserves any better Government than she enjoys.

And rulers and task-masters they must continue, let the yoke gall your shoulders never so sorely, until you realise and stand prepared to act upon the eternal truth that self-sacrifice and unselfishness are the only unfailing guides to freedom and happiness.In 1886 he published a pamphlet The Old Man's Hope in which he examined poverty in India, questioning charity as a solution for the problem.

[57] It has been suggested that the idea of the congress was originally conceived in a private meeting of seventeen men after a Theosophical Convention held at Madras in December 1884 but no evidence exists.

[60] A satirical work on native rule, India in 1983, published (anonymously but thought to be written by T. Hart Davies[61]) in 1888 included a character derisively called "A. O.

[62] The organizers of the 27th session of the Indian National Congress at Bankipur (26–28 December 1912) recorded their "profound sorrow at the death of Allan Octavian Hume, C.B., father and founder of the Congress, to whose lifelong services, rendered at rare self-sacrifice, India feels deep and lasting gratitude, and in whose death the cause of Indian progress and reform sustained irreparable loss.

Science, he wrote: ...teaches men to take an interest in things outside and beyond… The gratification of the animal instinct and the sordid and selfish cares of worldly advancement; it teaches a love of truth for its own sake and leads to a purely disinterested exercise of intellectual facultiesand of natural history he wrote in 1867:[10] ... alike to young and old, the study of Natural History in all its branches offers, next to religion, the most powerful safeguard against those worldly temptations to which all ages are exposed.

He added enormous reception rooms suitable for large dinner parties and balls, as well as a magnificent conservatory and spacious hall with walls displaying his superb collection of Indian horns.

In March 1873, he visited the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal along with geologists Dr. Ferdinand Stoliczka and Valentine Ball of the Geological Survey of India and James Wood-Mason of the Indian Museum in Calcutta.

During this expedition Hume collected many bird specimens, apart from conducting a bathymetric survey to determine whether the island chain was separated from continental India by a deep canyon.

[72] This expedition was made on special leave following his demotion from the Central Government to a junior position on the Board of Revenue of the North Western Provinces.

Hume was completely devastated and he began to lose interest in ornithology due to this theft and a landslip, caused by heavy rains in Simla, which had damaged his museum and many of the specimens.

:[10][79] He noted later that:[10][79] Mr. Hume was a naturalist of no ordinary calibre, and this great collection will remain a monument of his genius and energy of its founder long after he who formed it has passed away...Such a private collection as Mr. Hume's is not likely to be formed again; for it is doubtful if such a combination of genius for organisation with energy for the completion of so great a scheme, and the scientific knowledge requisite for its proper development will again be combined in a single individual.The Hume collection of birds was packed into 47 cases made of deodar wood constructed on site without nails that could potentially damage specimens and each case weighing about half a ton was transported down the hill to a bullock cart to Kalka and finally the port in Bombay.

He hoped that his collation, which he noted as being of a poor quality, would form a "nucleus round which future observation may crystallize" and that others around the country could help him "fill in many of the woeful blanks remaining in record".

He critiqued a monograph on parrots, Die Papageien by Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch suggesting that name changes (by "cabinet naturalists") were aimed at claiming authority to species without the trouble of actually discovering them.

or Djual Khool deny the whole thing; as I cannot permit our sacred philosophy to be so disfigured....Hume soon fell out of favour with the Theosophists and lost all interest in the theosophical movement in 1883.

[133]Hume took an interest in wild plants and especially on invasive species although his botanical publishing was sparse with only three short notes between 1901 and 1902 including one on a variety of Scirpus maritimus, and another on the flowering of Impatiens roylei.