Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (History, Art & Culture) – August 31, 2020

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.

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.

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.

: 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.