Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 30

The correct answer is D, Khandesh. Khandesh was ruled by the Faruqi dynasty, which set itself up in the Tapi valley in the late fourteenth century independently of the Bahmanis, and it was annexed by Akbar in 1601; it never formed part of the Bahmani kingdom and so did not emerge from its break-up. Option A is wrong as a choice because Bijapur, under Yusuf Adil Shah, was one of the five successor states, the Adil Shahi kingdom. Option B is wrong because Ahmadnagar, founded by Malik Ahmad, became the Nizam Shahi kingdom and was the state Chand Bibi defended against the Mughals. Option C is wrong because Golconda became the Qutb Shahi kingdom under Quli Qutb Shah and later gave Hyderabad the Charminar. The fifth successor states were Berar under the Imad Shahis and Bidar under the Barid Shahis, and four of these five combined to win Talikota in 1565.

The correct answer is D, A, B and C. When the British left in 1947, India had, besides the provinces under direct British rule, about 565 princely states whose rulers had accepted British paramountcy. That paramountcy lapsed with independence and every ruler had to accede either to India or to Pakistan; Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon, working through the States Department, persuaded almost all of them to sign an Instrument of Accession. Statements A and B therefore both describe princely states. Statement C is also true, since several, among them Himachal Pradesh, Manipur and Tripura, were kept as separate administrative units and became full states only later. Statement D is false, because Goa, Daman and Diu were Portuguese and Pondicherry was French, European possessions and never princely states. Option A is wrong because it leaves out statement C. Options B and C are wrong because each includes the false statement D. Exam tip: about 565 princely states, Patel and V. P. Menon, the Instrument of Accession, and Goa and Pondicherry as European colonies.

The correct answer is C, Abul Fazl. Abul Fazl, one of the navaratnas of Akbar's court, wrote the Akbarnama in Persian, and its third volume is the Ain-i-Akbari, a detailed account of the empire's provinces, revenue, army, offices, crops and prices. It remains the single most used source for Akbar's administration. Option A is wrong because Badauni wrote the Muntakhab-ut-Tawarikh, a history hostile to Akbar's religious policy. Option B is wrong because Gulbadan Begum, Babur's daughter, wrote the Humayun-nama about her brother's reign. Option D is wrong because Faizi, the brother of Abul Fazl, was the poet laureate of the court and translated works into Persian, but did not write the Ain-i-Akbari. Matching a chronicle to its author is a standard question, so keep these four pairs ready.

The correct answer is D, B R Ambedkar. On 20 March 1927 Dr B R Ambedkar led thousands of Dalits to the Chavdar tank at Mahad in Maharashtra and drank its water, asserting the right of the depressed classes to use a public water source. Upper-caste groups later purified the tank with cow dung and curd, and in December that year Ambedkar returned to Mahad and publicly burnt the Manusmriti. The day is remembered as Social Empowerment Day, and Mahad is called the first collective act of Dalit assertion in modern India. Option A is wrong because Jyotirao Phule died in 1890, long before 1927, though his Satyashodhak Samaj of 1873 prepared the ground. Option B is wrong because E V Ramaswamy Naicker, called Periyar, led the Self-Respect Movement and the Vaikom Satyagraha in the south. Option C is wrong because K Kelappan, known as Kerala Gandhi, led the Guruvayur Satyagraha of 1931. Exam tip: Mahad 1927 and Kalaram temple 1930 — both led by Ambedkar.

The correct answer is D, Shaikh Nizamuddin Auliya. Mahbub-i-Ilahi means the beloved of God, and it is the title by which this Chishti master of Delhi has been known for seven centuries. He kept his distance from the Sultans, refused their grants, and his hospice at Ghiyaspur became the most visited centre of the order; Amir Khusrau was his best-known disciple. Option A, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, brought the Chishti order to India and settled at Ajmer, where he is remembered as Gharib Nawaz, the helper of the poor. Option B, Baba Fariduddin Ganjshakar, taught at Ajodhan in Punjab, wrote in the local language, and a number of his verses were later included in the Sikh scripture. Option C, Qutubuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, was the successor of Moinuddin Chishti at Delhi and the master of Baba Farid, so the four names form a single line of succession.

The correct answer is C, 1991. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics broke up in 1991: a failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in August that year destroyed the centre's authority, the republics declared independence one after another, and on 25 December 1991 Gorbachev resigned. The next day the Soviet flag came down from the Kremlin and fifteen separate countries took the place of the USSR, with Russia as its successor state. Most of them joined the Commonwealth of Independent States formed by the Alma-Ata declaration of December 1991. Option A is wrong because 1990 saw only the reunification of Germany and the first stirrings of sovereignty in the republics. Option B is wrong because 1989 was the year the Berlin Wall fell and eastern Europe turned away from communism, while the Soviet Union itself stayed intact. Option D is wrong because by 1992 the break-up was already complete. Exam tip: Berlin Wall falls 1989 → Germany reunited 1990 → USSR dissolved 1991, ending the Cold War.

