Revolutionary Movement: previous-year questions

Answer: (B) Jatindra Nath Mukherjee

Jatindra Nath Mukherjee, 'Bagha Jatin', leader of the Jugantar group, planned an armed uprising with German arms during the First World War (the Indo-German Conspiracy). While waiting for the arms ship on the Odisha coast he and four comrades were surrounded by police on the bank of the Buribalam river near Balasore on 9 September 1915; he died of his wounds the next day. Among his companions, Chittapriya Ray Chaudhuri fell in the fight. The distractors: Vasudev Balwant Phadke (printed as V.S. Phadke) led an armed revolt in Maharashtra in 1879; Rani Gaidinliu led the Naga resistance of the 1930s; and 'Ajay Samanta' recalls Ajoy Mukherjee and Satish Samanta of the Tamluk Jatiya Sarkar (1942).

Answer: (C) Revolt

Ghadar is an Urdu-Punjabi word meaning ‘revolt’ or ‘mutiny’, and it gave its name to the Ghadar Party and its newspaper founded in San Francisco in 1913. ‘Rebel’ is the nearest wrong option, but the word names the act of revolt, not the person.

No option is correct as printed — this question is disputed. WBPSC awarded the mark to all candidates (final answer key, 24.05.2024). The provisional key (22.12.2023) had given Jatindranath Mukherjee.

PSC cancelled this question in its final answer key and gave one mark to every candidate. The provisional key had marked Jatindranath Mukherjee ("Bagha Jatin"), the Jugantar leader who coordinated the Indo-German arms plot in Bengal and died after the gunfight at Balasore (Orissa) in September 1915. Strictly speaking, however, the Ghadar Party (founded 1913 at San Francisco; Sohan Singh Bhakna president, Lala Har Dayal the moving spirit) was based among Punjabis, and its 1915 rising in India was organised by Rash Behari Bose and Sachindranath Sanyal. Of the others, Jatindranath Das died after a 63-day hunger strike in Lahore jail (1929), Barindra Ghosh belonged to the Alipore Bomb Case group and M. N. Roy went abroad for German arms and later founded the Communist Party of India at Tashkent (1920). CANCELLED BY PSC. The final answer key (24.05.2024) marks this question '*' and awards 1 mark to all candidates irrespective of attempt. correct_answer 'A' (Jatindranath Mukherjee) is only the provisional-key (22.12.2023) answer, kept so the record stays usable.

Answer: (B) the inhuman transportation and hanging of Indian youth.

Madan Lal Dhingra, a student associated with India House in London (Shyamji Krishnavarma, V. D. Savarkar), shot Sir William Curzon Wyllie, political aide-de-camp to the Secretary of State for India, on 1 July 1909. In his statement he said he had avenged the inhuman hangings and transportations of patriotic Indian youths, such as the execution of Khudiram Bose (1908). He was hanged at Pentonville prison on 17 August 1909. The arrests of the Ghadarites came later (1915), Lal-Bal-Pal were not imprisoned together, and the Partition of Bengal was not the motive he gave.

Answer: (A) Rasbehari Bose

On 23 December 1912 a bomb was thrown at Lord Hardinge as he rode an elephant through Chandni Chowk on his state entry into the new capital, Delhi. The plot (the Delhi or Delhi–Lahore Conspiracy Case) was masterminded by Rash Behari Bose; Basanta Kumar Biswas, Amir Chand, Avadh Behari and Bal Mukund were executed for it. Rash Behari escaped to Japan in 1915, later founded the Indian Independence League and handed over the INA to Subhas Bose. Sachindranath Sanyal was his associate and later a founder of the Hindustan Republican Association; Bhai Parmanand was tried in the Lahore Conspiracy Case; Sohan Lal Pathak was a Ghadarite hanged in Burma.

Answer: (A) Bhagwati Charan Vohra

'The Philosophy of the Bomb' (1930) was written by Bhagwati Charan Vohra of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, in consultation with Chandrashekhar Azad, as a reply to Gandhiji's article 'The Cult of the Bomb', which had condemned the attempt to blow up Viceroy Irwin's train in December 1929. Vohra died in May 1930 while testing a bomb on the banks of the Ravi. Yashpal was an HSRA member who later became a noted Hindi writer.

Answer: (A) Kakori Conspiracy Case

Ram Prasad Bismil of the Hindustan Republican Association led the Kakori train action near Lucknow on 9 August 1925; in the Kakori Conspiracy Case he was hanged in December 1927 along with Ashfaqulla Khan, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri. The Lahore Conspiracy Case is linked with Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru (hanged 23 March 1931), the Alipore Bomb Case (1908) with Aurobindo and Barindra Ghosh, and the Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929) with communist and trade-union leaders.

