Indian History GK Questions with Answers – Page 50

The Meerut session of November 1946, with Acharya J. B. Kripalani in the chair, was the last session of the Congress held before 15 August 1947.

At the Lucknow session of December 1916, presided over by Ambica Charan Mazumdar, the moderates and the extremists were reunited and the Congress and the Muslim League agreed on a joint scheme of political reform, accepting separate electorates for Muslims; that agreement is the Lucknow Pact.

Jana Gana Mana, composed by Rabindranath Tagore, was sung for the first time on 27 December 1911 at the Calcutta session of the Congress, and the first stanza was adopted as the national anthem by the Constituent Assembly on 24 January 1950.

The Nagpur session, presided over by C. Vijayaraghavachariar, confirmed the Non-Cooperation programme begun at the Calcutta special session of September 1920 and rewrote the organisation from top to bottom: a Working Committee of fifteen members was created, the provincial committees were reorganised on linguistic lines, the membership fee was lowered…

The Karachi session, presided over by Vallabhbhai Patel, endorsed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact and adopted the resolution on Fundamental Rights and the National Economic Programme, which promised free speech, free press, equality before law, a living wage and state ownership of key industries; the draft is attributed to Jawaharlal Nehru.

The Belgaum session in Karnataka is the only session of the Congress over which Mahatma Gandhi presided, and in his presidential year he worked chiefly for Hindu-Muslim unity, khadi and the removal of untouchability.

She presided over the Calcutta session of 1917 and was the first woman president of the Congress, in the same years in which she was leading the Home Rule League.

At Surat the two wings of the Congress quarrelled over the choice of president and over how far the boycott and swadeshi programme should be carried; the session broke up in disorder, Rash Behari Ghosh was declared president, and the Congress stayed divided until 1916.

Bose was re-elected president at the Tripuri session of 1939 after defeating Pattabhi Sitaramayya, but the Working Committee would not serve under him; he resigned in April 1939 and Rajendra Prasad was asked to take the chair for the remainder of the year.

The Lahore session of December 1929, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, declared complete independence to be the goal of the Congress and called upon the country to observe 26 January 1930 as Independence Day; the tricolour was hoisted on the bank of the Ravi on 31 December 1929.

Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, a Calcutta barrister, presided over the first session of the Congress at the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Bombay from 28 to 31 December 1885, attended by seventy-two delegates.

The correct answer is B, the Hartog Committee, which reported in 1929 that most children left school before becoming literate and that the hurried expansion of primary schools had produced wastage and stagnation; it recommended consolidation of existing schools rather than further expansion.

The correct answer is A, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who launched the Urdu weekly Al-Hilal and, when it was suppressed, followed it with Al-Balagh, using both to argue for Hindu-Muslim unity against the colonial government.

The correct answer is B, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, who published Kesari in Marathi and Mahratta in English from Pune and was tried for sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code for what he wrote in them.

The correct answer is A, W. W. Hunter, who led the Indian Education Commission appointed in 1882 to review the working of Wood's Despatch; it urged attention to primary education given in the vernacular, the transfer of schools to local boards and support for private schools through grants.

The correct answer is C, Charles Metcalfe, who as acting Governor-General repealed the Licensing Regulations of 1823 through the Press Act of 1835 and freed Indian newspapers from the need for a licence, earning the title of liberator of the Indian press.

The correct answer is A, the Bengal Gazette, also known as Hicky's Gazette or the Calcutta General Advertiser, started by James Augustus Hicky in 1780; its attacks on the officials of the Company led to its seizure.

The correct answer is A, Lord Lytton, whose Vernacular Press Act of 1878 is remembered as the gagging act because it applied only to newspapers in Indian languages, allowed the government to demand a bond and forfeit printing presses, and gave no right of appeal to a court.

The correct answer is C, 1857, the year of the revolt, when the three presidency universities were founded on the model recommended by Wood's Despatch of 1854; they were examining rather than teaching universities at the start.

The correct answer is B, the Charter Act of 1813, which required the Company to set aside not less than one lakh rupees a year for the revival and improvement of literature, the encouragement of the learned natives of India and the introduction of useful knowledge.