Rise of Nationalism & the Congress: previous-year questions

Answer: (B) B.G. Tilak

Bal Gangadhar Tilak formed the Congress Democratic Party in April 1920 to contest the elections under the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms on a programme of 'responsive cooperation'; he died on 1 August 1920 and the Congress then boycotted those elections under the Non-Cooperation programme. Do not confuse it with the Swaraj Party (Congress-Khilafat Swarajya Party) founded by C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru on 1 January 1923. Annie Besant started her Home Rule League in September 1916 (Tilak's own League came in April 1916), and Jinnah led the Muslim League and the Independent Party in the Central Legislative Assembly.

Answer: (A) Rajendra Prasad

Subhas Chandra Bose was elected Congress President at Haripura (1938) and re-elected at Tripuri (1939) by defeating Pattabhi Sitaramayya, the candidate backed by Gandhi, by 1,580 votes to 1,377. Unable to form a Working Committee because of opposition from the Gandhian wing, he resigned in April 1939 at Calcutta, and Rajendra Prasad was chosen as President; Bose then founded the Forward Bloc (May 1939). Later Presidents: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (1940-46, the longest continuous term), Jawaharlal Nehru briefly in 1946, and Acharya J.B. Kripalani (Meerut session, President at Independence). Rajagopalachari never held the office.

Answer: (D) A. O. Hume

Allan Octavian Hume, a retired civil servant, took the initiative to found the Indian National Congress, whose first session met in Bombay in December 1885. Dadabhai Naoroji was an early leader and later president, Gandhi joined the movement much later, and Lord Hardinge was a Viceroy.

Answer: (B) Surendranath Banerjee

The Indian Association was founded in Calcutta in 1876 by Surendranath Banerjea with Ananda Mohan Bose. Aurobindo and Bipin Chandra Pal were later Extremist leaders, and Surya Sen led the Chittagong armoury raid.

Answer: (A) Badruddin Tyabji

Badruddin Tyabji presided over the third session of the Congress at Madras in 1887, becoming its first Muslim President. Hakim Ajmal Khan (1921) and Maulana Azad (1923, 1940) presided later, and Jinnah never presided over the Congress.

Answer: (B) Dadabhai Naoroji

Dadabhai Naoroji was a leading Moderate who believed in petitions and constitutional methods. Lajpat Rai, Tilak and Bipin Chandra Pal formed the ‘Lal-Bal-Pal’ trio of Extremist leaders.

Answer: (A) Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee

W. C. Bonnerjee presided over the first session of the Congress at Bombay in December 1885. Pherozeshah Mehta presided in 1890, Patel in 1931, and Ambedkar never presided over the Congress.

Answer: (D) Lord Dufferin

Lord Dufferin, Viceroy when the Congress was founded, dismissed it in 1888 as representing only a ‘microscopic minority’ of the people. Canning, Elgin and Lawrence were Viceroys before the Congress existed.

Answer: (D) Madras

The third session of the Congress was held at Madras in 1887 under Badruddin Tyabji. The first was at Bombay (1885) and the second at Calcutta (1886); Lucknow hosted a session only in 1899.

Answer: (B) Montagu Declaration

After Montagu's August Declaration of 1917, the Montagu–Chelmsford reform proposals appeared in July 1918. A special Congress session at Bombay (August 1918) called them "disappointing and unsatisfactory", whereupon the Moderates led by Surendranath Banerjea, who wished to accept them, walked out and formed the National Liberal Federation (1918–19). That was the second split. The Lucknow Pact (1916) was the Congress–League accord made at the very session where Moderates and Extremists reunited after the Surat Split of 1907, and Annie Besant's election as the first woman President (Calcutta, 1917) caused no split.

Answer: (C) Abul Kalam Azad

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad became Congress President at the Ramgarh session in 1940 and remained in office until 1946, because no annual sessions could be held during the War and the Quit India years. This six-year stretch is the longest continuous tenure before independence, and as President he negotiated with the Cripps Mission and the Cabinet Mission. Nehru presided in consecutive years (1929–30 and 1936–37) but never for six in a row; Dadabhai Naoroji was President three times, but in 1886, 1893 and 1906; and Gokhale presided only once (Benares, 1905). Azad's birthday, 11 November, is observed as National Education Day.

Answer: (C) Abul Kalam Azad

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad presided over the special session of the Congress at Delhi in September 1923 at the age of 35, the youngest person to hold the office. Born in Mecca in 1888, he edited Al-Hilal and Al-Balagh and later became free India's first Education Minister. Rash Behari Ghosh presided at Surat (1907) and Madras (1908) as an elderly Moderate; Subhas Chandra Bose was 41 at Haripura (1938); and Lala Lajpat Rai presided over the Calcutta special session of 1920. The oldest President was Dadabhai Naoroji, aged 81 at Calcutta in 1906.

