Modern History Quiz or MCQs for UPSC Civil Services

Haider’s father Fateh Muhammad was the Faujdar (garrison commander) of Kolar. After his death Haider’s soldierly qualities helped him to rise through the military ranks. By 1755 he had secured a powerful position, commanding 100 horsemen and 2000 infantry men.
Haider suppressed an army mutiny in Mysore and restored the places of the Mysore kingdom occupied by Marathas. He received the title of “Fateh Haider Bahadur” or “the brave and victorious Lion”.
In 1760 Haider allied himself with the French at Pondicherry against the English, but his position at home was endangered by the plot engineered by the Marathas.
In 1770 the Mysore king Nanjaraja was poisoned to death and Haider’s hand was suspected. Thereafter Wodeyar kings functioned only as nominal rulers. The real royal authority vested in Haider.
Source: Tamil Nadu state board class 11, part 2, page 127.

After the American War of Independence, France had signed a treaty of friendship with America (1778) and so Britain declared war against France. In a similar context of Spain reaching an agreement with America, and thereby being dragged into the war against England (1779) England remained isolated. In India the coming together of the Nizam and the Marathas, supported by the French aggravated the situation further. Haider Ali wanted to turn England’s difficulty to its advantage and marched on Karnataka.
The Treaty of Mangalore was signed in March 1784, according to which both parties agreed to give up their conquests and release the prisoners.
Third Mysore War took place in 1790-92.
Source: Tamil Nadu state board class 11, part 2, page 128.

Tipu sent an embassy to Constantinople and another in 1787 to Paris. These diplomatic efforts of Tipu were intended to strengthen him against the English. The French Monarch Louis XVI was hospitable, but could give only vague promises of support to the Sultan.
Tipu’s attack on Travancore which was an ally of the British and his capture of Cranganore was treated as a declaration of war on the Company government. Hence the third Anglo-Mysore War broke out.
According to the treaty of Srirangapatnam, the Tipu was to give up half of his dominions, pay three crores of rupees as indemnity, and pledge two of his sons as hostages. The allies were given equal shares of the indemnity and of the ceded territories. The English got Malabar, Dindigul and Barmahal. Tipu lost Coorg (Kudagu), whose raja became a feudatory to the Company. Tipu’s power was greatly reduced. And after their stay at Madras as hostages the boys returned to Srirangapatnam on 29 May 1794 when their father had paid all the dues to the English. Tipu could hardly forget his humiliation and the heavy territorial and monetary losses suffered.
Source: Tamil Nadu state board class 11, part 2, page 129.

The origin of the Palayakkarar (poligari) system dates back to the 1530s. It is believed that this system was practiced earlier in Kakatiya kingdom of Warangal.
The literal meaning of Palayakkarar is the holder of a camp as well as the holder of an estate on military tenure.
Prior to the enforcement of this system Servaikarars and Talayaris collected fees for police work. After the creation of palayams, the Servaikarars turned Palayakkarars and subordinated Talayaris to their authority.
Source: Tamil Nadu state board class 11, part 2, page 130.

The Battle of Plassey: The officials of the Company made rampant misuse of its trade privileges that adversely affected the nawab’s finances. The English fortified Calcutta without the nawab’s permission.
The Company further tried to mislead him, and compounded their sin by giving asylum to a political fugitive, Krishna Das, son of Raj Ballabh who had fled with immense treasures against the nawab’s will. The Company, on its part, suspected that Siraj would drastically reduce its trade privileges in collusion with the French in Bengal. Thus, when Siraj attacked and seized the English fort at Calcutta, it brought their hostility into the open.
Mention may be made here of the much propagated ‘Black Hole Tragedy’. Siraj-ud-daula is believed to have imprisoned 146 English persons who were lodged in a very tiny room due to which 123 of them died of suffocation. However, historians either do not believe this story, or say that the number of victims must have been much smaller.
Source: Spectrum’s A Brief History of Modern India, Page 89.

The Treaty of Allahabad: Robert Clive concluded two important treaties at Allahabad in August 1765—one with the Nawab of Awadh and the other with the Mughal Emperor, Shah Alam II.
Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula agreed to:
(i)surrender Allahabad and Kara to Emperor Shah Alam II;
(ii)pay Rs 50 lakh to the Company as war indemnity; and
(iii)give Balwant Singh, Zamindar of Banaras, full possession of his estate.
Shah Alam II agreed to:
(i)reside at Allahabad, to be ceded to him by the Nawab of Awadh, under the Company’s protection;
(ii)issue a farman granting the diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to the East India Company in lieu of an annual payment of Rs 26 lakh; and
(iii)a provision of Rs 53 lakh to the Company in return for nizamat functions (military defence, police, and administration of justice) of the said provinces.
Clive did not want to annex Awadh because it would have placed the Company under an obligation to protect an extensive land frontier from the Afghan and the Maratha invasions. The treaty made the Nawab a firm friend of the Company, and turned Awadh into a buffer state. Similarly, Clive’s arrangement with Shah Alam II was inspired by practical considerations. It made the emperor a useful ‘rubber stamp’ of the Company. Besides, the emperor’s farman legalised the political gains of the Company in Bengal.
Mir Kasim, the dethroned Nawab of Bengal, spent the rest of his life in abject misery as a homeless wanderer and died in June 1777.
Source: Spectrum’s A Brief History of Modern India, Page 93, 94.

On April 1, 1801 the Peshwa brutally murdered the brother of Jaswantrao (also called Yashwantrao by some historians) Holkar, Vithuji. A furious Jaswant arrayed his forces against the combined armies of Sindhia and Bajirao II. The turmoil continued and on October 25, 1802, Jaswant defeated the armies of the Peshwa and Sindhia decisively at Hadapsar near Poona and placed Vinayakrao, son of Amritrao, on the Peshwa’s seat. A terrified Bajirao II fled to Bassein where, on December 31, 1802, he signed a treaty with the English.
The Marathas were defeated, reduced to British vassalage and isolated from one another.
(i)Defeat of Bhonsle (December 17, 1803, Treaty of Devgaon);
(ii)Defeat of Sindhia (December 30, 1803, Treaty of Surajianjangaon); and
(iii)Defeat of Holkar (1806, Treaty of Rajpurghat).
Source: Spectrum’s A Brief History of Modern India, Page 106 and 107.

The First Carnatic War ended in 1748 when the Treaty of Aix-La Chapelle was signed bringing the Austrian War of Succession to a conclusion. Under the terms of this treaty, Madras was handed back to the English, and the French, in turn, got their territories in North America.
Source: Spectrum’s A Brief History of Modern India, Page 45.

One of the weak ruler after Aurangzeb, Ahmad Shah (1748-1754): Ahmad Shah was an incompetent ruler who left the state affairs in the hands of Udham Bai, the ‘Queen Mother’. Udham Bai, given the title of Qibla-i-Alam, was a lady of poor intellect who ruled with the help of her paramour, Javid Khan (a notorious eunuch).
Source: Spectrum’s A Brief History of Modern India, Page 64.

The problem, however, lay in identifying individuals who could both improve agriculture and contract to pay the fixed revenue to the state. After a prolonged debate amongst Company officials, the Permanent Settlement was made with the rajas and taluqdars of Bengal.
They were now classified as zamindars, and they had to pay the revenue demand that was fixed in perpetuity. In terms of this definition, the zamindar was not a landowner in the village, but a revenue Collector of the state.
Source: NCERT Themes in Indian History Part 3, Page 259.

In early 18th Century the Dutch had given up Pulicat and moved their headquarters further south to Nagapattinam.
They had decided to shift their focus to the spice-producing islands of Indonesia and established their capital at Jakarta (Batavia).

The Portuguese threatened disruption of trade by violence unless their protection, cartaz, was bought.
• Under the cartaz system, the Portuguese exacted money from the traders as price for protection against what they termed as piracy.
• But much of this was caused by Portuguese freebooters themselves and so the whole system was a blatant protection racket.

Treaty of Salbai: It was signed on 17 May 1782, by representatives of the Maratha Empire and the British East India Company after long negotiations to settle the outcome of the First Anglo-Maratha War it was signed between Warren Hastings and Mahadaji Scindia.
Treaty of Bassein: It was a pact signed on December 31, 1802 between the British East India Company (Lord Wellesley) and Baji Rao II, the Maratha peshwa of Pune (Poona) in India after the Battle of Poona.
The treaty was a decisive step in the dissolution of the Maratha Confederacy, which led to the East India Company’s usurpation of the peshwa’s territories in western India in 1818.
Treaty of Perpetual friendship: Maharaja Ranjit Singh, also called Sher-i-Punjab was born November 1780 at Gujranwala. When he was 12 years old he became the chief of his own misl after the death of his father in 1792.
Ranjit Singh wanted to annex Sind but could not do so because of the English opposition. In 1831 he signed the treaty of perpetual friendship with the English (William Bentinck).

