Daily Quiz: UPSC Prelims Marathon (History) – October 12th,2020

The Treaty of Sugauli that established the boundary line of Nepal and colonial India was signed on 2 December 1815 and ratified by 4 March 1816 between the East India Company and King of Nepal following the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-16.
The signatory for Nepal was Raj Guru Gajraj Mishra aided by Chandra Sekhar Upadhaya the signatory for the Company was Lieutenant Colonel Paris Bradshaw.
Source: Spectrum

The name of Lord William Bentinck is still cherished in India for suppression of the Thugs. The thugs, i.e., cheats were a sect of hereditary assassins and robbers who lived by preying upon innocent and defenseless travelers.
Source: Spectrum

In 1823, the Governor-General-in Council appointed a “General Committee of Public Instruction”, which had the responsibility to grant one lakh of rupees for education.
•The committee consisted of 10(ten) European members, of which Lord Macaulay was the president.
•The committee decided to spend major portions from the grant for the improvement of oriental literature.
Source: Shodhganga

Indigo was a commercial crop forced upon the peasantry by the Zamindars and British planters in the Zamindari areas of eastern India.
•At one point indigo cultivation was considered to be a symbol of India’s slavery. Finally, in 1860 the terribly oppressed indigo peasants launched “Non-Cultivation of indigo” movements.
•Beginning with the ryots of Govindpur village in Nadia district of Bengal, the indigo strikes rapidly spread to other areas.
•By the spring of 1860, it totally covered all the indigo districts of Bengal.
•The indigo peasants got tremendous support from the intelligentsia and the press, as well as from the missionaries of Bengal.
•Outstanding in this respect was the role of Harish Chandra Mukherjee editor of Hindu Patriot.
•Dina Bandhu Mitra’s play ‘Neel Darpan’ was to gain great fame for vividly portraying the oppression by planters upon indigo farmers.

The settlement was directly made with the village or Mahal by the Settlement Officers, who fixed the rent with the consultation of Lambardar and the rent to be paid by the cultivating tenants.
•The system was known as Mauzawari in United Provinces, Malguzari in the Central Provinces, and village or mahali settlement in pre-independent Punjab.
•Mahal simply defined as a fiscal unit was a local area coincides with a large or forms a part of village or includes several parts of villages.
•Mahalwari system covered the most fertile tract of British India including Ganga-Jamuna Doab, major areas of Agra and Awadh Provinces, North Western Provinces, old Banares, the Ceded and Conquered districts and Later on it was extended to Central Provinces and the British Punjab.
•The Ryotwari system of land revenue was instituted in the late 18th century by Sir Thomas Munro, Governor of Madras in 1820.
•This was practiced in the Madras and Bombay areas, as well as Assam and Coorg provinces.
•In this system, the peasants or cultivators were regarded as the owners of the land.
•They had ownership rights, could sell, mortgage or gift the land.
Source: e-gyankosh

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.
Source: Spectrum

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.
Source: Spectrum

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.
Source: Spectrum

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.”
Source: NCERT

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.
Source: ICSE