The correct answer is C, Tanaji Malusare. Tanaji led the night assault that recovered the fort of Kondana from the Mughal garrison in 1670 and was killed in the fighting. Shivaji is said to have mourned that the lion was gone though the fort was won, and the fort was renamed Sinhagad, the fort of the lion. Option A is wrong because Chimaji Appa was a brother of Peshwa Baji Rao I and is remembered for taking Vasai from the Portuguese in 1739, seventy years later. Option B is wrong because Baji Prabhu Deshpande died holding the pass of Pavan Khind in 1660 so that Shivaji could reach Vishalgad safely, a different episode that papers deliberately place among the options. Option D is wrong because Baji Pasalkar was an early companion from the Pune region and is not connected with Kondana.

The correct answer is A, Satyendra Prasanna Sinha. The 1915 session of the Indian National Congress, held at Bombay, was presided over by Satyendra Prasanna Sinha, later Lord Sinha of Raipur. He was the first Indian appointed to the Governor-General's Executive Council, in 1909, and went on to become Under-Secretary of State for India and Governor of Bihar and Orissa, the first Indian to govern a province. His presidency came in the year Gopal Krishna Gokhale and Pherozeshah Mehta died and Gandhi returned from South Africa, so the session marks a turning point for the party. Option B is wrong because Ambica Charan Mazumdar presided at Lucknow in 1916, where the Congress and the Muslim League signed their pact and the moderates and extremists reunited. Option C is wrong because Bhupendra Nath Bose presided at Madras in 1914. Option D is wrong because Madan Mohan Malaviya presided at Lahore in 1909 and at the Delhi special session in 1918. Exam tip: 1914 Madras Bose, 1915 Bombay Sinha, 1916 Lucknow Mazumdar.

The correct answer is C, Satyashodak Samaj – Maharashtra. Jyotirao Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, the Truth Seekers' Society, at Pune in 1873 to fight caste rank and priestly control in Maharashtra. Phule, helped by his wife Savitribai, had already opened schools for girls and for children of the castes then called low, and in his book Gulamgiri he compared the state of the Shudras with that of slaves. The Samaj arranged marriages without Brahmin priests and spoke for peasants, workers and women. A is wrong because the Satnami movement was led by Guru Ghasidas among the leather-working castes of Chhattisgarh, not in Punjab. B is wrong because the Matua sect was started by Harichand Thakur among the Namasudras of Bengal, not in Tamil Nadu. D is wrong because the Arya Samaj was founded by Dayanand Saraswati in 1875 and was strongest in Punjab and north India, not Kerala. Exam tip: Phule – Satyashodhak Samaj, Pune 1873, Gulamgiri; Ghasidas – Satnami, Chhattisgarh.

The correct answer is D, land gifted to temples. Chola inscriptions use a separate term for every kind of land grant, and tirunamattukkani is the land whose produce was set apart for a temple. The Cholas ruled the Kaveri delta from the ninth to the thirteenth century and had their land settlements cut into temple walls in Tamil, which is why historians can still name each category. In the same lists, brahmadeya was land given to Brahmanas, vellanvagai was the land of ordinary non-Brahmana peasant owners who paid tax to the state, shalabhoga was land whose income ran a school, and pallichchhandam was land given to Jaina establishments. A is wrong because land gifted to Brahmanas was called brahmadeya. B is wrong because the holdings of non-Brahmana peasant proprietors were vellanvagai. C is wrong because a grant to Jaina institutions was pallichchhandam. Exam tip: brahmadeya to Brahmanas, vellanvagai to peasants, shalabhoga to a school, pallichchhandam to Jainas, tirunamattukkani to a temple.

The correct answer is C, Russian revolution. The call ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ closes the Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848, and it became the rallying cry of the socialist movement that carried the Bolsheviks to power in Russia in 1917. Lenin's party used it to bind industrial workers behind the party, and the words were later carved on Marx's tomb in London and printed on Soviet emblems. The February revolution of 1917 ended tsarist rule and the October revolution brought the Bolsheviks in. A is wrong because the French revolution of 1789 raised liberty, equality and fraternity. B is wrong because the American revolution of 1776 was fought over taxation without representation. D is wrong because Japan had the Meiji Restoration of 1868, a drive to modernise from above rather than a workers' revolution. Exam tip: Communist Manifesto 1848 by Marx and Engels; Russian revolution 1917 under Lenin, slogan of the working class.