Wellesley broadened the scope of this arrangement by his Subsidiary Alliance System, bringing under it Hyderabad, Mysore, Lucknow, the Maratha Peshwa, the Bhonsle (Kolhapur) and Sindhia (Gwalior).
The provisions of the Subsidiary Treaty are:
• An Indian ruler entering into Subsidiary Alliance with the British had to dissolve his own armed forces and accept British forces and a British Resident in his territory.
• He had to pay for the British army’s maintenance. If he failed, a portion of his territory would be taken away and ceded to the British.
• The protected prince was to sever all connections with European powers other than the British, especially the French.
• No European should be employed without the permission of the British.
• No negotiation with any Indian power should be held without the Company’s permission and
• No other Indian power to interfere in its internal affairs

Warren Hastings took charge as the governor-general at a critical period of British rule when the British were to encounter the powerful combination of the Marathas, Mysore and Hyderabad.
• He followed a policy of ring-fence which aimed at creating buffer zones to defend the Company’s frontiers.
• Broadly speaking, it was the policy of defence of their neighbours’ frontiers for safeguarding their own territories.
• This policy of Warren Hastings was reflected in his war against the Marathas and Mysore.

This is what James Mill, the famous economist and political philosopher from Scotland, wrote about the residents appointed by the Company.
“We place a resident, who really is king of the country, whatever injunctions of non-interference he may act under. As long as the prince acts in perfect subservience, and does what is agreeable to the residents, that is, to the British Government, things go on quietly; they are managed without the resident appearing much in the administration of affairs but when anything of a different nature happens, the moment the prince takes a course which the British Government think wrong, then comes clashing and disturbance”.

In simple terms, the doctrine stated that the adopted son could be the heir to his foster father’s private property, but not the state; it was for the paramount power (the British) to decide whether to bestow the state on the adopted son or to annex it.
• The doctrine was stated to be based on Hindu law and Indian customs, but Hindu law seemed to be somewhat inconclusive on this point, and the instances of an Indian sovereign annexing the state of his vassal on account of ‘lapse’ (i.e., leaving no issue as heir) were rather rare.
• Maharaja Ranjit Singh had annexed a few of his feudatory principalities on account of ‘lapse’. Likewise, the Company in 1820 acquired a few petty Cis-Sutlej states on the absence of heirs.
• Nonetheless, there was no clear-cut instance of an adopted son being deprived of an entire state or of such a state being regarded as a ‘lapse’.
• Though this policy is attributed to Lord Dalhousie (1848-56), he was not its originator. It was a coincidence that during his governor-generalship several important cases arose in which the ‘Doctrine’ could be applied.
• Dalhousie showed too much zeal in enforcing this policy which had been theoretically enunciated on some previous occasions.

His predecessors had acted on the general principle of avoiding annexation if it could be avoided; Dalhousie in turn acted on the general principle of annexing if he could do so legitimately.
• It was a matter of chance that during Lord Dalhousie’s term many rulers of states died without a male issue and seven states were annexed under the Doctrine of Lapse.
• The most important of these were Satara (1848), Jhansi and Nagpur (1854). The other small states included Jaitpur (Bundelkhand), Sambalpur (Orissa), and Baghat (Madhya Pradesh).

Polygar Rebellions (1799-1805).
•Polygars (Palaiyakkarars) were feudal lords who were appointed as military
chiefs and administrative governors from the time of the Vijayanagara Empire
in parts of Southern India. (They were given the charge of a Palayam or a group of
villages).
•It was the Polygars who collected taxes from the cultivators.
•But the East India Company came into conflict with the Polygars over the question
of who should collect taxes, and sought to control the Polygars.
•The first rebellion, also called the First Polygar War broke out in September 1799
in Tirunelveli district in modern Tamil Nadu.
•The Polygars were led by Kattabomma Nayak (also called Veerapandi Kattabomman)
who was in charge of Panchalankurichi Palayam?
•In the battles with the British troops, Kattabomman initially escaped but was
subsequently caught and publicly hanged as a warning to other Polygars.

A difference of opinion with Kitchener, regarding the status of the military
member of the council in India (who controlled army supply and logistics,
which Kitchener wanted under his own control), led to a controversy in which Curzon failed
to obtain the support of the home government.

The Permanent Settlement, also known as the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, was an agreement between the East India Company and Bengali landlords to fix revenues to be raised from land.

 After a prolonged debate amongst Company officials, the Permanent Settlement was made with the rajas and taluqdars of Bengal.

 They were now classified as zamindars, and they had to pay the revenue demand that was fixed in perpetuity.

 In terms of this definition, the zamindar was not a landowner in the village, but a revenue Collector of the state.

 The Permanent Settlement had the features that state demand was fixed at 89% of the rent and 11% was to be retained by the zamindar.

 The state demand could not be increased but payment should be made on the due date, before sunset, so it was also known as the ‘Sunset Law’. Failure to pay led to the sale of land to the highest bidder.

 Faced with an exorbitantly high revenue demand and possible auction of their estates, they devised ways of surviving the pressures. New contexts produced new strategies. Fictitious sale was one such strategy.

 Between 1793 and 1801 four big zamindaris of Bengal, including Burdwan, made benami purchases that collectively yielded as much as Rs 30 lakh. Of the total sales at the auctions, over 15 per cent were fictitious.

The jotedars were most powerful in North Bengal, although rich peasants and village headmen were emerging as commanding figures in the countryside in other parts of Bengal as well.

 In some places they were called haoladars, elsewhere they were known as gantidars or mandals.

 Their rise inevitably weakened zamindari authority.

The Fifth Report was submitted to the British Parliament in 1813.

 It was the fifth of a series of reports on the administration and activities of the East India Company in India.

 Often referred to as the Fifth Report, it ran into 1002 pages, of which over 800 pages were appendices that reproduced petitions of zamindars and ryots, reports of collectors from different districts, statistical tables on revenue returns, and notes on the revenue and judicial administration of Bengal and Madras (present-day Tamil Nadu) written by officials.

As British rule expanded from Bengal to other parts of India, new systems of revenue were imposed.

 The Permanent Settlement was rarely extended to any region beyond Bengal. Why was this so?

 One reason was that after 1810, agricultural prices rose, increasing the value of harvest produce, and enlarging the income of the Bengal zamindars.

 Since the revenue demand was fixed under the Permanent Settlement, the colonial state could not claim any share of this enhanced income. Keen on expanding its financial resources, the colonial government had to think of ways to maximise its land revenue.

 When officials devise policies, their thinking is deeply shaped by economic theories they are familiar with. By the 1820s, the economist David Ricardo was a celebrated figure in England. Colonial officials had learnt Ricardian ideas during their college years.

 According to Ricardian ideas, a landowner should have a claim only to the “average rent” that prevailed at a given time. When the land yielded more than this “average rent”, the landowner had a surplus that the state needed to tax.

 If tax was not levied, cultivators were likely to turn into rentiers, and their surplus income was unlikely to be productively invested in the improvement of the land.

 Many British officials in India thought that the history of Bengal confirmed Ricardo’s theory. There the zamindars seemed to have turned into rentiers, leasing out land and living on the rental incomes.

 It was therefore necessary, the British officials now felt, to have a different system.

The ryots came to see the moneylender as devious and deceitful.

 They complained of moneylenders manipulating laws and forging accounts.

 In 1859 the British passed a Limitation Law that stated that the loan bonds signed between moneylenders and ryots would have validity for only three years.

 This law was meant to check the accumulation of interest over time.

when the Company’s rule was m ore securely established, the view gained ground that the State would benefit more from periodical settlements.

 Further, in certain parts of the Company’s territories, viz., the U.P. (now Uttar Pradesh) and the Punjab, there were well organised village communities and, barring a portion of the U.P., there were no local chieftains or large farmers of land in this area.

 These areas thus presented a different problem, and settlement was concluded with village communities and the villagers were held jointly and severally responsible for the payment of revenue. This came to be known as the Mahalwari system of land revenue, as the land revenue was assessed on the ‘mahal’.

 In some parts of Madras, the land revenue was directly settled with individual ryots in view of, the difficulty of making settlements with the whole villages. This initiated the ryotwari system which was later introduced in Bombay and other neighboring provinces.

 Both these systems—mahalwari and ryotwari involved detailed surveys of fields and classification of lands according to soil. The assessments were fixed not in perpetuity but for a definite period.

Under Lord Hastings (Governor General from 1813 to 1823) a new policy of “paramountcy” was initiated.

 Now the Company claimed that its authority was paramount or supreme, hence its power was greater than that of Indian states.

 In order to protect its interests it was justified in annexing or threatening to annex any Indian kingdom.

 This view continued to guide later British policies as well.

• Abolition of Sati: Sati, also spelled as Suttee, is a practice among Hindu

communities where a recently widowed woman, either voluntarily or by force,

immolates herself on her deceased husband’s pyre.

