Indian History Previous Year Questions (PYQ) with Answers – Page 8

The correct answer is A, Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqulla. Both were sentenced to death in the Kakori case and hanged in December 1927. On 9 August 1925, members of the Hindustan Republican Association stopped a train at Kakori near Lucknow and took away government money to fund their fight. Four of them were hanged: Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Rajendra Lahiri and Roshan Singh, while Chandrashekhar Azad escaped arrest. The friendship of Bismil, a Hindu, and Ashfaqulla, a Muslim, is still remembered as a symbol of unity. Option B is wrong because Vasudev Chapekar was hanged for the 1897 killing of the plague commissioner Rand in Pune, and Savarkar was sent to the Cellular Jail, not hanged. Option C is wrong because Khudiram Bose was hanged in 1908 for the Muzaffarpur bomb attack in Bihar, and Prafulla Chaki shot himself at Mokama to avoid arrest. Option D is wrong because Surya Sen was hanged for the Chittagong armoury raid and Udham Singh for killing Michael O'Dwyer in London. Exam tip: Kakori 1925 means Bismil, Ashfaqulla, Lahiri and Roshan Singh.

The correct answer is A, Shri Krishna Singh. Shri Krishna Singh, better known as Sri Krishna Sinha, led the formation of the Bihar branch of the Swaraj Dal in 1923. The Swaraj Party itself was founded on 1 January 1923 by Chittaranjan Das and Motilal Nehru, who wanted to enter the councils and oppose the government from inside. The split that led to it came at the Congress session held at Gaya in Bihar in December 1922, where Das was president and his council-entry plan was voted down. Sri Krishna Sinha, called Bihar Kesari, later became the first Chief Minister of Bihar and held the post from 1946 until his death in 1961. Option B is wrong because Ramlal Shah did not found the Swaraj Dal in Bihar. Option C is wrong because Bankim Chandra Mitra is not the person credited with it either. Option D is wrong because Sachindra Nath Sanyal was a revolutionary who founded the Hindustan Republican Association in 1924. Exam tip: Gaya session 1922, Swaraj Party 1923, Bihar unit under Sri Krishna Sinha.

The correct answer is B, Non-violence. Ahimsa, or non-violence, is the first and greatest vow of Jainism, and every other rule of Jain life follows from it, down to the mask and the soft broom a Jain monk carries to avoid harming the smallest creature. Mahavira, the twenty-fourth Tirthankara, taught five vows: ahimsa or non-violence, satya or truth, asteya or non-stealing, aparigraha or non-possession and brahmacharya or celibacy. Parshvanatha, the twenty-third Tirthankara, had already taught the first four, and Mahavira added celibacy. The three jewels of Jainism are right faith, right knowledge and right conduct. Option A is wrong because karma explains the soul's bondage and is shared with other Indian religions, so it is not the chief rule of conduct. Option C is wrong because dispassion follows from keeping the vows rather than standing above them. Option D is wrong because loyalty is not a Jain vow at all. Exam tip: the five vows of Mahavira are ahimsa, satya, asteya, aparigraha and brahmacharya.

The correct answer is C, Kesari. Bal Gangadhar Tilak started Kesari in 1881 and used it to carry the message of swaraj to Marathi readers.

Tilak brought out two papers from Pune in the same year, Kesari in Marathi and Maratha in English. His writings in Kesari on the Bengal partition and on the Muzaffarpur bomb case led to a charge of sedition, and in 1908 he was sentenced to six years of transportation to Mandalay in Burma. It was Tilak who declared that swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it, and he began the public Ganapati and Shivaji festivals to reach ordinary people.

Option A is wrong because Yugantar was started in Bengali by Barindra Kumar Ghosh and Bhupendranath Datta. Option B is wrong because the Bengalee was edited by Surendranath Banerjee. Option D is wrong because Amrita Bazar Patrika was founded by Sisir Kumar Ghosh and Motilal Ghosh.

Exam tip: Tilak - Kesari in Marathi and Maratha in English; Gandhi - Young India and Navajivan.

The correct answer is A, England and France. The Hundred Years' War was fought between England and France from 1337 to 1453, so it actually ran for 116 years with long truces in between. It began when Edward III of England pressed his claim to the French throne, and behind that lay English lands in France and control of the wool trade of Flanders. England won the famous early battles of Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, helped by the longbow, but France recovered after Joan of Arc raised the siege of Orleans in 1429, and by 1453 the English held only Calais. B is wrong because England and Italy fought no such war. C is wrong because England and Germany faced each other in the twentieth-century world wars, not in the fourteenth century. D is wrong because the German-French clash was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, far later and far shorter. Exam tip: Hundred Years' War 1337 to 1453, England against France, turned by Joan of Arc in 1429.

