History Quiz: Revision | 30 May, 2021

At the Parliament of Religions held at Chicago in 1893, Swami Vivekananda made a great impression on people by his learned interpretations.

• The keynote of his opening address was the need for a healthy balance between spiritualism and materialism.
• Envisaging a new culture for the whole world, he called for a blend of the materialism of the West and the spiritualism of the East into a new harmony to produce happiness for mankind.

Source: Spectrum Modern India.

Dayananda subscribed to the Vedic notion of chaturvarna system in which a person was not born in any caste but was identified as a brahmin, kshatriya, vaishya or shudra according to the occupation the person followed.  

• The Arya Samaj fixed the minimum marriageable age at twenty-five years for boys and sixteen years for girls.  
• Swami Dayananda once lamented the Hindu race as “the children of children”.  
• Inter-caste marriages and widow remarriages were also encouraged.  

• Equal status for women was the demand of the Samaj, both in letter and in spirit.  
• The Samaj also helped the people in crises like floods, famines and earthquakes. 

Source: Spectrum Modern India.

A Parsi social reformer, Behramji M. Malabari (1853 – 1912), founded the Seva Sadan in 1908 along with a friend, Diwan Dayaram Gidumal.

• Malabari spoke vigorously against child marriage and for widow remarriage among Hindus.
• It was his efforts that led to the Age of Consent Act regulating the age of consent for females, Seva Sadan specialised in taking care of those women who were exploited and then discarded by society.
• It catered to all castes and provided the destitute women with education, and medical and welfare services.

Source: Spectrum Modern 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.

Source: Spectrum Modern India.

Sachin Sanyal was sentenced to life for his involvement in the conspiracy and was imprisoned at Cellular Jail in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where he wrote his book titled Bandi Jeevan (A Life of Captivity, 1922).

Source: Spectrum Modern India.

There was a large-scale participation of young women especially under Surya Sen. These women provided shelter, carried messages and fought with guns in hand.

• Prominent women revolutionaries in Bengal during this phase included Pritilata Waddedar, who died conducting a raid;

• Kalpana Dutt who was arrested and tried along with Surya Sen and given a life sentence;
• Santi Ghosh and Suniti Chandheri, school girls of Comilla, who shot dead the district magistrate. (December 1931);
• and Bina Das who fired point blank at the governor while receiving her degree at the convocation (February 1932).

Source: Spectrum Modern India.

Earlier, in December 1927, a large number of Muslim leaders had met at Delhi at the Muslim League session and evolved four proposals for their demands to be incorporated into the draft constitution. These proposals, which were accepted by the Madras session of the Congress (December 1927), came to be known as the ‘Delhi Proposals’.

These were:

• joint electorates in place of separate electorates with reserved seats for Muslims;
• one-third representation to Muslims in Central Legislative Assembly;
• representation to Muslims in Punjab and Bengal in proportion to their population;
• formation of three new Muslim majority provinces— Sindh, Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province.

Source: Spectrum Modern India.

In April 1930, C. Rajagopalachari organised a march from Thiruchirapalli (Trichinapoly as it was called by the British) to Vedaranniyam on the Tanjore (or Thanjavur) coast to break the salt law.

Source: Spectrum Modern India.

Peshawar, Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan’s educational and social reform work among the Pathans had politicized them.

Gaffar Khan, also called Badshah Khan and Frontier Gandhi, had started the first Pushto political monthly Pukhtoon and had organised a volunteer brigade ‘Khudai Khidmatgars’, popularly known as the ‘Red-Shirts’, who were pledged to the freedom struggle and non-violence.

Source: Spectrum Modern India.

At the Congress meeting in Haripura, Gujarat, in February 1938, Bose was unanimously elected president of the session.

• He was firm in his belief that the Congress ministries in the provinces had immense revolutionary potential, as he said in his presidential address.
• Bose also talked of economic development of the country through planning and was instrumental in setting up a National Planning Committee later.

Source: Spectrum Modern India.