Indian History GK Questions with Answers – Page 36

Appointed in 1926 and chaired by Lord Linlithgow, it examined the condition of Indian agriculture and rural life and recommended a central body to coordinate agricultural research, which was established in 1929 as the Imperial Council of Agricultural Research, renamed the Indian Council of Agricultural Research after independence.

The Indian Education Commission of 1882, known as the Hunter Commission, reviewed the progress of education since Wood's Despatch and recommended that the State pay special attention to primary education in the vernacular and hand schools over to the newly created local boards, in keeping with Ripon's local self-government resolution.

The Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance of 1926, named after its chairman Edward Hilton Young, recommended that the functions of currency and credit be taken away from the Government and handed to a central bank; the recommendation was carried out by the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934…

All seven members of the Indian Statutory Commission were British members of Parliament, among them Clement Attlee, and Indians of every party read this as a declaration that they were unfit to decide their own constitution; hence the boycott and the slogan 'Simon, go back'.

The annual session of the Indian National Congress held at Madras in December 1927, presided over by Dr M. A. Ansari, resolved to boycott the Simon Commission at every stage and in every form, and the same session passed a resolution on complete independence.

The British Government announced the Indian Statutory Commission in November 1927 under Sir John Simon to review the working of the Government of India Act, 1919; the commission itself reached Bombay on 3 February 1928 and submitted its report in 1930.

It ended the patronage of the Court of Directors over appointments and laid down that recruitment to the covenanted civil service would be by open competition, which was thrown open to Indians as well; the committee under Macaulay that framed the scheme reported in 1854.

The Act directed that a sum of not less than one lakh rupees be set apart every year for the revival and improvement of literature, the encouragement of the learned natives of India and the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences.

The Act provided for the establishment of a Supreme Court at Calcutta, and the court was set up in 1774 with a Chief Justice and three other judges, Sir Elijah Impey being its first Chief Justice.

It added six new members to the Governor-General's Council for legislative purposes, so that law-making was carried on by a separate body which began to behave like a small parliament, with its own rules of business, and which is therefore regarded as the beginning of the Indian Legislative Council.

The Charter Act of 1833 added a fourth, law member to the Governor-General's Council for legislative work, and Thomas Babington Macaulay took up the post in 1834.

This Act was the final step in centralising British administration in India: it vested all civil and military powers in the Governor-General of India, took away the legislative powers of the Bombay and Madras governments, and made the East India Company a purely administrative agency holding its territories in trust…

Pressed by British manufacturers who wanted a free market in India, Parliament threw Indian trade open to all British subjects and allowed the Company to keep only the tea trade and the trade with China.

The Act separated the commercial and the political functions of the East India Company, leaving trade to the Court of Directors and placing civil, military and revenue administration under a newly created Board of Control answerable to Parliament.

It was the first attempt by the British Parliament to regulate the affairs of the East India Company: it redesignated the Governor of Bengal as the Governor-General of Bengal, gave him a Council of four, made Bombay and Madras subordinate to him and provided for a Supreme Court at Calcutta.

The Regulating Act of 1773 changed the designation of the Governor of Bengal to Governor-General of Bengal and created an Executive Council of four members to assist him, and Warren Hastings, who had been Governor of Bengal since 1772, became the first holder of the new office.

The 1919 reforms gave no such right to all women, while the 1935 Act did reserve seats for women in the legislatures.

All four rose much later, between the 10th and 12th centuries, mostly as feudatories who broke away from the declining Western (Kalyani) Chalukyas or the Pratiharas.

In 1837 Prinsep, an officer of the East India Company's mint and secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, deciphered the Brahmi script in which most of Ashoka's edicts are written.

All three wrote dramas in Sanskrit, and the question tests the names of classical playwrights after Kalidasa.