Answer: (A) Assassination of British official W.C. Rand by Chapekar Brothers

On 22 June 1897 the Chapekar brothers Damodar and Balkrishna shot W. C. Rand, the Plague Commissioner of Poona, and Lt. Ayerst, in protest against harsh plague measures - generally regarded as the first political assassination of British officials after 1857. The other options came later: Curzon Wyllie was shot by Madan Lal Dhingra in London (1 July 1909); A. M. T. Jackson, Collector of Nashik, by Anant Laxman Kanhere (21 December 1909); and J. P. Saunders by Bhagat Singh and Rajguru in Lahore (17 December 1928) to avenge Lala Lajpat Rai.

Answer: (B) Pather Dabi

Pather Dabi ('The Right of Way', 1926) by Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay centres on the revolutionary Sabyasachi and a secret society working from Burma to free India; the British government banned it for sedition soon after publication. Srikanta is a semi-autobiographical novel in four parts about a wanderer, and Palli Samaj depicts caste and factional politics in a Bengal village. Other political novels to remember: Bankim Chandra's Anandamath (1882) and Tagore's Ghare Baire and Char Adhyay.

Answer: (A) V. D. Savarkar

V. D. Savarkar, sentenced in 1910-11 to two life terms (50 years) in the Cellular Jail in the Andamans in the Nasik Conspiracy (Jackson murder) case, submitted several clemency petitions to the British government (1911, 1913 and later); he was moved to Ratnagiri in 1921 and released conditionally in 1924. Tilak served six years in Mandalay (1908-14) without seeking mercy, Sukhdev Thapar was hanged with Bhagat Singh and Rajguru on 23 March 1931, and Chandra Shekhar Azad was never captured - he shot himself at Alfred Park, Allahabad, in February 1931.

Answer: (A) Revolt

"Ghadar" literally means "revolt" or "mutiny", and gave its name to the Ghadar Party formed by Indian revolutionaries abroad.

Answer: (C) Surya Sen

Surya Sen ("Masterda") planned and led the Chittagong Armoury Raid of April 1930 against British armouries in Bengal.

Answer: (A) Subhaschandra Bose

Subhas Chandra Bose founded the All India Forward Bloc in 1939 after resigning as Congress president, to pursue a more radical path to independence.

Answer: (A) Chittagong Armoury Raid

Surya Sen ("Masterda"), a schoolteacher-turned-revolutionary, planned and led the Chittagong Armoury Raid of April 1930, in which a group of young revolutionaries seized government armouries in Chittagong, Bengal.

Answer: (A) Rash Behari Bose

Rash Behari Bose, a veteran revolutionary based in Japan, founded the Indian Independence League in 1942 to organise Indians in Southeast Asia against British rule; Subhas Chandra Bose later took over its leadership along with the associated Indian National Army (INA).

Answer: (A) 1945

The Indian National Army (INA) trials of captured officers began at the Red Fort in November 1945 and continued into 1946, generating enormous public sympathy for the accused and adding pressure on the British to leave India.

Answer: (A) Singapore

Subhas Chandra Bose proclaimed the Provisional Government of Free India (Azad Hind) in Singapore in October 1943, with the backing of Japan, and declared war on Britain and the United States.

Answer: (B) Lala Hardayal

Lala Har Dayal founded the Ghadar Party among Indian immigrants (mostly Punjabi) on the west coast of the United States in 1913, aiming to organise an armed uprising against British rule in India.

Answer: (B) V. D. Savarkar

V. D. Savarkar founded the Abhinav Bharat Society at Nasik in 1904; it grew out of his earlier Mitra Mela (1899) and was modelled on Mazzini's 'Young Italy'. Savarkar also founded the Free India Society in London and wrote 'The Indian War of Independence, 1857'. Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki are linked with the Muzaffarpur bomb attempt on Kingsford (1908), and Bhagat Singh with the Naujawan Bharat Sabha (1926) and the HSRA.

Answer: (B) Lala Hardayal

The Ghadar Party was formed in 1913 at San Francisco (headquarters: Yugantar Ashram) by Indian immigrants on the Pacific coast; Lala Hardayal was its moving spirit and general secretary, while Sohan Singh Bhakna was its first president. Its weekly paper 'Ghadar' began on 1 November 1913, and the Komagata Maru incident (1914) is linked with it. Bhagat Singh belonged to the HSRA, Tilak to the Home Rule League, and Savarkar to Abhinav Bharat.