Quit India, INA & Towards Independence: previous-year questions

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: (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: (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: (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).

Answer: (D) All of the above

During the Quit India Movement British authority collapsed in several areas and parallel governments were set up: at Ballia in eastern Uttar Pradesh under Chittu Pandey (August 1942, lasting about a week); at Satara in Maharashtra, the 'Prati Sarkar' of Nana Patil and Y.B. Chavan, the longest-lived (1943 to 1945-46); and at Talcher in Odisha. All three options are correct, so the answer is D. The most important example for West Bengal is not listed: the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar at Tamluk, Medinipur (December 1942 to September 1944), led by Satish Chandra Samanta with Ajoy Mukherjee and Sushil Dhara; Matangini Hazra was shot there on 29 September 1942 while leading a procession.

Answer: (A) Sir Henry lawrence

The Cabinet Mission of 1946 had three members: Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Sir Stafford Cripps and A. V. Alexander. Sir Henry Lawrence was a 19th-century administrator who died defending Lucknow in 1857, so he is the one who was not a member.

Answer: (D) On the eve of the Quit India movement

Gandhi gave the call ‘Do or Die’ in his speech at Gowalia Tank, Bombay, on 8 August 1942, when the Congress passed the Quit India resolution. The non-cooperation, civil disobedience and Rowlatt campaigns came earlier and had no such slogan.

Answer: (B) Tamluk

Tamluk was the centre of the Quit India movement in Medinipur, where the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar, a parallel national government, functioned from 1942 to 1944 and Matangini Hazra was shot leading a procession. Kanthi (Contai) was also active, but Tamluk was the hub; Garbeta and Haldia were not.

Answer: (A) Subhas Chandra Bose

As Congress President (Haripura, 1938), Subhas Chandra Bose set up the National Planning Committee in late 1938 to prepare a plan of economic development based on industrialisation; he appointed Jawaharlal Nehru as its chairman, with K. T. Shah as secretary. So Bose was "instrumental in founding" it, while Nehru headed it. Gandhi favoured village industries and was not enthusiastic about heavy industrialisation. Other pre-independence plans: Visvesvaraya's plan (1934), the Bombay Plan of industrialists (1944), the Gandhian Plan of S. N. Agarwal (1944) and M. N. Roy's People's Plan (1945). The Planning Commission was set up on 15 March 1950.

Answer: (B) 1934

The Congress Socialist Party was formed in 1934 within the Congress by Acharya Narendra Dev, Jayaprakash Narayan and others. 1935 is the year of the Government of India Act. In 1936 the All India Kisan Sabha and the Progressive Writers' Association were founded at Lucknow. In 1937 provincial elections were held under the 1935 Act, after which Congress formed ministries in most provinces.

Answer: (D) Medinipur

The Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar, a parallel national government formed during the Quit India Movement, was set up at Tamluk in Medinipur district on 17 December 1942 under Satish Chandra Samanta. It ran its own departments and a volunteer force, the Vidyut Vahini, until 1944. Matangini Hazra was shot while leading a procession to the Tamluk police station in September 1942. Bankura, Birbhum and Malda had no such parallel government.

Answer: (C) Tiger

The flag of the Azad Hind Fauj (INA) under Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was the tricolour with a springing (leaping) tiger at the centre - a symbol first used by the Indian Legion that Bose raised in Germany, and recalling Tipu Sultan, the 'Tiger of Mysore'. The lion belongs to the State Emblem of India (Lion Capital of Sarnath), the elephant appears on the Ashokan abacus, and the one-horned rhino is Assam's state animal. INA motto: 'Ittehad, Itmad aur Qurbani' (Unity, Faith, Sacrifice); slogans: 'Jai Hind' and 'Dilli Chalo'.

Answer: (D) 23rd March 1940

The Lahore Resolution, later called the Pakistan Resolution, was moved by A. K. Fazlul Huq at the Muslim League's Lahore session, presided over by M. A. Jinnah, on 23 March 1940 (and adopted the next day); it demanded 'independent states' in the Muslim-majority north-west and east. The word 'Pakistan', coined by Choudhry Rahmat Ali in 1933, does not appear in it. 16 August 1946 was the League's Direct Action Day (Great Calcutta Killings); 1935 recalls the Government of India Act; April 1942 is the time of the Cripps Mission. Pakistan observes 23 March as Pakistan Day.

Answer: (D) Sister Nivedita

PSC's key credits Sister Nivedita (Margaret Noble), the Irish disciple of Swami Vivekananda, who designed a flag in 1904 - red and yellow, bearing the Vajra (thunderbolt) of Indra and the words 'Bonde Matoram' - which was displayed at the Congress exhibition of 1906. Other early flags: the Calcutta flag hoisted at Parsi Bagan Square on 7 August 1906 (Sachindra Prasad Bose and Hemchandra Kanungo); the flag unfurled by Madam Bhikaiji Cama at Stuttgart in 1907 (option A garbles her name); the Home Rule flag of Annie Besant and Tilak (1917); and Pingali Venkayya's design (1921), the basis of the tricolour adopted on 22 July 1947.

Answer: (A) 1946

The British Cabinet Mission arrived in India in March 1946 to discuss the transfer of power and propose a constitutional framework.

Answer: (B) Sir Cyril Radcliffe

Sir Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer with no prior knowledge of India, chaired the Boundary Commission that drew the partition line (the "Radcliffe Line") between India and Pakistan in 1947, working under intense time pressure with tragic humanitarian consequences.

Answer: (B) Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi used this famous phrase to dismiss the offer made by the 1942 Cripps Mission, suggesting that its promise of post-war Dominion status was worthless given Britain's precarious wartime position.

Answer: (C) Jawaharlal Nehru

This is a line from Jawaharlal Nehru's famous "Tryst with Destiny" speech, delivered to the Constituent Assembly on the night of 14-15 August 1947, marking India's independence.

Answer: (B) Sivaswami Iyer

This scathing remark on the all-White Simon Commission's report is attributed to the jurist and statesman Sir P. S. Sivaswami Iyer, reflecting the broad cross-party Indian rejection of a commission that had excluded any Indian members.