Indian National Movement: previous-year questions

Answer: (B) Sarojini Naidu

Sarojini Naidu described Gandhi and Viceroy Lord Irwin as 'the Two Mahatmas' during the talks that produced the Gandhi-Irwin (Delhi) Pact of 5 March 1931, a comment on the deeply religious, conscience-driven character of both men. Under the Pact the Congress suspended Civil Disobedience and agreed to attend the Second Round Table Conference, while the Government released non-violent political prisoners and allowed salt-making for personal use in coastal villages. Naidu, the 'Nightingale of India', was the first Indian woman President of the Congress (Kanpur, 1925). Among the other options, Nehru was unhappy with the Pact, Mirabehn (Madeleine Slade) was Gandhi's English disciple, and Tagore is credited with popularising the title 'Mahatma' for Gandhi.

Answer: (B) Chapati

In the early months of 1857 chapatis were passed from village to village across North India, usually by village watchmen, each village baking more and sending them on; British officers took this unexplained circulation as a sign of coming trouble. The other symbol associated with the revolt is the red lotus, said to have been passed among sepoy regiments. Swords, scarves and coins are not recorded as such symbols. Key facts: the immediate cause was the greased cartridge of the Enfield rifle; Mangal Pandey's outbreak took place at Barrackpore (Bengal) on 29 March 1857 and the revolt proper began at Meerut on 10 May 1857, with Bahadur Shah Zafar proclaimed emperor at Delhi.

Answer: (C) Germany

After escaping from house arrest in Calcutta in January 1941 and travelling through Kabul and Moscow, Subhas Chandra Bose reached Berlin, where he set up the Free India Centre and, in early 1942, the Azad Hind Radio, broadcasting to India in several languages. It was in Germany that he raised the Indian Legion, was first called 'Netaji' and adopted 'Jai Hind' as the greeting. In 1943 he went by submarine to East Asia; the radio's headquarters later shifted to Singapore and Rangoon. Japan (B) is where he took charge of the INA and formed the Provisional Government of Azad Hind at Singapore (21 October 1943); Austria (A) is linked with his stay in Vienna in the 1930s, when he wrote 'The Indian Struggle'.

Answer: (B) Mohan Singh

The first and most famous INA trial at the Red Fort (November 1945 to January 1946) was of three officers, Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Kumar Sahgal and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon, a Muslim, a Hindu and a Sikh, remembered in the slogan 'Lal Qile se aayi awaaz: Sahgal, Dhillon, Shah Nawaz'. They were defended by the INA Defence Committee of Bhulabhai Desai, Tej Bahadur Sapru, K.N. Katju, Asaf Ali and Jawaharlal Nehru; their sentences were remitted by Commander-in-Chief Auchinleck. Mohan Singh had founded the first INA in 1942 with Japanese help but was arrested by the Japanese after differences with them that December, well before Bose reorganised the army, and he was not among the Red Fort accused.

Answer: (D) Vinoba Bhave

After the Congress rejected the August Offer (1940), Gandhi launched the limited Individual Satyagraha to assert the right to speak against India being dragged into the Second World War. Acharya Vinoba Bhave was the first satyagrahi (17 October 1940, at Paunar near Wardha), Jawaharlal Nehru the second and Brahma Datt the third; its slogan was 'Delhi Chalo'. Achyut Patwardhan and Aruna Asaf Ali belong to a later phase, as underground leaders of the Quit India Movement of 1942 (Aruna Asaf Ali hoisted the flag at Gowalia Tank, Bombay). Vinoba later began the Bhoodan movement at Pochampally in 1951.

Answer: (C) Birsa Munda

Birsa Munda (born 15 November 1875 at Ulihatu, Khunti) proclaimed himself a prophet, founded the Birsait faith and was revered by the Mundas as 'Dharti Aba' (Father of the Earth) and Bhagwan. He led the Ulgulan ('Great Tumult') of 1899-1900 in Chotanagpur against landlords, moneylenders, missionaries and the British, and died in Ranchi jail on 9 June 1900; the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908 followed. His birthday is observed as Janjatiya Gaurav Divas and is also Jharkhand's foundation day. Kanhu Murmu (A) led the Santhal Hul of 1855-56 with his brother Sidhu, while Rupa (Rup Singh) Naik and Joria Bhagat (B, D) were leaders of the Naikda tribal movement in Gujarat in 1868.