• The Bengal Sati Regulation which banned the Sati practice in all jurisdictions

of British India was passed on December 4, 1829 by the then Governor-

General Lord William Bentinck.

• The Religious Disabilities Act: The Religious Disabilities Act of 1850 was a law

passed in British India under East India Company rule that abolished all laws

affecting the rights of persons converting to another religion or caste.

• The new Act allowed Indians who converted from one religion to other religion equal

rights under no law, especially in the case of inheritance.

• The General Service Enlistment Act: The General Service Enlistment

Act passed in the year 1856 contained the provision that mandated soldiers or

recruits of the Bengal Army to serve within or outside India when ordered. It meant

that they were too sent overseas and sea voyages to serve.

Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833 and a cause was

inserted in the Charter Act of 1833 requiring the Governor-General-in-Council to abolish

slavery in India as soon as it could be safely and conveniently carried out. Act V of 1843

declared slavery illegal in India and all existing slaves were emancipated without any

compensation to the slave-owners.

Cornwallis (governor-general, 1786-93) was the first to bring into existence

and organise the civil services. He tried to check corruption through—

• raising the civil servants’ salary,
• strict enforcement of rules against private trade,
• debarring civil servants from taking presents, bribes etc.,
• Enforcing promotions through seniority.

Early in the 19th century, the British were enjoying significant power in the India subcontinent, working with and often against the scattered royal kingdoms that ruled over patches of land, small and large.

 They had grown from just traders at the ports of southern India to a military power with influence all the way up to the plains fed by the great Ganges.

 But Tibet, located beyond the towering Himalayas, was still a mystic land for them. That’s when they recruited three brothers: Dolpa, Mani Singh and Nain Singh Rawat.

 Three brothers (mainly Nain Singh) explored the Himalayan region for the British. He received a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society in the year 1876 for his contributions.

Statement 1 is incorrect. Lakshmi Bai was born around 1827 in present-day Varanasi in northeast India. Named Manikarnika, she was the daughter of a Brahman who worked as an adviser to the court of the peshwa, or prime minister, of the Maratha Empire, Baji Rao II.
Statement 2 is correct. In 1853 Gangadhar Rao, the maharaja of Jhansi became ill. He then instructed that Lakshmi Bai would rule as regent until the adopted boy came of age. Shortly after the adoption, Lakshmi became a widow. Lakshmi Bai’s hold on power in Jhansi lasted until March 1858, when company troops led by Gen. Hugh Rose laid siege to the fortress.

Charles Metcalfe (Governor General – 1835 – 36) known as the “liberator of the Indian press”.
• He repealed the Licensing regulation, 1823.
• During his tenure Printing Press grew rapidly.
• The new Metcalfe act 1835 required the publisher to follow a registration procedure and give a precise account of premises of publication.

“The Sepoy Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857” book was written by famous
historian R. C. Majumdar.

First Factory Act, 1881.
•To improve the lot of factory labourers, the Government of Ripon passed the first
Factory Act, 1881 which sought to regulate and improve the conditions of labour.
•The Act was applicable in case of factories employing 100 or more hands.
•The Act prohibited the employment of children under the age of seven, limited
the number of working hours for children below the age of twelve and required that
dangerous machinery should be fenced

Lord Ripon.
•Lord Ripon in 1882 decided to transfer financial responsibility to the provinces.
Accordingly he divided the resources of revenues into three categories-Imperia1,
Provincial and Divided.
•The Imperial Heads of revenue were customs, salt and opium, posts and
telegraph, mint etc. These revenues were exclusively meant for the Central
Government.
•The Provincial Head were receipts of general administration and included
subjects like law and justice public works, education, police, jails etc. The
income from these sources was exclusively assigned to the provinces.
•In addition to this a percentage of land revenue was also assigned to the provinces
by the Imperial Government.
•The Divided Heads included excise, stamps, registration, forests, licenses etc.
The income from these heads was shared between the imperial and the Provincial
Government.

•The depressed class mission: R V Shinde was a prominent campaigner on behalf
of the Dalit movement in India who established the Depressed Classes Mission of
India to provide education to the Dalits. He laid the foundation of Depressed Class
Mission on 18 October 1906 in order to work against untouchability on the
national level.
•Social Service League: Narayan Malhar Joshi, a leading member of the Servants of
India Society, founded the Social Service League in 1911.
•The objective of the movement was “to collect and study social facts and discuss
social problems with a view to forming public opinion on questions of social service”
and to secure for the masses a better quality of life and work.
•The League opened a number of day and night schools, libraries, dispensaries and
started boys’ clubs and scouts corps.
•Deccan Education Society: Deccan education society is an organization which
runs 43 education establishments in Maharastra, Pune founded by Bal Gangadhar Tilak. It was created in the year 1884. The college was the first higher-education
institution in Pune.

During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the “Gagging Act” had been passed by
Lord Canning, which sought to regulate the establishment of printing presses and to
restrain the mad of printed mater.
•All presses had to have a license from the government with distinction between
publications in English and other regional languages.
•The Gagging Act also held that no printed material shall impugn the motives of the
British Raj, tending to bring it hatred and contempt and exciting unlawful resistance
to its orders.
•When the British Government found that the Gagging Act was not potent enough to
repress all nationalist sentiments, it created a more forcible law, designed in part by
Sir Alexander John Arbuthnot and Sir Ashley Eden, Lieutenant Governor of Bengal;
known as Vernacular Press Act.
•Lord Lytton brought Vernacular Press Act came in to force in 1878. It was repealed
by Lord Ripon in 1882.

The goal of the Sargent plan was the reorganization of the entire education

system of India. The commission under the chairmanship of the John Sargent submitted its

report to the Central Advisory Board of Education CABE in (1944).This scheme of post war

educational development was mainly focused on the quality enhancement of higher

education (ie. university system).

Recommendations-

• Pre-primary basic school for 3-6 years age group.
• Compulsory and free education for 6-14 year age group.
• High school education of two types – Academic & Technical and Vocational.
• Refresher courses for teachers and better salary for them.
• Abolition of intermediate courses.
• Standard of the universities must be raised.
• Admission should be restricted so only the capable students can go for the higher

education.

Statement 1 is correct. Ayyankali was a social reformer who worked for the advancement of deprived untouchable people in the princely state of Travancore, British India. He defied the social conventions that applied to lower castes and untouchables in the society.
The region in Kerala where Ayyankali lived was particularly affected by social divisions during his lifetime and was described by Swami Vivekananda as a “mad house” of castes. The Pulayars were regarded as the lowest group of people in the Travancore kingdom and they suffered badly from oppressive discrimination, in particular from members of the powerful Nair caste.
Statement 2 is incorrect. Ayyankali (28 August 1863 – 1941) did not participate in Quit India Movement that started on 8 August 1942, during World War II, demanding an end to British Rule of India.

Vishvanath Narayan Mandlik (8 March 1833 – 9 May 1899) was an eminent Bombay citizen, lawyer, author and a legal expert on Hindu law.
• Although a conservative when dealing in several cases involving Hindu traditions (where he opposed state intervention), he supported some reforms such as education for women.
• He also translated several English classics and law books into Marathi.
• He also wrote several works on Hindu Law in English, including translations of Yajnyawalkya’s Smriti, the Manu Smriti and Nilakantha’s Vywahara-mayukha.
• He founded a bi-weekly in English called the Native Opinion in 1864 to which he was the sole contributor in the early years.

The Faraizi movement, also called the Fara’idi Movement because of its emphasis on the Islamic pillars of faith, was founded by Haji Shariatullah in 1818.
• Its scene of action was East Bengal, and it aimed at the eradication of social innovations or un-Islamic practices current among the Muslims of the region and draws their attention to their duties as Muslims.
• Under the leadership of Haji’s son, Dudu Mian, the movement became revolutionary from 1840 onwards.
• He gave the movement an organisational system from the village to the provincial level with a khalifa or authorised deputy at every level.
• The Fara’idis organised a paramilitary force armed with clubs to fight the zamindars who were mostly Hindu, though there were some Muslim landlords too, besides the indigo planters. Dudu Mian asked his followers not to pay rent.
• The organisation even established its own Law courts. Dudu Mian was arrested several times, and his arrest in 1847 finally weakened the movement.
• The movement survived merely as a religious movement without political overtones after the death of Dudu Mian in 1862.

A group of westerners led by Madame H.P. Blavatsky (1831-1891) and Colonel M.S. Olcott, who were inspired by Indian thought and culture, founded the Theosophical Society in New York City, United States in 1875.
• In 1882, they shifted their headquarters to Adyar, on the outskirts of Madras (at that time) in India.
• The society believed that a special relationship could be established between a person’s soul and God by contemplation, prayer, revelation, etc. It accepted the Hindu beliefs in reincarnation and karma, and drew inspiration from the philosophy of the Upanishads and samkhya, yoga and Vedanta schools of thought.
• It aimed to work for universal brotherhood of humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour.