The correct answer is A, 390. Chandragupta II extended Gupta rule to Gujarat around 390 AD by defeating the Western Kshatrapas, the Saka rulers of Malwa, Gujarat and Kathiawar. The victory handed the Guptas the western ports and the sea trade with West Asia and Rome, and it won him the title Vikramaditya; his silver coins also call him Sakari, the destroyer of the Sakas. Chandragupta II ruled from about 380 to 415 AD, made Ujjain his second seat of power, and the Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hien travelled through India in his reign. B is wrong because 309 AD falls before the dynasty itself began, as Chandragupta I took the throne only around 319 AD. C is wrong because 903 AD is several centuries after the Gupta empire had ended. D is wrong because 930 AD belongs to the Rajput age, far later than any Gupta king. Exam tip: Chandragupta II - Vikramaditya and Sakari, Ujjain, Fa-Hien's visit, Saka conquest about 390 AD.

The correct answer is B, Buddha, Dhamma (dharma), Sangha. Triratna means the three jewels in which a Buddhist takes refuge. Buddha is the enlightened teacher, Dhamma is his teaching of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, and Sangha is the order of monks and nuns that carries the teaching forward. A follower formally enters the faith by reciting these three refuges, which is why the Triratna is treated as the doorway of Buddhism. A is wrong because Tripitaka is the three-basket Pali canon of Buddhism, made up of the Vinaya, Sutta and Abhidhamma Pitakas, not the three jewels. C is wrong because truth, non-violence and compassion are values respected in Indian thought but they are not the Triratna. D is wrong because the threefold Buddhist training is Sheel, Samadhi and Prajna, and this option replaces Prajna with Sangha. Exam tip: Buddhism's Triratna is Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha; Jainism's Triratna is right faith, right knowledge and right conduct.

The correct answer is A, 1773. The Boston Tea Party took place on 16 December 1773, when American colonists threw British tea into Boston harbour. The protest was against the Tea Act of 1773, which let the East India Company sell tea in the colonies without paying the usual duties and undercut local merchants. Members of the Sons of Liberty, some dressed as Mohawk Indians, boarded three ships at Griffin's Wharf and dumped 342 chests of tea into the water. Britain replied with the Intolerable Acts, and the anger they caused led to the First Continental Congress in 1774 and to the American War of Independence from 1775. B is wrong because 1776 is the year the Declaration of Independence was adopted, on 4 July. C is wrong because 1775 is when fighting began at Lexington and Concord. D is wrong because 1774 is the year of the Intolerable Acts and the First Continental Congress. Exam tip: Boston Tea Party 1773, war begins 1775, independence declared 1776.

The correct answer is D, 1911. King George V announced at the Delhi Durbar on 12 December 1911 that the capital of British India would move from Calcutta to Delhi. Lord Hardinge II was the Viceroy at the time, and the same Durbar also cancelled the Partition of Bengal of 1905. Delhi was chosen because it was more central, had long been the seat of the Sultans and the Mughals, and was away from the strong nationalist movement in Bengal. The new city of New Delhi was planned by Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker and was formally inaugurated in 1931. A is wrong because 1912 is when the move was carried out; the decision was declared in 1911. B is wrong because 1905 is the year of the Partition of Bengal under Lord Curzon. C is wrong because 1910 is the year George V became king. Exam tip: 1905 Partition of Bengal (Curzon); 1911 partition annulled and capital shift announced (Hardinge II, Delhi Durbar); 1931 New Delhi inaugurated.

The correct answer is D, Shah Jahan. The Jama Masjid of Delhi was built by Shah Jahan between 1650 and 1656 as the main mosque of his new capital, Shahjahanabad. It is one of the largest mosques in India, made of red sandstone and white marble, with three great gateways, four towers and two tall minarets. Its courtyard can hold about 25,000 worshippers. Its original name was Masjid-i-Jahan Numa, and it stands facing the Red Fort, which Shah Jahan also built. A is wrong because Humayun died in 1556, almost a century before the mosque was built. B is wrong because Babur founded the Mughal Empire in 1526 and died in 1530. C is wrong because Aurangzeb built the Badshahi Mosque in Lahore and the Moti Masjid inside the Red Fort, not the Jama Masjid. Exam tip: Shah Jahan = Taj Mahal, Red Fort, Jama Masjid (Delhi), Moti Masjid (Agra); Aurangzeb = Badshahi Mosque (Lahore), Bibi ka Maqbara (Aurangabad).

