Leaders & Personalities: previous-year questions

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: (D) Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan

Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who led the non-violent Khudai Khidmatgar (‘Red Shirts’) movement in the North-West Frontier Province, was called the Frontier Gandhi. Rashbehari Bose and Barin Ghosh were revolutionaries, and M. N. Roy a communist leader.

Answer: (C) Firoz Shah Mehta

The Congress Socialist Party was formed in 1934 by Acharya Narendra Deva, Jayaprakash Narayan and others, with Ram Manohar Lohia a leading member. Pherozeshah Mehta was a Moderate leader of the early Congress who died in 1915, long before the party existed.

Answer: (C) Nabagopal Mitra

Nabagopal Mitra (1840–94) organised the Hindu Mela (1867) with the support of the Tagore family and founded the National Paper, the National Society, the National School and the National Gymnasium, among other "National" institutions, which earned him the nickname "National Mitra". Rajnarayan Bose, whose ideas inspired the Mela, is called the "Grandfather of Indian Nationalism". Satyendranath Tagore was the first Indian to enter the Indian Civil Service (1863) and wrote a patriotic song for the Mela; Jyotirindranath Tagore was a dramatist and composer who was also associated with it.

Answer: (B) M.N. Roy

Manabendra Nath Roy, after breaking with communism, developed Radical (New) Humanism and formed the Radical Democratic Party in 1940. Earlier he had helped found the Communist Party of India at Tashkent in 1920. Subhas Chandra Bose founded the Forward Bloc in 1939. Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto, and Nehru wrote The Discovery of India.

Answer: (B) Gopal Krishna Gokhale

Gandhi regarded Gopal Krishna Gokhale, the Moderate leader who founded the Servants of India Society in 1905, as his political guru. Bal Gangadhar Tilak was the Extremist leader known for 'Swaraj is my birthright'. Ananda Mohan Bose co-founded the Indian Association and presided over the Madras Congress of 1898. Rajnarain Bose is called the 'grandfather of Indian nationalism'.

Answer: (A) Mahatma Gandhi

Gandhi wrote Hind Swaraj in Gujarati in 1909, setting out his critique of modern civilisation and his idea of self-rule. Nehru wrote The Discovery of India in Ahmednagar Fort jail. Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize in 1913 for Gitanjali. Tilak wrote the Gita Rahasya in Mandalay jail.

Answer: (D) Bipin Chandra Pal

Aurobindo Ghosh praised Bipin Chandra Pal, his colleague on the paper 'Bande Mataram', as one of the mightiest prophets of nationalism. Pal (of the Lal-Bal-Pal trio) is called the 'Father of Revolutionary Thought in India' and edited 'New India'. Of the others: Brahmabandhab Upadhyay edited 'Sandhya', Ashwini Kumar Dutta founded the Swadesh Bandhab Samiti at Barisal, and Rashbehari Bose planned the attack on Lord Hardinge (1912) and later built the Indian Independence League in Japan.

Answer: (D) C. R. Das

Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das declared that Swaraj must be 'for the masses, not for the classes'; he stressed it as President of the Gaya Congress (1922). After his 'Council entry' plan was defeated there, he founded the Swaraj Party (1 January 1923) with Motilal Nehru as secretary, and became the first elected Mayor of Calcutta in 1924 with Subhas Chandra Bose as Chief Executive Officer. He was Bose's political guru and died in 1925.

Answer: (A) Winston Churchill

In 1931, when Gandhiji was holding talks with Viceroy Irwin, Winston Churchill said it was nauseating to see 'a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir ... striding half-naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace'; hence the phrases 'seditious fakir' and 'half-naked fakir'. Ramsay MacDonald was the British Prime Minister who announced the Communal Award (1932), Lord Irwin signed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact (1931), and Sir Stafford Cripps led the Cripps Mission (1942).

Answer: (D) Dadabhai Naoroji

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) is the 'Grand Old Man of India': three times Congress President (1886, 1893, 1906), the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons (1892, Liberal, Central Finsbury), and author of 'Poverty and Un-British Rule in India' with its Drain Theory. Surendranath Banerjea was called 'Rashtraguru' and 'Surrender Not' and wrote 'A Nation in Making'; Badruddin Tyabji was the first Muslim President of the Congress (1887); Gokhale was Gandhiji's political guru.

Answer: (C) Bal Gangadhar Tilak

'Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it' was the declaration of Bal Gangadhar 'Lokmanya' Tilak, popularised during the Home Rule movement (1916). Tilak edited Kesari (Marathi) and Mahratta (English), wrote Gita Rahasya and The Arctic Home in the Vedas, and was called the 'Father of Indian Unrest' by Valentine Chirol. V. D. Savarkar founded Abhinav Bharat and wrote on the 1857 revolt; Vasudev Balwant Phadke led an armed uprising in Maharashtra in 1879; Balkrishna Chapekar was one of the Chapekar brothers who killed W. C. Rand in 1897.

Answer: (A) Fazlul Haque

Abul Kasem Fazlul Huq (1873-1962) was called 'Sher-e-Bangla' (Tiger of Bengal). He founded the Krishak Praja Party, became the first Premier of Bengal in 1937, moved the Lahore (Pakistan) Resolution in March 1940 and later led the United Front in East Pakistan. Haji Muhammad Mohsin was a philanthropist of Hooghly (Mohsin Fund, Hooghly Imambara); Maulana Azad edited Al-Hilal and was independent India's first Education Minister; Nawab Salimullah of Dhaka hosted the founding session of the Muslim League in 1906. Compare: 'Sher-e-Punjab' - Maharaja Ranjit Singh; 'Punjab Kesari' - Lala Lajpat Rai.

Answer: (C) Matangini Hazra

Matangini Hazra ('Gandhi Buri') was a Gandhian satyagrahi: aged 72, she was shot dead holding the tricolour while leading an unarmed Quit India procession to the Tamluk police station on 29 September 1942. The others were armed revolutionaries: Bina Das fired at Governor Stanley Jackson at the Calcutta University convocation (1932); Santi Ghosh and Suniti Chaudhuri, schoolgirls of Comilla, shot dead District Magistrate Stevens (1931); Kalpana Datta (Joshi) belonged to Surya Sen's Chittagong group. Pritilata Waddedar led the attack on the Pahartali European Club (1932).

Answer: (D) Dadabhai Naoroji

Dadabhai Naoroji (1825-1917) is the 'Grand Old Man of India': three-time Congress President (1886, 1893 and 1906, when 'Swaraj' was declared the goal), the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons (1892, Liberal, Central Finsbury) and author of the Drain Theory in Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. Badruddin Tyabji was the first Muslim President of the Congress (1887); Surendranath Banerjee, 'Rashtraguru' or 'Surrender-Not', wrote A Nation in Making; G. K. Gokhale, Gandhi's political guru, founded the Servants of India Society (1905).