Indian History Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers – Page 16

Debendranath Tagore founded the Tattvabodhini Sabha in Calcutta in 1839 to study the Upanishads and Vedanta and to spread the rational religion that Rammohun Roy had preached.

The Battle of Talikota, fought in January 1565, broke the Vijayanagara empire. The Deccan sultanates of Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar and Bidar joined hands against it, and their combined army defeated Aliya Rama Raya, the regent of the Aravidu dynasty, who was captured and killed on the field.

Raja Nand Kumar, a Brahmin revenue officer of Bengal, accused Warren Hastings of taking bribes. Soon afterwards Nand Kumar himself was charged with forgery, tried by the Supreme Court at Calcutta under Chief Justice Elijah Impey and hanged in 1775.

The Moplahs, or Mappilas, were Muslim cultivators of the Malabar region of northern Kerala, and their long struggle against the jenmi landlords grew into the Malabar or Moplah rebellion of 1921.

The Third Battle of Panipat was fought in 1761 between Ahmad Shah Abdali of Afghanistan and the Marathas, who were defeated.

The Santhal rebellion, known as the Hul, broke out on 30 June 1855 in the Rajmahal hills of the Santhal Parganas, in what is now Jharkhand.

The Battle of Plassey was fought on 23 June 1757 on the bank of the Bhagirathi near Palashi in Bengal, and Robert Clive's small Company force defeated Nawab Siraj-ud-daulah there.

Humayun Shah Bahmani ruled from 1458 to 1461 and the chronicles of the Deccan record his punishments as so savage that he was nicknamed Zalim, the cruel or the tyrant.

He was a Jaina in his early life and served as a minister in a Chalukya court in the twelfth century.

The Imad Shahi dynasty founded the Sultanate of Berar in 1490. As the Bahmani kingdom of the Deccan broke up in the late fifteenth century, five successor sultanates appeared.

The Vernacular Press Act was passed in 1878, when Lord Lytton was Viceroy of India. The Act was aimed at Indian-language newspapers, which had grown sharply critical of British rule after the famine of 1876-78.

Akbar introduced the mansabdari system in the closing years of the sixteenth century to grade every officer of the empire.

Balban, who ruled from 1266 to 1287, brought the Persian court customs of sijda, bowing low before the Sultan, and paibos, kissing his feet, into the Delhi court.

Pitt's India Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1784, named after Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, and it separated the commercial work of the East India Company from its political work.

Razia Sultan was removed from the throne of Delhi in 1240 and killed the same year. She was the daughter of Iltutmish, who named her his successor over his sons, and she ruled from 1236 to 1240, the only woman ever to sit on the throne of the Delhi Sultanate.

Mathura on the Yamuna became the second capital of the Kushanas, while Purushapura, today's Peshawar, was the main one.

The Third Anglo-Maratha War, fought in 1817-18 under Lord Hastings, ended Maratha power. Peshwa Baji Rao II was beaten at Khadki, Koregaon and Ashti, the office of Peshwa was abolished, and his lands around Poona were taken over and joined to the Bombay Presidency.

Lal Kot was built by the Tomara Rajputs before the Delhi Sultanate began. The Tomara king Anangpal is credited with raising this fort in the 11th century, and it is counted as the first of the 'cities of Delhi'.

On 8 and 9 September 1928, young revolutionaries met secretly at the ruins of Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi and renamed the Hindustan Republican Association as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.

The Bahmani kingdom was born in 1347 out of a revolt against his rule in the Deccan. Muhammad-bin-Tughlaq ruled from 1325 to 1351 and tried to control the far south from Delhi, even shifting his capital to Daulatabad for a while.