Answer: (C) Jawaharlal Nehru

The Interim Government was sworn in on 2 September 1946 under the Cabinet Mission Plan. Technically it was the Viceroy's Executive Council: the Viceroy (Lord Wavell, later Mountbatten) remained its President and Jawaharlal Nehru was designated Vice-President, also holding External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations. Vallabhbhai Patel held Home and Information and Broadcasting; Liaquat Ali Khan became Finance Member when the Muslim League joined on 26 October 1946 (his 1947 'poor man's budget' is often asked); and Sir Claude Auchinleck was the Commander-in-Chief, not a member. Other portfolios to remember: Baldev Singh, Defence; Rajendra Prasad, Food and Agriculture; Jagjivan Ram, Labour; C. Rajagopalachari, Education; Jogendra Nath Mandal, Law.

Answer: (B) Rowlat Act

The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, passed in March 1919 on the recommendations of the Sedition Committee chaired by Justice Sidney Rowlatt, was popularly called the Rowlatt Act or the 'Black Act' (no dalil, no vakil, no appeal). It allowed detention without trial for up to two years and trial of political cases without juries. Gandhi's Rowlatt Satyagraha (hartal of 6 April 1919) followed, leading on to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919. The Defence of India Act, 1915 (A) was the wartime measure whose powers the Rowlatt Act sought to continue; the Indian Penal Code (C) dates from 1860; and the Lex Loci Act, 1850 (D) protected the inheritance rights of converts.

Answer: (B) Bhagirath Manjhi

The Kherwar or Sapha Hor ('pure people') movement arose among the Santhals of the Santhal Parganas in the 1870s under Bhagirath Manjhi. It began as a religious reform preaching worship of one God and pure living, and turned into resistance against revenue settlement, rent and moneylenders, a sequel to the Santhal Hul of 1855-56. The other names belong to different movements: Birsa Munda led the Munda Ulgulan (1899-1900); Baba Ramchandra organised the Awadh Kisan Sabha (1920); and Madari Pasi led the Eka movement of Hardoi and neighbouring districts (1921-22).

Answer: (B) Muhammad Iqbal

Muhammad Iqbal, the Urdu and Persian poet-philosopher, attended the Second (1931) and Third (1932) Round Table Conferences in London as a Muslim delegate. He is remembered for 'Saare Jahan Se Achchha' (Tarana-e-Hind, 1904), the collection Bang-e-Dara, and his Allahabad address to the Muslim League in 1930 proposing a consolidated Muslim state in north-west India. The three conferences: First (1930-31, Congress absent), Second (1931, Gandhi the sole Congress representative) and Third (1932, Congress absent); B.R. Ambedkar and Tej Bahadur Sapru attended all three. Firaq Gorakhpuri (Jnanpith winner), Josh Malihabadi ('Shayar-e-Inquilab') and Faiz Ahmad Faiz were major Urdu poets but were not delegates.

Answer: (C) 1920

The Chamber of Princes (Narendra Mandal) was created by a royal proclamation of King George V following the Montagu-Chelmsford Report and is dated to 1920; it was formally inaugurated at the Red Fort, Delhi, on 8 February 1921 by the Duke of Connaught. It was a consultative body of about 120 members in which the rulers could discuss matters of common interest, presided over by the Viceroy, with an elected Chancellor (the first was Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner). It lasted until 1947. The other years: 1858, the Queen's Proclamation promising no further annexation of states; 1915, Gandhi's return to India; 1947, the lapse of British paramountcy. Also linked: the Butler Committee (1927) on relations between the states and the paramount power.

Answer: (A) B. G. Tilak

At its Delhi session (December 1918) the Congress named B.G. Tilak, Gandhi and Syed Hasan Imam as its delegates to the Paris (Versailles) Peace Conference. Tilak, who was already in England for his libel suit against Valentine Chirol, was the one who pressed the case: he sent a memorandum to the conference president Georges Clemenceau and appealed to US President Woodrow Wilson for Indian self-determination, but the British government refused him a passport to Paris. India was officially represented there by Secretary of State Edwin Montagu, S.P. Sinha and Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner. Annie Besant led the Home Rule League, C.R. Das later founded the Swaraj Party (1923), and Surendranath Banerjee had by then left the Congress with the Moderates.

Answer: (B) Ratan Mani

The Reang (Bru) uprising of 1942-43 in the princely state of Tripura was led by Ratanmani Noatia, a religious teacher with a large following among the Reangs, against heavy taxes, forced levies during the Second World War and the oppression of state-appointed chiefs. It was put down by the forces of Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya (option D), the ruler from 1923 to 1947 who is remembered as the architect of modern Tripura. Parikshit Jamatia (A) led the earlier Jamatia revolt of 1863 in Tripura, and Birsa Munda (C) belongs to Chotanagpur. The Reangs are Tripura's only Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group.

