Indian History Quiz: Education and the Press in British India

The correct answer is B, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who brought out Sambad Kaumudi in Bengali in 1821 and the Persian weekly Mirat-ul-Akhbar the next year, closing the latter in protest against the Licensing Regulations of 1823. Option A is wrong because Rash Behari Bose was a revolutionary of a much later generation who worked from Japan and helped found the Indian Independence League. Option C is wrong because Sisir Kumar Ghosh, with his brother Motilal Ghosh, founded the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the paper that turned into an English weekly to escape the Vernacular Press Act. Option D is wrong because Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar is associated with Som Prakash and with widow remarriage and women's education, not with Sambad Kaumudi. Remember the pair that goes with this name: Sambad Kaumudi in Bengali of 1821 and Mirat-ul-Akhbar in Persian of 1822, both from Calcutta and both by the same reformer.

The correct answer is B, Wood's Despatch of 1854, sent by Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control, and called the Magna Carta of English education in India because it laid down a complete system: departments of public instruction in the provinces, universities in the presidency towns, a grants-in-aid scheme for private schools, vernacular primary education, teacher training and the education of women. Option A is wrong because Macaulay's Minute only settled the medium of instruction and the Anglicist case in 1835. Option C is wrong because the Hunter Commission of 1882 reviewed how far the Despatch had been carried out. Option D is wrong because the Sargent Plan of 1944 came at the end of British rule and was criticised for proposing a forty-year timetable for universal education.

The correct answer is C, 1835. Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote his Minute on 2 February 1835, and Lord William Bentinck's resolution of the following month accepted it, ending the long quarrel between the Orientalists and the Anglicists in favour of European learning taught in English. Option A is wrong because 1813 is the year of the Charter Act that first set aside one lakh rupees a year for education. Option B is wrong because 1823 is the year of the Licensing Regulations against the press, although the General Committee of Public Instruction was also formed in that year. Option D is wrong because 1854 belongs to Wood's Despatch. The policy Macaulay built rested on the downward filtration theory, the belief that education given to the upper classes would trickle down to the masses.

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. Option A is wrong because the Charter Act of 1793 is remembered for renewing the Company's monopoly for twenty years and for making the Governor-General's salaries a charge on Indian revenues. Option C is wrong because the Charter Act of 1833 ended the Company's commercial activities and made the Governor-General of Bengal the Governor-General of India. Option D is wrong because the Charter Act of 1853 introduced open competition for the civil service and separated the legislative and executive functions of the Governor-General's Council.

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. Option A is wrong because 1835 is the year of Macaulay's Minute and of the Metcalfe Press Act. Option B is wrong because 1854 is the year of the Despatch that recommended the universities, a distinction worth holding on to since many questions offer both years. Option D is wrong because 1882 is the year of the Hunter Commission, and also the year the Vernacular Press Act was repealed by Lord Ripon. A fourth university, at Allahabad, followed later in the century. One more point is often attached to this year: these universities examined candidates and awarded degrees while the teaching was done by affiliated colleges, a pattern that lasted for decades.

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. Option B is wrong, though Lord Ripon repealed the Act in 1882, which is why his name is attached to the repeal and not the passing. Option C is wrong because Lord Curzon is associated with the Indian Universities Act of 1904 and the partition of Bengal in 1905. Option D is wrong because Lord Minto brought the Newspapers Act of 1908 and the Indian Press Act of 1910 against the extremist press. Note also that the Amrita Bazar Patrika escaped the 1878 Act by becoming an English paper overnight.

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. Option B is wrong because the Calcutta Gazette was an official government paper begun a few years later. Option C is wrong because the Bombay Samachar, a Gujarati paper founded in 1822, is the oldest surviving Indian newspaper but not the first one published in India, a distinction that makes it a frequent trap. Option D is wrong because the Indian Mirror belongs to the second half of the nineteenth century and is associated with Devendranath Tagore. Keep the pair apart: first newspaper of 1780, oldest surviving of 1822.

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. Option A is wrong because Lord Wellesley did the opposite, imposing pre-censorship on all newspapers by the Censorship of Press Act of 1799. Option B is wrong because Lord William Bentinck is remembered for the abolition of sati in 1829, the suppression of thuggee and the acceptance of Macaulay's education policy. Option D is wrong because Macaulay drafted the Press Act of 1835 and the Indian Penal Code, but the credit for the liberation of the press is attached to Metcalfe, in whose name the law was passed.

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. Option B is wrong because Michael Sadler headed the Calcutta University Commission of 1917 to 1919, which proposed a twelve-year school course, intermediate colleges and a three-year degree. Option C is wrong because Philip Hartog chaired the committee of 1929 that reported wastage and stagnation in primary schools and asked for consolidation instead of expansion. Option D is wrong because John Sargent gave the plan of 1944 for post-war educational development. The Hunter Commission is also remembered for recommending that secondary education be given two sides, one preparing students for the university and the other for employment.

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. Option A is wrong because Gopal Krishna Gokhale is connected with Sudharak and Hitavada. Option C is wrong because Dadabhai Naoroji brought out Rast Goftar in Gujarati and wrote Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. Option D is wrong because Aurobindo Ghosh edited Vande Mataram during the Swadeshi movement and later Karmayogin. Remember that the sedition section was inserted into the Penal Code in 1870 and became the government's main weapon against nationalist editors. Tilak is also remembered for his words that the government's action proved his case, and for the Ganapati and Shivaji festivals through which he carried politics to ordinary readers of these papers.

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. Option B is wrong because Mohammad Ali, one of the Ali brothers of the Khilafat movement, edited Comrade in English and Hamdard in Urdu. Option C is wrong because Syed Ahmed Khan founded the Aligarh movement, the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College and the journal Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq. Option D is wrong because Muhammad Iqbal was a poet and philosopher, not the founder of this weekly. Azad later became independent India's first Education Minister, which is how this name links the two halves of the chapter. Al-Hilal also marks a shift in the Urdu press, from a literary tone to open political argument, which is why the government moved against it under the press laws of that decade.

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. Option A is wrong because the Sadler Commission of 1917 to 1919 dealt with university education and the structure of the school and degree course. Option C is wrong because the Raleigh Commission of 1902 examined universities and led to Curzon's Indian Universities Act of 1904. Option D is wrong because the Wardha Scheme of 1937, worked out by the Zakir Husain Committee on Gandhi's idea of basic education, proposed teaching through a productive craft in the mother tongue. The committee is also remembered for its finding that the problem lay in compulsion without quality, so it asked for better trained teachers and longer school years rather than more schools.