The development of the Western culture and ideology forced the traditional institutions to revitalize themselves.
• During the second half of the nineteenth century, the expression of protest and desire for change were articulated through various reform movements.
• What gave these reform movements an ideological unity were rationalism, religious universalism and humanism.
• For example, Raja Rammohun Roy repudiated the infallibility of the Vedas and during the Aligarh Movement, Syed Ahmed Khan emphasized that religious tenets were not immutable.
• As Keshab Chandra Sen said, ‘Our position is not that truths are to be in all religions, but that all established religions of the World are true.’

Dharma Sabha: The orthodox Hindu led by Raja Radhakant Deb organised the ‘Dharma Sabha’ with the object of countering the propaganda of BrahmoSamaj.

Tatvabodhini Sabha: Debendranath Tagore, father of Rabindranath Tagore founded the Tatvabodhini Sabha in 1839 to propagate Rammohun Roy’s ideas. The Tatvabodhini Sabha and its organ the Tatvabodhini Patrika promoted a systematic study of India’s past in Bengali language and helped spread rational outlook.
Brahmo Samaj of India: Keshubsen and his followers broke away from Brahmo samaj in 1866 and established what was called the ‘Brahmo Samaj of India’.

Jyotirao Phule, a gardener by caste who was fascinated by the founding principles of the United States, espoused a radical view of social change.
• Shivaji, to him, stood up not only to the tyranny of Aurangzeb that emanated from Agra, but also to the tyranny within Hindu society of its hereditary elite.
• Phule in his book/publication Life of Shivaji wanted the ordinary peasant to emulate Shivaji and stand up against every variety of oppression, domestic as well as foreign.

The Satyarth Prakash (The light of Truth) is the masterpiece of Swami
Dayanand Saraswati.
•As the great writer of this masterpiece Swami Dayanand was a symbol of ultimate
morality and spiritualism and was a sage of standing.
•This book (Satyarth Prakash) is, indeed, and encyclopedia of the various
contemporary social religious and political currents cross-currents and movements
going on at the time of the writer’s life.
•To go it further, the writer has not spared the past events and guiding philosophies,
which has polluted the human mind and deteriorated the man’s quest for true
knowledge and right way of life.

The Justice Party, earlier South Indian Liberal Federation, was a political
party in the Madras Presidency of British India. It was established in 1916 by Natesa
Mudaliar and co-founded by T. M. Nair and P. Theagaraya Chetty as a result of a series
of non-Brahmin conferences and meetings in the presidency.

Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha is a central institution formed by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar
for removing difficulties of the untouchables and placing their grievances before
government
S.N.D.P. means Sri Narayana Guru Dharma Paripalana Yogam or sangam. Narayana
Guru through his socio religious teachings and writings has become so famous in the socioreligions and political scenario of Kerala during 19th century that all the young people
turned towards the reformative movements of Sri Narayana Guru and voluntarially they
have redesignated their former youth association (it’s called Vivatu sangha) as S.N.D.P. It
was registered as a joint stock company in January 1903 with Sri Narayana Guru as
life time president.

Statement 1 is incorrect. The Treaty of Sugauli, the treaty that established the boundary line of Nepal with India, was signed on 2 December 1815 and ratified by 4 March 1816 between the East India Company and Kingdom of Nepal following the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-16.
# Treaty of Salbai was signed in 1782, by representatives of the Maratha Empire and the British East India Company to settle the outcome of the First Anglo-Maratha War.
Statement 2 is incorrect. Lord Hastings (Francis Edward Rawdon-Hastings) served as Governor-General of Bengal from 1813 to 1823.
By the Charter Act of 1833, the post of Governor-General of Bengal converted into “Governor-General of India”.
# NOT Warren Hastings (1772-1785).

The Moderates campaigned on the following grounds:
• Indianisation of government service: on the economic grounds that British civil servants got very high emoluments while inclusion of Indians would be more economical;
• Call for separation of judicial from executive functions.
• Criticism of an oppressive and tyrannical bureaucracy and an expensive and time-consuming judicial system.
• Criticism of an aggressive foreign policy which resulted in annexation of Burma, attack on Afghanistan and suppression of tribals in the North-West-all costing heavily for the Indian treasury.
• Call for increase in expenditure on welfare (i.e., health, sanitation), education-especially elementary and technical-irrigation works and improvement of agriculture, agricultural banks for cultivators, etc.
• Demand for better treatment for Indian labor abroad in other British colonies, where they faced oppression and racial discrimination.

The Government of Ripon desired the provincial governments to apply in case of local bodies the same principle of financial decentralization which Lord Mayo’s Government had begun towards them. For his contributions, Lord Ripon is called father of local self-government in India.

The main aims of the Indian National Congress in the initial stage were to
• found a democratic, nationalist movement
• politicize and politically educate people
• establish the headquarters for a movement
• promote friendly relations among nationalist political workers from different parts of the country
• develop and propagate an anti-colonial nationalist ideology
• formulate and present popular demands before the government with a view to unifying the people over a common economic and political programme
• Develop and consolidate a feeling of national unity among people irrespective of religion, caste or province.
• Carefully promote and nurture Indian nationhood

The Communal Award, based on the findings of the Indian Franchise Committee (also called the Lothian Committee), established separate electorates and reserved seats for minorities, including the depressed classes which were granted seventy-eight reserved seats.

Lord Lawrence, the governor-general in India during the period 1864-1869,
initiated the policy of Masterly Inactivity. He believed that the English should not interfere
in the internal affairs of Afghanistan and there was no necessity to keep an English
representative at its court.

Statement 1 is incorrect. Bal Gangadhar Tilak never became president of Indian National Congress.
Statement 2 is incorrect. Tilak breathed his last, after a brief illness, in Bombay on August 1, 1920. Non-cooperation-Khilafat was launched by Khilafat committee on 31st August
1920. The programme was approved by Congress at a special session in Calcutta in September 1920.
Statement 3 is correct. In 1897, Tilak was arrested and tried for sedition before the Bombay High Court. Dinshaw Davar, the lawyer who secured him bail, later became the judge and passed a sentence on him in 1908.
Tilak was arrested in 1908 and charged with sedition for second time. Initially, Jinnah appeared for Tilak and applied for bail, but this was rejected by Justice Davar.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah successfully defended Tilak in the latter’s third sedition trial in 1916.

The Cellular Jail in Port Blair, Andaman & Nicobar Islands is a prison where Indians fighting for freedom from the British were exiled and incarcerated under very inhuman conditions.
Today, a national memorial, it is called cellular because it was constructed to host only individual cells for the purpose of solitary confinement.
Some prominent inmates of the Cellular Jail were: Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, Yogendra Shukla, Batukeshwar Dutt, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Bhai Parmanand, Sohan Singh, Subodh Roy and Trailokyanath Chakravarty.
-Barindra Kumar Ghose and Aurobindo Ghosh were arrested in 1908 following the intensified police investigation after attempted killing of Kingsford by two revolutionaries Khudiram and Prafulla on 30 April 1908.
The trial (known as the Alipore Bomb Case) initially sentenced BarinGhosh and Ullaskar Datta to death. However, the sentence was reduced to life imprisonment, by Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das and Barin was deported to the Cellular Jail in Andaman in 1909 along with other convicts.
-Fazl-E-HaqKhairabadi was covered by an amnesty after the Indian Rebellion of 1857 failed and was arrested by the British authorities on 30 January 1859 at Khairabad for inciting violence.
He was tried and found guilty of encouraging murder and role in the ‘jihad’. He was sentenced for life to the prison at Kalapani (Cellular Jail) on Andaman Island, and his property was confiscated by the judicial commissioner of Awadh court.
-Batukeshwar Dutt along with Bhagat Singh was involved in the Central Legislative Assembly Bombing Case of 1929, passed away on 20th July 1965 after an illness at the age of 54. Dutt was sentenced to life imprisonment and deported to the Cellular Jail in Port Blair.

The Berlin Committee for Indian Independence was established in 1915 by Virendranath Chattopadhyay, Bhupendranath Dutta, Lala Hardayal and others with the help of the German foreign office under ‘Zimmerman Plan’.
• These revolutionaries aimed to mobilize the Indian settlers abroad to send volunteers and arms to India to incite rebellion among Indian troops there and to even organize an armed invasion of British India to liberate the country.
• The Indian revolutionaries in Europe sent missions to Baghdad, Persia, Turkey and Kabul to work among Indian troops and the Indian prisoners of war (POWs) and to incite anti-British feelings among the people of these countries.