The correct answer is B, indigo. Under the tinkathiya system, European planters forced the peasants of Champaran in Bihar to grow indigo on 3 out of every 20 katthas (one bigha) of their land. Indigo was a blue dye in demand abroad, and the planters paid the farmers very little for it. When cheap German synthetic dye made indigo less profitable, the planters demanded higher rents and illegal dues instead. A local farmer, Raj Kumar Shukla, persuaded Gandhiji to visit Champaran in 1917. This became Gandhi's first satyagraha in India, and the Champaran Agrarian Act of 1918 ended the tinkathiya system. A is wrong because sugarcane was not the crop forced on the peasants under this system. C is wrong because the Champaran planters were indigo planters, and cotton was not imposed there. D is wrong because jute is a crop of Bengal and was not linked with the Champaran struggle. Exam tip: Gandhi's first three struggles in India: Champaran 1917 (indigo), Ahmedabad mill strike 1918 (wages), Kheda 1918 (land revenue).

The correct answer is A, Kharavela. The Hathigumpha or ‘elephant cave’ inscription is carved in the Udayagiri hills near Bhubaneswar in Odisha and is the main record of Kharavela, the Jain king of Kalinga of the Mahameghavahana (Chedi) dynasty, who ruled around the first century BCE. Written in Prakrit in the Brahmi script, it describes his reign year by year: repairs to his capital, campaigns against rulers in the north and south, gifts to Jain monks, and the extension of a canal first dug by a Nanda king. That Nanda reference makes it an important source for older history too. Option B is wrong because Ashoka is known from his own rock and pillar edicts; his Kalinga war is described in Rock Edict XIII. Option C is wrong because Harshavardhana is known from Banabhatta’s Harshacharita and the Banskhera and Madhuban copper plates. Option D is wrong because Kanishka’s key record is the Rabatak inscription found in Afghanistan. Exam tip: Hathigumpha → Kharavela; Junagadh → Rudradaman; Nasik → Gautamiputra Satakarni.

The correct answer is C, 1885. The Bengal Tenancy Act was passed in 1885, under Viceroy Lord Dufferin, to protect tenants in Bengal and Bihar from their zamindars. The Permanent Settlement of 1793 had made the zamindars owners of the land and left the peasants open to rising rents and eviction. After the Pabna agrarian revolt that began in 1873, the government promised relief, and the 1885 Act gave occupancy rights to a ryot who had held land in a village for twelve years and put limits on raising his rent. The date is easy to hold because the Indian National Congress was also founded in 1885. Option A is wrong because in 1868 tenants still depended on the weak Rent Act of 1859. Option B is wrong because in 1881 the new law was still being prepared. Option D is wrong because the Act was passed in only one year, 1885. Exam tip: Permanent Settlement 1793, Pabna revolt 1873, Bengal Tenancy Act 1885.

The correct answer is B, Tabaqat-i Nasiri. Minhaj-us-Siraj wrote this Persian history in Delhi around 1260 and gave the first account of Bakhtiyar Khilji's raid on Bihar. Minhaj dedicated the book to Sultan Nasiruddin Mahmud, which is where its name comes from. He describes how Bakhtiyar's men attacked what they took to be a fort, only to find it was a Buddhist monastery full of shaven-headed monks, and he notes that such a place was called a vihara, the word behind the name Bihar. Paper setters also link Bakhtiyar with the ruin of Odantapuri, Nalanda and Vikramashila, and with his later capture of Nadia in Bengal. Option A is wrong because Al-Biruni wrote about India in the eleventh century, long before this raid. Option C is wrong because Hasan Nizami's Taj-ul Maasir is the court history of Muhammad Ghori and Qutbuddin Aibak. Option D is wrong because Yahya Sirhindi's Tarikh-i Mubarak Shahi is a fifteenth-century work of the Sayyid period. Exam tip: Bakhtiyar's Bihar raid is told by Minhaj in Tabaqat-i Nasiri.

The correct answer is C, William Finch. Finch was the English traveller who described Akbar's palace of forty pillars in the Allahabad fort and the huge labour force behind it. He was an agent of the English East India Company and landed at Surat in 1608 with Captain William Hawkins, who went on to the court of Jahangir. Finch then travelled through northern India and wrote detailed notes on Agra, Lahore and Allahabad, which is why his account is used as a source for Akbar's buildings. Akbar founded the Allahabad fort in 1583 at the meeting point of the Ganga and the Yamuna. Option A is wrong because Niccolao Manucci was a Venetian who served the Mughals in Aurangzeb's time and wrote Storia do Mogor. Option B is wrong because Tavernier was a French jewel merchant who described Shah Jahan's Peacock Throne. Option D is wrong because Abdul Hamid Lahori was Shah Jahan's court historian and wrote the Padshahnama. Exam tip: Hawkins and Finch came under Jahangir; Tavernier and Bernier saw Shah Jahan; Manucci served under Aurangzeb.