Answer: (B) North American History, to connote an assembly of people

At the first session in Bombay in December 1885 the proposed "Indian National Union" was renamed the Indian National Congress, a suggestion credited to Dadabhai Naoroji. The word was taken from North American history, where "Congress" meant an assembly of the people's delegates, rather than copied from the name of the US legislature as such. The Chicago Parliament of the World's Religions (1893) and the All India Trade Union Congress (1920) both came later. Basics: the Congress was founded on 28 December 1885 at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay, with 72 delegates; W. C. Bonnerjee was the first President, A. O. Hume the founder and Lord Dufferin the Viceroy.

Answer: (C) 1896

Tilak turned the Ganapati festival into a public (sarvajanik) celebration in 1893 and followed it with the Shivaji festival, first celebrated at Raigad fort in April 1896 after a movement begun in 1895 to repair Shivaji's samadhi (which is why some books give 1895). Both festivals were used to spread nationalist ideas among the masses. Among the other years, 1885 is the founding year of the Congress and 1897 saw Tilak's first sedition trial and the Chapekar brothers' killing of Rand at Poona. Tilak's papers were Kesari (Marathi) and Mahratta (English); Valentine Chirol called him the "Father of Indian Unrest".

Answer: (A) There was merger between the INC and the National Conference.

PSC's key gives the merger: Surendranath Banerjea's Indian National Conference (which had met at Calcutta in 1883 and 1885 under the Indian Association) merged with the Indian National Congress at the 1886 Calcutta session, making the Congress a truly all-India body. Note that the other two statements are also historically correct — Dadabhai Naoroji presided over the session and Rajendralal Mitra chaired its Reception Committee — which is why many guidebooks answer "All of the above"; the PSC nevertheless kept (A). Later landmarks: Badruddin Tyabji was the first Muslim President (Madras, 1887) and George Yule the first English President (Allahabad, 1888).

No option is correct as printed — this question is disputed. WBPSC awarded the mark to all candidates (final answer key, 24.05.2024): Gandhi presided at the Belgaum session of December 1924, but the option prints 1925.

PSC cancelled this question in its final answer key and gave one mark to every candidate, because the printed option carries the wrong year. Gandhi presided over the Congress only once, at the Belgaum (now Belagavi, Karnataka) session held in December 1924, not 1925. The provisional key had accepted "Belgaum, 1925" as the intended answer. The other sessions listed: Kakinada 1923 was presided over by Maulana Mohammad Ali, Kanpur 1925 by Sarojini Naidu (the first Indian woman President) and Gauhati 1926 by S. Srinivasa Iyengar. The centenary of the Belgaum session fell in 2024.

Answer: (D) W. Wedderburn

The British Committee of the Indian National Congress was set up in London in 1889 to put India's case before the British public and Parliament; Sir William Wedderburn was its chairman and William Digby its secretary, with Dadabhai Naoroji among the members. It published the journal "India" from 1890. Wedderburn was also Congress President twice (Bombay 1889 and Allahabad 1910) and wrote Hume's biography. A. O. Hume founded the Congress and was its general secretary for many years; Naoroji had earlier founded the East India Association in London (1866).

Answer: (B) Ferozshah Mehta, K. T. Telang and Badruddin Tyabji

Pherozeshah Mehta, K. T. Telang and Badruddin Tyabji, the three lawyers who dominated Bombay's public life and founded the Bombay Presidency Association in 1885, were known as the Bombay Triumvirate or the "Three Stars" of Bombay's public life. Mehta was called the "Lion of Bombay"; Tyabji became the first Muslim President of the Congress (Madras, 1887); Telang became a judge of the Bombay High Court. Tilak, Agarkar and Namjoshi belonged to Poona (New English School, Deccan Education Society). G. H. Deshmukh was "Lokahitawadi", and R. G. Bhandarkar was an orientalist and Prarthana Samaj leader. The extremist trio was Lal-Bal-Pal.

Answer: (B) Liberal

Dadabhai Naoroji was elected to the House of Commons in 1892 from Central Finsbury, London, as a Liberal Party candidate, by a wafer-thin majority; he was the first Indian member of the British Parliament. Known as the "Grand Old Man of India", he set out the drain theory in "Poverty and Un-British Rule in India" and was Congress President three times (1886, 1893 and 1906). The second Indian MP, Mancherjee Bhownaggree (1895), was a Conservative, and the third, Shapurji Saklatvala (1922), was elected with Labour support and later as a Communist. The Labour Party itself was formed only in 1900.

Answer: (A) The Ilbert Bill Controversy

The Ilbert Bill (1883), drafted by Law Member C. P. Ilbert under Lord Ripon, proposed to let Indian district magistrates and sessions judges try European accused. The European community reacted with a furious, openly racist agitation (the "White Mutiny"), and the Bill was diluted in 1884 so that a European could demand a jury of which half were Europeans. The episode exposed racial arrogance as nothing else had, and taught Indians the value of organised agitation, hastening the birth of the Congress in 1885. The other three were Lord Lytton's measures: the Vernacular Press Act (1878), the Arms Act (1878) and the lowering of the ICS age limit from 21 to 19.