The Ghadr Party was a revolutionary group organised around a weekly newspaper The Ghadr with its headquarters at San Francisco and branches along the US coast and in the Far East.
• These revolutionaries included mainly ex-soldiers and peasants who had migrated from the Punjab to the USA and Canada in search of better employment opportunities.
• They were based in the US and Canadian cities along the western (Pacific) coast.
• Pre-Ghadr revolutionary activity had been carried on by Ramdas Puri, G.D. Kumar, Taraknath Das, Sohan Singh Bhakna and Lala Hardayal who reached their in1911.
• To carry out revolutionary activities, the earlier activists had set up a ‘Swadesh Sevak Home’ at Vancouver and ‘United India House’ at Seattle. Finally in 1913, the Ghadr was established

By early 1915, Annie Besant had launched a campaign to demand self-government for India after the war on the lines of white colonies.
• She campaigned through her newspapers, New India and Commonweal, and through public meetings and conferences.
• At the annual session of the Congress in 1915, the efforts of Tilak and Besant met with some success. It was decided that the Extremists be admitted to the Congress.
• Although Besant failed to get the Congress to approve her scheme of Home Rule Leagues, the Congress did commit itself to a programme of educative propaganda and to a revival of local-level Congress committees.
• Not willing to wait for too long, Besant laid the condition that if the Congress did not implement its commitments, she would be free to set up her own league—which she finally had to, as there was no response from the Congress.
• Tilak and Besant set up their separate leagues to avoid any friction.
• There was an informal understanding between both the leagues wherein Tilak’s league worked in Maharashtra (except Bombay), Karnataka, Berar and the Central Provinces. Besant’s league worked in the rest of the country.
• Tilak’s league had its headquarters in Delhi. It had 6 branches. Besant’s league had 200 branches and was a looser organisation compared to Tilak’s.

Rash Behari Ghosh was born on 23 December 1845 in Burdwan, West Bengal. After a short spell in the local pathshala, Rashbihari was educated in the Burdwan Raj Collegiate School.
• Passing the entrance examination from Bankura, he entered Presidency College, Calcutta and obtained a first class in the M.A. examination in English. In 1871 he passed with honours the Law examination and in 1884 was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws.
• Ghosh was closely associated with Calcutta University. From 1887 to 1899 he was a member of the Syndicate. Gokhale’s scheme of compulsory primary education received
his warm support and during the Swadeshi movement he supported the move for national education, becoming the first President of the National Council of Education (1906 – 21).
• He did not associate himself publicly with the Indian National Congress until 1906. His first important appearance in politics was in 1905 when he presided over a meeting held in the Calcutta Town Hall to protest against the offensive remarks of Lord Curzon at the Convocation ceremony of Calcutta University.
• In 1906 he was the Chairman of the Reception Committee when the Congress held its annual session in Calcutta. Next year (1907) he presided over the Surat session which ended in pandemonium. In 1908 he presided over the Madras session.

Shrimadh Bhagvad Gita Rahasya, popularly also known as Gita Rahasya or
Karmayog Shashtra, is a 1915 Marathi language book authored by Indian social reformer
and independence activist Bal Gangadhar Tilak while he was in prison at Mandalay,
Burma.

Sri Aurobindo was renowned and important personality in the history of the
Indian resurgence and Indian nationalism.
•Aurobindo had a versatile brilliance. He was a great poet, a thoughtful thinker, a
distinguished metaphysican, a great prophet and a passionate patriot.
•He wrote effective texts that represented the crystallization of the new and rising
soul of India and given a spiritual message for humankind.
•He wrote that “Political freedom is the life-breath of a nation. To attempt social
reform, educational reform, industrial expansion, the moral improvement of
the race without aiming first and foremost at political freedom, is the very
height of ignorance and futility.
•The primary requisite for national progress, national reform, is the habit of free and
healthy national thought and action which is impossible in a state of servitude.”

Statement 1 is correct. The Chittagong armoury raid took place on 18 April

1930 and was an attempt at raiding the armoury of police and auxiliary forces, led by

freedom fighter Surya Sen.

Pritilata Waddedar joined the freedom movement and worked with revolutionaries like

Surya Sen and Nirmal Sen. She was involved in several revolutionary acts like the famous

Chittagong armoury raid and attack on the Pahartali European club at Chittagong in

1932.

Statement 2 is incorrect. During the attack on the Pahartali European club at Chittagong in

1932, she received bullet injury. However, she consumed cyanide before the British police

could capture her.

Statement 1 is correct. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad was twice elected President of the Indian National Congress, the first time in 1923 when he was only thirty – five years old, and the second time in 1940. He continued as the President of the Congress till 1946, for no election was held during this period as almost every Congress leader was in prison on account of the Quit India Movement in 1942.
Statement 2 is correct. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad served the country from 1947 to 1958 as the first Minister of Education in Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s cabinet.
# National Education Day is celebrated every year on November 11 to mark the birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

Statement 1 is incorrect. Acharya JB Kripalani was arrested in 1942 during the Quit India movement and released along with the other Congress leaders in 1945.
Statement 2 is correct. He was well-known as a Gandhian and a socialist. He became the Congress president in 1946 and resigned from his position in 1947, soon after Independence.
# In 1975, when Emergency was declared, Kripalani was among the first political leaders to be arrested.
# He earned the moniker ‘Acharya’ around 1922 when he was teaching at the Gujarat Vidyapith

Statement 1 is incorrect. On 14 July 1942, the Congress Working Committee met at Wardha and resolved that it would authorise Gandhi to take charge of the non-violent mass movement.
The Resolution, generally referred to as the ‘Quit India’ resolution, was to be approved by the All India Congress Committee meeting in Bombay in August. C. Rajgopalachari, quit the Congress over this decision, and so did some local and regional level organizers.
Statement 2 is correct. On 7 to 8 August 1942, the All India Congress Committee met in Bombay and ratified the ‘Quit India’ resolution. Gandhi called for ‘Do or Die’. The next day, on 9 August 1942, Gandhi, members of the Congress Working Committee and other Congress leaders were arrested by the British Government under the Defence of India Rules.
The leadership of the movement went into hands of net generation leaders like Aruna Asaf Ali, Jayprakash Narayan, Usha Mehta, RamManohar Lohia, Biju Patnaik etc.

The Constituent Assembly met for the first time in New Delhi on 9 December, 1946 in the Constitution Hall which is now known as the Central Hall of Parliament House.
Mountbatten Plan was a declaration of the government of Great Britain on June 3, 1947, that provided for the partition of India into two states that were granted the rights of dominions.
The 1947 Indian Independence Act is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that partitioned British India; it received the Royal Assent on 18 July 1947.

Statement 1 is incorrect. Tilak never became the INC president while in March 1931, Sardar Patel presided over the 46th session of the Indian National Congress at Karachi which was called upon to ratify the Gandhi – Irwin Pact, which had just then been concluded.

Statement 2 is incorrect. In response to the inadequacy of the Simon Report, the Labour Government, which had come to power under Ramsay MacDonald in 1929, decided to hold a series of Round Table Conferences in London.
The first Round Table Conference convened from 12 November 1930 to 19 January 1931. Prior to the Conference, M. K. Gandhi had initiated the Civil Disobedience Movement on behalf of the Indian National Congress. Consequently, since many of the Congress’ leaders were in jail, Congress did not participate in the first conference.

Lord Irwin, the Viceroy, met with Gandhi to reach a compromise. The second Round Table Conference was held in London from 7 September 1931 to 1 December 1931 with the participation of Gandhi and the Indian National Congress.
The third Round Table Conference (17 November 1932 – 24 December 1932) was not attended by the Indian National Congress and Gandhi.

Gaidinliu a teenage girl took over the leadership of the civil disobedience movement.
• In March 1932, the entire village of Bopugoanrni in the Naga Hills was burnt down by the government forces, in retaliation to the attack on the Assam Rifles outpost by Gaidinliu’s followers.
• Finally the seventeen year old leader, called Rani Gaidinliu by’Nehru, was arrested on 17 October 1932, and sentenced to life imprisonment

Gandhi was requested by Rajkumar Shukla, a local man, to look into the problems of the farmers in context of indigo planters of Champaran in Bihar.
• The European planters had been forcing the peasants to grow indigo on 3/20 part of the total land (called tinkathia system).
• When towards the end of the nineteenth century German synthetic dyes replaced indigo, the European planters demanded high rents and illegal dues from the peasants in order to maximise their profits before the peasants could shift to other crops.
• Besides, the peasants were forced to sell the produce at prices fixed by the Europeans.
• When Gandhi, joined now by Rajendra Prasad, Mazharul- Haq, Mahadeo Desai, Narhari Parekh, and J.B. Kripalani, reached Champaran to probe into the matter, the authorities ordered him to leave the area at once.
• Gandhi defied the order and preferred to face the punishment.
• This passive resistance or civil disobedience of an unjust order was a novel method at that time.
• Finally, the authorities retreated and permitted Gandhi to make an enquiry.