Answer: (D) Tilak

The Age of Consent Act, 1891 raised the age of consent for girls from 10 to 12 years; it followed Behramji Malabari's campaign and the death of the child-wife Phulmoni Dasi in Bengal. Bal Gangadhar Tilak opposed the Bill, not in defence of child marriage as such but on the ground that a foreign government had no right to legislate on Hindu social and religious customs and that reform must come from within society. Ranade, Gokhale and other reformers supported it; W.C. Bonnerjee was the first Congress President (1885). Follow-up law: the Child Marriage Restraint (Sarda) Act, 1929 fixed the marriage age at 14 for girls and 18 for boys.

Answer: (D) The Nizam of Hyderabad

The Subsidiary Alliance was the system used by Lord Wellesley (1798-1805) under which an Indian ruler kept a British force in his territory and paid for it (in cash or by ceding land), accepted a British Resident, employed no other Europeans and gave up independent foreign relations. The Nizam of Hyderabad was the first to accept it, in 1798. Others followed: Mysore and Tanjore (1799), Awadh (1801), Peshwa Baji Rao II by the Treaty of Bassein (1802), then the Bhonsle and Scindia (1803). So options A and C are later entrants. Do not confuse it with Dalhousie's Doctrine of Lapse (Satara, 1848).

Answer: (B) Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore criticised the bonfires of foreign cloth during the Non-Cooperation Movement as a wasteful and negative act when the poor lacked clothing, and questioned the cult of the charkha, in his essay 'The Call of Truth' (1921); Gandhi answered him in 'The Great Sentinel' in Young India. The disagreement was about method, not about freedom: Tagore had himself renounced his knighthood after Jallianwala Bagh in 1919. The other three do not fit: C.R. Das gave up his legal practice and led the movement in Bengal, Subhas Chandra Bose resigned from the ICS in 1921 to join it, and Tilak died on 1 August 1920, the very day the movement was launched.

Answer: (C) Mahatma Gandhi

The Congress boycotted the official Hunter Committee and appointed its own Punjab Inquiry Committee in November 1919. Its commissioners were M.K. Gandhi, C.R. Das, Abbas Tyabji and M.R. Jayakar (Motilal Nehru stepped aside on being elected President of the Amritsar Congress), with K. Santhanam as secretary, and the report, published in 1920, was drafted by Gandhi. It put the death toll far above the official figure of 379 and condemned General Dyer and Lieutenant-Governor Michael O'Dwyer. Das and Motilal Nehru (A, B) were associated with the committee but did not write the report, and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew (D), with Dr Satyapal, was the Amritsar leader whose arrest led to the protest meeting of 13 April 1919.

Answer: (C) Madari Pasi

The Eka (Unity) movement of 1921-22 spread through Hardoi, Bahraich, Sitapur and Barabanki in Awadh. Peasants took a religious vow to pay only the recorded rent and no more, to refuse forced labour (begar) and to stay united against extra levies by landlords and their agents (thekedars). It began with Congress and Khilafat support, but leadership passed to Madari Pasi and other low-caste leaders, and it was suppressed by March 1922. Linked UP movements: the UP Kisan Sabha (1918) and the Awadh Kisan Sabha (1920) of Baba Ramchandra. The distractors: Birsa Munda (Munda Ulgulan), Annie Besant (Home Rule League) and Anugrah Narayan Sinha (Bihar leader associated with the Champaran Satyagraha).

Answer: (A) Warren Hastings

The Asiatic Society was founded in Calcutta on 15 January 1784 by Sir William Jones, a judge of the Supreme Court, when Warren Hastings was Governor-General of Bengal (1774-85, the first to hold that title under the Regulating Act, 1773); Hastings declined the presidency and became its patron. Its scholars include Charles Wilkins (first English translation of the Bhagavad Gita, 1785), Jones himself (Abhijnanasakuntalam, 1789) and James Prinsep, who deciphered Brahmi in 1837. Other institutions and their periods: Calcutta Madrasa, 1781 (Hastings); Sanskrit College, Benares, 1791 (Jonathan Duncan, under Cornwallis); Fort William College, 1800 (Wellesley). Clive (D) was Governor of Bengal, never Governor-General.

Answer: (C) Hyderabad

Operation Polo was the 'police action' of 13 to 18 September 1948 by which the Indian Army, led by Major General J.N. Chaudhuri, ended the rule of the Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, and integrated Hyderabad; the Razakar militia of Qasim Razvi was disbanded. The other states were integrated differently: Junagadh by a plebiscite in February 1948 after its Nawab fled to Pakistan; Kashmir by Maharaja Hari Singh's Instrument of Accession on 26 October 1947; and Jodhpur by negotiation, through the efforts of Sardar Patel and V.P. Menon. Other operation names worth knowing: Operation Vijay (Goa, 1961; also Kargil, 1999) and Operation Meghdoot (Siachen, 1984).