Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (History, Art & Culture) – June 22, 2020

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.

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 It was repealed by Lord Ripon in 1882.

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 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.

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.

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 socio-religions 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.

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.

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.”

The Lucknow Session of the congress is memorable for it marked the re-union 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.