By early 1915, Annie Besant had launched a campaign to demand self-government for India after the war on the lines of white colonies.
• She campaigned through her newspapers, New India and Commonweal, and through public meetings and conferences.
• At the annual session of the Congress in 1915, the efforts of Tilak and Besant met with some success. It was decided that the Extremists be admitted to the Congress.
• Although Besant failed to get the Congress to approve her scheme of Home Rule Leagues, the Congress did commit itself to a programme of educative propaganda and to a revival of local-level Congress committees.
• Not willing to wait for too long, Besant laid the condition that if the Congress did not implement its commitments, she would be free to set up her own league-which she finally had to, as there was no response from the Congress

The Nehru Report confined itself to British India, as it envisaged the future link-up of British India with the princely states on a federal basis. For the dominion it recommended:
• Dominion status on lines of self-governing dominions as the form of government desired by Indians (much to the chagrin of younger, militant section-Nehru being prominent among them).
• Rejection of separate electorates which had been the basis of constitutional reforms so far; instead, a demand for joint electorates with reservation of seats for Muslims at the Centre and in provinces where they were in minority (and not in those where Muslims were in majority, such as Punjab and Bengal) in proportion to the Muslim population there with right to contest additional seats.
• Linguistic provinces.
• Nineteen fundamental rights including equal rights for women, right to form unions, and universal adult suffrage.
• Responsible government at the Centre and in provinces.
• Full protection to cultural and religious interests of Muslims.
• Complete dissociation of State from religion.

On November 2, 1929, a conference of prominent national leaders issued a ‘Delhi Manifesto’ which put forward certain conditions for attending the Round Table Conference:
• that the purpose of the Round Table Conference should be not to determine whether or when dominion status was to be reached but to formulate a constitution for implementation of the dominion status (thus acting as a constituent assembly) and the basic principle of dominion status should be immediately accepted;
• That the Congress should have majority representation at the conference; and
• There should be a general amnesty for political prisoners and a policy of conciliation; Gandhi along with Motilal Nehru and other political leaders met Lord Irwin in December 1929 (after the viceroy had narrowly escaped after a bomb was detonated meaning to hit the train he was travelling in).
• They asked the viceroy for assurance that the purpose of the round table conference was to draft a constitutional scheme for dominion status.
• That was not the purpose of the conference, said Irwin.
• Viceroy Irwin rejected the demands put forward in the Delhi Manifesto.

Prepared a formula for Congress-League cooperation in 1944. It was a tacit acceptance of the League’s demand for Pakistan. Gandhi supported the formula. The main points in the CR Plan were:
• Muslim League to endorse Congress demand for independence.
• League to cooperate with Congress in forming a provisional government at centre.
• After the end of the war, the entire population of Muslim majority areas in the North-West and North-East India to decide by a plebiscite, whether or not to form a separate sovereign state.
• In case of acceptance of partition, agreement to be made jointly for safeguarding defence, commerce, communications, etc.
• The above terms to be operative only if England transferred full powers to India.

The trade union movement was led by All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) founded in 1920.
• Lala Lajpat Rai was its first president and Dewan Chaman Lal its general secretary. Tilak was also one of the moving spirits.
• The major strikes during the 1920s included those in Kharagpur Railway Workshops,Tata Iron and Steel Works (Jamshedpur), Bombay
• Textile Mills (this involved 1,50,000 workers and went on for 5 months), and Buckingham Carnatic Mills. In 1928, there were a number of strikes involving 5 lakh workers.
• In 1923, the first May Day was celebrated in India in Madras.
• Although the organization was originally formed to give Indian representation at the League of Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO), it also met an increasing need for such a body for the rapidly expanding labor movement in India.

The differences over the question of council entry between the two schools of thought resulted in the defeat of the Swarajists’ proposal of ‘ending or mending’ the councils at the Gaya session of the Congress (December 1922).
C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru resigned from the presidentship and secretaryship respectively of the Congress and announced the formation of Congress-Khilafat Swarajya Party or simply Swarajist Party, with C.R. Das as the president and Motilal Nehru as one of the secretaries.

In March 1931, a special session of the Congress was held at Karachi to endorse the Gandhi-Irwin Pact.
Six days before the session (which was held on March 29) Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were executed.
• Throughout Gandhi’s route to Karachi, he was greeted with black flag demonstrations by the Punjab Naujawan Bharat Sabha, in protest against his failure to secure commutation of the death sentence for Bhagat and his comrades.
• While disapproving of and dissociating itself from political violence, the Congress admired the ‘bravery’ and ‘sacrifice’ of the three martyrs.
• The Delhi Pact or Gandhi-Irwin Pact was endorsed.
• The goal of purna swaraj was reiterated.
• Two resolutions were adopted-one on Fundamental Rights and the other on National Economic Programme- which made the session particularly memorable

Hitler’s astounding success and the fall of Belgium, Holland and France put England in a conciliatory mood.
• As the war in Europe had undertaken a new turn, the dominant Congress leadership was again in a dilemma.
• Both Gandhi and Nehru strongly opposed the idea of taking advantage of Britain’s position. The Congress was ready to compromise, asking the
• British government to let it form an interim government during the war period but the government was not interested.

The government came up with its own offer to get the cooperation of India in the war effort. Linlithgow announced the August Offer (August 1940) which proposed:
• Dominion status as the objective for India;
• Expansion of viceroy’s executive council which would have a majority of Indians (who would be drawn from major political parties);
• Setting up of a constituent assembly after the war where mainly Indians would decide the constitution according to their social, economic and political conceptions, subject to fulfillment of the obligation of the government regarding defense, minority rights, treaties with States, all India services; and
• No future constitution to be adopted without the consent of minorities.

Gandhiji was requested by Rajkumar Shukla, a local man, to look into the problems of the farmers in context of indigo planters of Champaran in Bihar.
• The European planters had been forcing the peasants to grow indigo on 3/20 part of the total land (called tinkathia system).
• When towards the end of the nineteenth century German synthetic dyes replaced indigo, the European planters demanded high rents and illegal dues from the peasants in order to maximise their profits before the peasants could shift to other crops.
• Besides, the peasants were forced to sell the produce at prices fixed by the Europeans.

When Gandhi, joined now by Rajendra Prasad, Mazharul- Haq, Mahadeo Desai, Narhari Parekh, and J.B. Kripalani, reached Champaran to probe into the matter, the authorities ordered him to leave the area at once.
• Gandhi defied the order and preferred to face the punishment. This passive resistance or civil disobedience of an unjust order was a novel method at that time.
• Finally, the authorities retreated and permitted Gandhi to make an enquiry

On November 2, 1929, a conference of prominent national leaders issued a ‘Delhi Manifesto’ which put forward certain conditions for attending the Round Table Conference:
• that the purpose of the Round Table Conference should be not to determine whether or when dominion status was to be reached but to formulate a constitution for implementation of the dominion status (thus acting as a constituent assembly) and the basic principle of dominion status should be immediately accepted;
• That the Congress should have majority representation at the conference; and
• There should be a general amnesty for political prisoners and a policy of conciliation;
• Gandhi along with Motilal Nehru and other political leaders met Lord Irwin in December 1929 (after the viceroy had narrowly escaped after a bomb was detonated meaning to hit the train he was travelling in).
• They asked the viceroy for assurance that the purpose of the round table conference was to draft a constitutional scheme for dominion status

•That was not the purpose of the conference, said Irwin. Viceroy Irwin rejected the demands put forward in the Delhi Manifesto.

In March 1942, a mission headed by Stafford Cripps was sent to India with constitutional proposals to seek Indian support for the war.
Stafford Cripps was a left-wing Laborite, the leader of the House of Commons and a member of the British War Cabinet who had actively supported the Indian national movement.
The main proposals of the mission were as follows.
• An Indian Union with a dominion status would be set up; it would be free to decide its relations with the Commonwealth and free to participate in the United Nations and other international bodies.
• After the end of the war, a constituent assembly would be convened to frame a new constitution.
• Members of this assembly would be partly elected by the provincial assemblies through proportional representation and partly nominated by the princes.
• The British government would accept the new constitution subject to two conditions: (i) any province not willing to join the Union could have a separate constitution and form a separate Union, and (ii) the new constitution making body and the British government would negotiate a treaty to effect the transfer of power and to safeguard racial and religious minorities.
• In the meantime, defense of India would remain in British hands and the governor-general’s powers would remain intact.

The viceroy, Lord Minto, and the Secretary of State for India, John Morley, agreed that some reforms were due so as to placate the Moderates as well as the Muslims.
• They worked out a set of measures that came to be known as the Morley- Minto (or Minto-Morley) Reforms that translated into the Indian Councils Act of 1909.

The elective principle was recognised for the nonofficial membership of the councils in India.
• Indians were allowed to participate in the election of various legislative councils, though on the basis of class and community.
• For the first time, separate electorates for Muslims for election to the central council was established—a most detrimental step for India.
• The number of elected members in the Imperial Legislative Council and the Provincial Legislative Councils was increased. In the provincial councils, non-official majority was introduced, but since some of these non-officials were nominated and not elected, the overall non-elected majority remained.
• One Indian was to be appointed to the viceroy’s executive council.