The correct answer is D, Alauddin Khilji. Amir Khusro was the court poet and musician of Alauddin Khalji, and he lived in the courts of several Delhi sultans from Balban's time to Ghiyasuddin Tughlaq. He was a disciple of the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya and is buried near his dargah in Delhi. He wrote in Persian and in Hindavi, the early form of Hindi and Urdu, and is called Tuti-e-Hind, the Parrot of India. Tradition credits him with the qawwali and with ragas and forms such as tarana, and his Khazain-ul-Futuh describes Alauddin's campaigns. Popular belief also links him to the sitar and the tabla, though historians doubt this. A is wrong because Shah Jahan was a Mughal emperor who ruled about three centuries later. B is wrong because Aurangzeb, also a Mughal, banned music at his court. C is wrong because Jahangir was a Mughal emperor known for his love of painting. Exam tip: Amir Khusro = Alauddin Khalji's court, disciple of Nizamuddin Auliya, Parrot of India, father of qawwali.

The correct answer is C, 1206 AD and 1526 AD. The Delhi Sultanate began in 1206, when Qutb-ud-din Aibak became the first sultan after the death of Muhammad Ghori, and ended in 1526, when Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat. In these 320 years five dynasties ruled from Delhi in this order: the Mamluk or Slave dynasty, the Khalji, the Tughlaq, the Sayyid and the Lodi. The Tughlaqs ruled the longest and the Khaljis the shortest. Famous rulers of the period include Iltutmish, Razia Sultan, the first woman to rule from Delhi, Balban, Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq. A is wrong because 1106 is a century before the Sultanate began. B is wrong because 1606 to 1826 falls in the Mughal and British periods. D is wrong because 1006 is the time of the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni, and 1326 falls in the middle of Tughlaq rule. Exam tip: Delhi Sultanate = 1206 to 1526; dynasty order Slave, Khalji, Tughlaq, Sayyid, Lodi.

The correct answer is C, Emperor Akbar. Hamida Banu Begum was the wife of Humayun and the mother of Akbar, who was born to her in 1542 at Amarkot in Sindh. Humayun married her in 1541 while he was on the run after losing his throne to Sher Shah Suri at the battles of Chausa (1539) and Kannauj (1540). Akbar was born during these years of exile, and Humayun won back Delhi only in 1555, a few months before his death. Hamida Banu was honoured with the title Maryam Makani, and she lived on at the court of her son until her death in 1604. A is wrong because Humayun was her husband; his mother was Maham Begum. B is wrong because Jahangir was her grandson, the son of Akbar and Mariam-uz-Zamani. D is wrong because Babur was her father-in-law, the founder of the Mughal empire. Exam tip: Babur, then Humayun, then Akbar, then Jahangir; Akbar's mother = Hamida Banu Begum, born at Amarkot in 1542.

The correct answer is B, Rajputs. Akbar won over the Rajput rulers through marriage alliances and high ranks, turning old rivals into pillars of the Mughal empire. In 1562 he married the daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber, and her family rose to the top of the nobility: Raja Man Singh of Amber became one of his greatest generals and governors. Raja Todar Mal, his finance minister, built the land revenue system, and Raja Birbal was among his closest companions. Akbar abolished the pilgrim tax in 1563 and the jizya in 1564, and his idea of sulh-i-kul, peace with all, shaped his rule. A is wrong because Muslim nobles already held high posts; giving them rank was not a sign of tolerance. C is wrong because the Sikhs were a small community under their Gurus then and held no court ranks. D is wrong because Christian Jesuits visited his court for debates but were not given high posts. Exam tip: Akbar's tolerance = Rajput alliances, jizya abolished in 1564, sulh-i-kul, Ibadat Khana at Fatehpur Sikri.

The correct answer is A, Rig Veda. The Rig Veda is the oldest of the four Vedas, so it describes the earliest Vedic culture. It is a collection of 1,028 hymns arranged in ten books called mandalas, composed in the land of the seven rivers in the north-west. Books II to VII form the oldest core, while the first and tenth were added later; the tenth holds the Purusha Sukta, the first mention of the four varnas. The Gayatri Mantra also comes from the Rig Veda. The society it shows is pastoral and tribal, with cattle as wealth and Indra, Agni and Varuna as the chief gods. Option B is wrong because the Yajurveda gives the formulas and rituals for sacrifices and belongs to the later Vedic period. Option C is wrong because the Atharvaveda, the last of the four, deals with charms, spells and cures. Option D is wrong because the Samaveda sets Rigvedic verses to music and is the root of Indian classical music. Exam tip: the order is Rig, Sama, Yajur, Atharva.