Nagpur Session (1920) of Indian National Congress (INC).
•The 1920 session was of course not the first one Nagpur hosted – the city did that
way back in 1891, only six years after the Congress’ formation. It was all set to do
that again in 1907 when a tense atmosphere here led to the venue being shifted to
Surat in Gujarat.
•A resolution calling for complete non-cooperation and boycott, virtually
amounting to a war cry against the British rule in India, was the hallmark of the
Nagpur session. It was also significant in many other ways.
•The Nagpur session is also a memorable for the new congress Constitution that
was adopted.

The Lucknow Session of the congress is memorable for it marked the reunion
of Moderate and Extremist parties after the Surat split (1907).
•Another noteworthy development was the Congress League Pact for acceptance of a
united scheme of Constitutional reforms.
•Ninteen elected members of the Governor-General’s Legislative Council
prepared a memorandum, popularly known as ‘Nineteen Memorandum’,
containing a different set of proposals and submitted it to the Viceroy in November
1916.
Their main recommendations were:
•all the Legislative Councils should have a substantial majority of elected members;
•the Legislative Councils should be large in size and enjoy larger powers in respect of
legislation and finance;
•fiscal autonomy should be conceded to India; the provincial governments should be
made autonomous;
•a full measure of Local-Self Government should be immediately granted.

Statement 1 is incorrect. Each year the International Day of Peace is
observed around the world on 21 September. The UN General Assembly has declared this
as a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, through observing 24 hours of nonviolence
and cease-fire.
The International Day of Non-Violence is observed on 2 October, the birthday of
Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement and pioneer of the
philosophy and strategy of non-violence [UN].
# International days designated by UN are occasions to educate the public on issues of
concern, to mobilize political will and resources to address global problems, and to celebrate
and reinforce achievements of humanity.
Statement 2 is correct. Mahatma Gandhi was nominated five times for the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1947 and 1948. He was never awarded with peace prize.

Chinnaswami Subramania Bharati (1882-1921) was an Indian writer of the
nationalist period and is regarded as the father of the modern Tamil style.
Bharati’s best-known works include Kaṇṇan pattu (1917), Panchali sapatham (1912;
Panchali’s Vow), and Kuyil pattu (1912). Many of his English works were collected in Agni
and Other Poems and Translations and Essays and Other Prose Fragments (1937).
As a working journalist, his writings in Swadesamitran and India made an important
contribution to Tamil political vocabulary. He wrote stories, commentaries, and was also the
pioneer of column writing in Tamil.
The exposure to political affairs led to his involvement in the extremist wing of the Indian
National Congress party, and, as a result, he was forced to flee to Pondicherry (now
Puducherry), a French colony, where he lived in exile from 1910 to 1919.

Tripuri session of the Congress was held from 8 to 12 March 1939.
Subhash Chandra Bose was re-elected the President of INC at the Tripuri Session in 1939
by defeating Gandhiji’s candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya.
Forward Bloc was formed by Subhash Chandra Bose on 3 May 1939, after he resigned
from Congress President Ship on 29 April 1939.
World War II broke out on 1 September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. Britain and
France went to Poland’s aid and declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939.

The Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act (Rowlatt Act) of 1919, was
a repressive legislation enacted in British India, following the report of a committee under
Justice Rowlatt. The report had recommended the continuation of special wartime powers
for use against revolutionary conspiracy and terrorist activity.
Statement 1 is correct. The Rowlatt Act entitled the British to arrest anyone found
suspicious of plotting against the British Raj. Under this act, those supposed to be involved
in revolt against the British could be sentenced to a term of up to 2 years in jail, without
any trial. It also placed severe restrictions on the freedom of the press.
The Act aroused opposition among Indian nationalists and this was channelled by
Mohandas Gandhi into a nationwide satyagraha, known as the Rowlatt agitation, which
ended with the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.
Statement 2 is incorrect. Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt threw a bomb in the Central
Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929 against the passage of the Public Safety Bill and the
Trade Disputes Bill which would reduce the civil liberties of citizens.
# Hindi Diwas is celebrated on 14th September. It was on this day in 1949 that the
constituent assembly adopted Hindi written in Devanagari as the official language of the country.

Dr. Rajendra Prasad, son of Mahadev Sahai, was born in Siwan, Bihar on December 3, 1884.
Statement 1 is correct. In September 1946 Prasad was sworn in as minister for food and agriculture in the interim government preceding full independence. From 1946 to 1949 he presided over the Indian Constituent Assembly and helped to shape the constitution.
He was unanimously elected president in 1950 and, after the first general election (1952), was chosen by an overwhelming majority of the new electoral college; in 1957 he was elected to a third term.
Statement 2 is correct. Subhash Chandra Bose resigned from the Congress presidentship after not getting much support within the party in 1939. Dr Rajendra Prasad became the INC President following the resignation of Subhash Chandra Bose.

Statement 1 is correct. Scheduled Castes Federation (SCF) was an organisation in India founded by B. R. Ambedkar in 1942 to campaign for the rights of the Dalit community.
Bahishkrit Hitakarini Sabha is a central institution formed by Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar for removing difficulties of the untouchables and placing their grievances before government.
Statement 2 is correct. BR Ambedkar was conferred Bharat Ratna posthumously on March 31, 1990.
In 1956, Ambedkar converted to Buddhism. He completed the final manuscript of his book on Buddhism ‘The Buddha and His Dhamma’ in December 1956. Three days later, on 6 December, he passed away.

The Royal Commission on Labour or the Whitley Commission on Labour was set up in 1929 to inquire into the existing conditions of labour in industrial undertakings and plantations in India. The Commission was chaired by John Henry Whitley. The commission submitted its report in 1931

Islington Commission, 1912 a Royal Commission formed to recommend reforms in the Public Service of British India with Lord Islington as its chairman.

 A ten member commission, which included three Indians, was given the task of examining the Indian demand to increase the number of Indians in the Higher Civil Services and, most importantly, holding simultaneous examination in India.

 The commission was guided by three principal considerations: firstly, to maintain high standards of civil administration in British India; secondly, to safeguard the paramount interest of British rule; and thirdly, to satisfy the reasonable aspirations of Indians and promote friendly relations between Indians and Europeans for better governance.

 The commission completed its report in 1915, but owing to the outbreak of the First World War, the report was not published until 1917.

 The commission examined several important issues and made a number of recommendations in regard to the Higher Civil Services.

 It suggested that the services were to be reorganised into higher and lower branches on the basis of work and not on the basis of race or salary and that no other artificial distinction should be maintained.

 Excepting the case of ICS, all other civil servants, once promoted from a lower to a higher service, should enjoy equal benefits and should be treated identically with those directly recruited and should be considered as full members of the service.

 The Civil Services were divided into four categories- Imperial, Central, Provincial and Subordinate.

 The existing problems of recruitment to various services from the point of view of place, fixation of salary, and proportion of Indians were examined.

The crucial link between the founding of a military academy and the attainment of independence was acutely realized by a section of Indian leadership in the days of struggle for independence, whose concerted efforts resulted in the recommendations of the Montague Chelmsford Reforms Committee that enabled ten Indians for receiving training at Sandhurst for induction as commissioned officers;

 Setting up of the Skeen Committee in 1925 and later holding of Round Table Conference in London in 1930, which recommended the establishment of the Indian Sandhurst.

 As a follow up action, a committee was set up under the chairmanship of Field Marshal Sir Philip Chetwode, the then Commander-in-Chief of India, to work out modalities for establishment of an Indian Sandhurst.

 In Jul 1931, the committee recommended establishment of a military academy for induction of 40 Gentlemen Cadets (GC) in each term comprising 15 as Direct Entries, 15 from the ranks through Kitchner College, Nowgaon and 10 from princely states.

 The training span was initially envisaged for three years but later reduced to two and a half years.

The ongoing national movement influenced the tribal movements in the early decades of 20th century: The Tana Bhagat movement of Gumla in Ranchi district, and the Zeliangrong movement in the Naga Hills were two such instances.
• Jadonang (1905-193 I), who set up the Haraka religious cult with three basic objectives started the complex Zeliangrong or Haomei movement in 1925.
• The first aimed at reformation of the tribes, particularly the Zemi, Liangrnei and Rangmei, to enable them to face the onslaught of Christianity.
• Secondly, the overthrows of the exploitative colonial laws by attacking British rule.
• And third, establishment of the Naga Raj.

The movement was also aimed against the Kuki tribe, the “outsider”.
• From 1927 onwards, influenced by Gandhi, Jadonang began a civil disobedience movement in the area.
• On 13 June 1931, Jgdonang was arrested and sentenced to death, and finally hanged on 29 August 1931

The hardships caused by administrative reorganization in the Kolhapur state
after 1844 caused deep resentment.
•The godkaris (the hereditary military class which garrisoned Maratha forts)
were disbanded.
•Faced with the specter of unemployment the Gadkaries rose in revolt and occupied
the forts of Samangarh and Bhudargarh

The life of the Paharias – as hunters, shifting cultivators, food gatherers, charcoal producers, silkworm rearers – was thus intimately connected to the forest.
• They lived in hutments within tamarind groves, and rested in the shade of mango trees. They considered the entire region as their land, the basis of their identity as well as survival; and they resisted the intrusion of outsiders.
• Their chiefs maintained the unity of the group, settled disputes, and led the tribe in battles with other tribes and plainspeople.
• With their base in the hills, the Paharias regularly raided the plains where settled agriculturists lived. These raids were necessary for survival, particularly in years of scarcity; they were a way of asserting power over settled communities; and they were a means of negotiating political relations with outsiders.
• The zamindars on the plains had to often purchase peace by paying a regular tribute to the hill chiefs.
• Traders similarly gave a small amount to the hill folk for permission to use the passes controlled by them.
• Once the toll was paid, the Paharia chiefs protected the traders, ensuring that their goods were not plundered by anyone.

The Santhals had begun to come into Bengal around the 1780s. Zamindars hired them to reclaim land and expand cultivation, and British officials invited them to settle in the Jangal Mahals.
• Having failed to subdue the Paharias and transform them into settled agriculturists, the British turned to the Santhals. The Paharias refused to cut forests, resisted touching the plough, and continued to be turbulent.
• The Santhals, by contrast, appeared to be ideal settlers, clearing forests and ploughing the land with vigour. The Santhals were given land and persuaded to settle in the foothills of Rajmahal.
• By 1832 a large area of land was demarcated as Damin-i-Koh. This was declared to be the land of the Santhals. They were to live within it, practise plough agriculture, and become settled peasants.
• The land grant to the Santhals stipulated that at least one-tenth of the area was to be cleared and cultivated within the first ten years. The territory was surveyed and mapped.
• Enclosed with boundary pillars, it was separated from both the world of the settled agriculturists of the plains and the Paharias of the hills.

The disastrous famine of 1770 and the harsh economic order of the British compelled a group of sanyasis in Eastern India to fight the British yoke.
• Originally peasants, even some evicted from land, these sanyasis were joined by a large number of dispossessed small zamindars, disbanded soldiers and rural poor.
• They raided Company factories and the treasuries, and fought the Company’s forces. It was only after a prolonged action that Warren Hastings could subdue the sanyasis.
• Equal participation of Hindus and Muslims characterised the uprisings, sometimes referred to as the Fakir Rebellion.
• Majnum Shah (or Majnu Shah), Chirag Ali, Musa Shah, Bhawani Pathak and Debi Chaudhurani were important leaders.
• Debi Chaudhurani’s participation recognizes the women’s role in early resistances against the British.
• Anandamath, a semi-historical novel by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, is based on the Sanyasi Revolt.

Buchanan on Santhals wrote: They are very clever in clearing new lands, but live meanly. Their huts have no fence, and the walls are made of small sticks placed upright, close together and plastered within with clay. They are small and slovenly, and too flat-roofed, with very little arch.

Rampa Revolts led by Alluri Sitarama Raju of the Koyas (1916, 1922-1924; Rampa region in Andhra Pradesh); against British interference; capture and execution of Raju in 1924.

According to ICAR, the Indore research station was set up where the Institute
for Plant Industry (IPI) used to exist.
IPI was established in the 1920s by the Maharaja of Indore, ostensibly to study cotton.
•But it also seems to have been a way to offer a research position to Albert Howard, a
British agricultural scientist who first came to India in 1905 to work as imperial
economic botanist at Pusa.
•He started studying their traditional methods- of animals raised alongside
crops, with their wastes, and other plant wastes forming the only fertilisers.
•Howard was an expert in fungi and he theorised that traditional methods nurtured
fungi and microbes in the soil, leading to better soil health than what was created by
artificial means.
•Howard’s theories would lay the principles for the organic farming movement, but
they proved too radical for his colleagues at the time.
•But Howard realised that the princely states offered more liberties than the directly
British ruled provinces. Indore gave him a chance to continue his research without
leaving India.
•Howard developed and popularised what he called the Indore process, a
method of combining animal and plant wastes to ensure rapid decomposition
into a form that could be used in farming — a scientific system for composting.

The institution of paper money was first introduced into India in 1839,
when the presidency banks (Calcutta, Bombay & Madras) were authorized to issue notes
payable to bearer of demand within their circle.
•The idea of transferring the issue and management of paper currency under
government control was first conceived by James Wilson.
•Thus, the Bill for the establishment of a Government Paper Currency in India was
first introduced on 3rd March 1860 by James Wilson.
•By Act XIX of 1861, paper currency, under government management was lawfully
set up in India
•Wilson’s scheme provided for the issue of currency notes of the denominations
of five, ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred, five hundred and one thousand rupees.

The Tebhaga movement was led by the share croppers of the Bengal region against the oppressive jotedars in 1946-47.

 The uprising was due to the share cropping system that prevailed in the Bengal. During the early nineteen century a new class of rich peasants known as jotedars emerged in the Bengal region.

 The jotedars collected huge tracts of land in rural areas. They also controlled the local markets, money lending activities, exercised control over the poor cultivators.

 The sharecroppers were encouraged by the Floud Commission which had already recommended their demand to the government.

 The movement was led by the All India Kisan Sabha, the peasant wing of CPI.

 Initially only few peasants were participated but in January 1947, the Bengal Bargadars Temporary Regulation Bill incorporated the demand of the Sharecroppers. This encouraged the movement and led to the increased participation of the peasants from rural areas.

 At the request of the jotedars, the police suppressed the sharecroppers. By March 1947, the movement slowly disappeared due to government promises. But the government failed to pass the bill immediately and it was only in 1950, the bill was passed.

K.R. Narayanan was elected as Vice President in 1992, he went on to become President in 1997.
The Pokhran-II tests were a series of five nuclear bomb test explosions conducted by India at the Indian Army’s Pokhran Test Range in May 1998. It was the second instance of nuclear testing conducted by India; the first test, code-named Smiling Buddha, was conducted in May 1974.
The Kargil war was fought between India and Pakistan between May and July 1999 in the Kargil district of Kashmir and along the Line of Control (LOC).
The time period for Tenth FYP was 2002-07.

On 1 November 1956, Bombay State was re-organized under the States Reorganisation Act on linguistic lines, absorbing various territories including the Saurashtra and Kutch States, which ceased to exist. On 1 May 1960, Bombay State was dissolved and split on linguistic lines into the two states of Gujarat, with Gujarati speaking population and Maharashtra, with Marathi speaking population.
Nagaland attained statehood with the enactment of the state of Nagaland Act in 1962 by the Parliament.
On 1 November 1966, Haryana was carved out on the basis of that the parts of Punjab which were to be Haryana’s “Hindi-speaking areas.”

In 1967, Morarji Desai joined Smt. Indira Gandhi’s cabinet as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister in charge of Finance. Post-emergency, he was unanimously elected as Leader of the Janata Party in Parliament and was sworn in as the Prime Minister of India on March 24, 1977.
In December 1973, students of L D College of Engineering in Ahmedabad went on a strike to protest against a hike in school fees. A month later, students of Gujarat University erupted in protest, demanding the dismissal of the state government. It called itself the ‘Navnirman movement’. The student protests against the government escalated and soon factory workers and people from other sectors of society joined in. By February 1974, the central government was forced to act upon the protest. It suspended the Assembly and imposed President’s rule upon the state.
The 1975 emergency was the third national emergency (first one was in 1962 when China invaded India while the second one was in 1971 during the war with Pakistan), and the only one to be declared citing of “internal disturbances”.

Both statements are correct.
The Assam Accord was a Memorandum of Settlement (MoS) signed between representatives of the Government of India and the leaders of the Assam Movement in New Delhi on 15 August 1985.
A six-year agitation demanding identification and deportation of illegal immigrants was launched by the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) in 1979 concluded with the signing of the Assam Accord.
Among other things the clause 6 of the accord states “constitutional, legislative and administrative safeguards, as may be appropriate, shall be provided to protect, preserve and promote the cultural, social, linguistic identity and heritage of the Assamese people.”
Home Ministry in 2019 set up a committee under High Court judge Biplab Kumar Sarma to make recommendations on the implementation of Clause 6.

Operation Gibraltar was the codename given to the strategy of Pakistan to infiltrate Jammu and Kashmir, and instigate the locals in starting a rebellion against India.
-In August 1965, Pakistan Army’s Azad Kashmir Regular Force troops, disguised as locals, entered Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistan. The operation sparked the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
Indo–Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation was a treaty signed between the Republic of India and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic on August 09, 1971 that specified mutual strategic cooperation.
-The treaty was a seen as a deviation from India’s sustained position of non-alignment in the Cold War and in the prelude to the Bangladesh liberation war with Pakistan.
The Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990.