The correct answer is C, Subhash Chandra Bose. Both slogans belong to Netaji and to the Azad Hind Fauj, the Indian National Army he led from 1943. He gave the call of Dilli Chalo to set the march on Delhi as the army's goal, and asked for blood in return for freedom in his famous appeal to Indians in South East Asia. He also gave the greeting Jai Hind, set up the Provisional Government of Free India at Singapore in October 1943, and formed the Rani of Jhansi Regiment of women soldiers. Option A is wrong because Gandhi's slogans were Quit India and Do or Die, given in 1942. Option B is wrong because Nehru is remembered for his Tryst with Destiny speech, not these slogans. Option D is wrong because Patel, the Iron Man of India, is linked to the Bardoli movement and the merger of the princely states. Exam tip: Dilli Chalo, Jai Hind and Give me blood all point to Subhash Chandra Bose.

The correct answer is A, 1905. Lord Curzon announced the partition of Bengal on 19 July 1905 and it came into effect on 16 October 1905, splitting the province into a Muslim-majority eastern half and the rest of Bengal. The reason given in public was that Bengal had grown too large to administer, but the real aim was to weaken the nationalist movement there by dividing Hindus and Muslims. The protest against it began the Swadeshi and boycott movement, in which foreign cloth was burnt and Indian goods, schools and banks were promoted, and Rabindranath Tagore's song Amar Sonar Bangla belongs to those days. The anger was so wide that the partition was finally cancelled in 1911, when the capital was also moved from Calcutta to Delhi. B is wrong because 1901 is the year Queen Victoria died. C is wrong because 1907 is the year of the Surat split in the Congress. D is wrong because 1911 is the year the partition was revoked, not made. Exam tip: announced in 1905 by Curzon, revoked in 1911 under Hardinge.

The correct answer is C, Thomas Munro. The Ryotwari settlement was worked out by Thomas Munro, along with Captain Alexander Read, and introduced from 1820 in the Madras Presidency, where Munro was then Governor. Under it the revenue was settled directly with the ryot, the individual cultivator, who was treated as the owner of his field for as long as he paid; there was no zamindar in between, and the demand was revised every thirty years after a survey of the soil. The system later covered much of Madras, Bombay, Assam and Berar, close to half of British India, and its high, cash demand pushed many peasants into debt. A is wrong because Warren Hastings tried the farming of revenue by auction in Bengal. B is wrong because Lord Cornwallis brought in the Permanent Settlement of 1793 with zamindars. D is wrong because Lord Ripon is remembered for local self-government and the Ilbert Bill. Exam tip: Permanent Settlement 1793 Cornwallis, Ryotwari Munro in Madras, Mahalwari in the North-Western Provinces.

The correct answer is C, Mehrgarh. Mehrgarh, on the Bolan river in the Kachi plain of Baluchistan, is the earliest known farming village in the Indian subcontinent, occupied from about 7000 BCE. Its people were among the first in the region to grow wheat and barley and to rear sheep, goats and cattle, and the site records the long shift from hunting and gathering to settled village life. Archaeologists have found mud-brick houses, storage pits, burials with goods placed beside the dead, and some of the earliest evidence anywhere of cotton and of drilled teeth. Mehrgarh is treated as the forerunner of the Harappan civilisation. Option A is wrong because Hallur, in Karnataka, is a southern neolithic and megalithic site known for early iron. Option B is wrong because Chiraud, or Chirand, in Bihar is a neolithic site much later than Mehrgarh and famous for bone tools. Option D is wrong because Burzahom, in Kashmir, is known for pit dwellings and is also later. Exam tip: Mehrgarh of about 7000 BCE is the earliest village with wheat and barley, Burzahom has pit houses and Chirand has bone tools.

The correct answer is C, Kerala. 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 tenants had no security of tenure and paid heavy rents and renewal fees, so when the Khilafat and Non-Cooperation campaigns of 1920-21 reached Malabar the anger turned into an armed revolt in the Ernad and Valluvanad taluks. British troops crushed the rising, and dozens of prisoners died of suffocation in a closed goods wagon in the Wagon Tragedy of November 1921. A is wrong because Tamil Nadu saw no Moplah movement. B is wrong because Bengal's tenant struggles were the Pabna agitation and, later, the Tebhaga movement. D is wrong because the peasant risings of Uttar Pradesh were the Awadh Kisan Sabha movement and the Eka movement. Exam tip: Moplah rebellion - Malabar in Kerala, 1921, linked to the Khilafat movement and the Wagon Tragedy.

The correct answer is D, Charter Act – 1833. This Act ended the last trading rights of the East India Company, its monopoly of trade with China and of the tea trade, and turned the Company into a purely administrative body holding India in trust for the British Crown. The same Act made the Governor-General of Bengal the Governor-General of India, with William Bentinck the first to hold that title, gave him alone the power to legislate for the whole of British India, and added a Law Member to his council, a post first held by Macaulay, who led the work on a common code of law. A is wrong because the Regulating Act of 1773 was only the first step towards control, setting up a Supreme Court at Calcutta. B is wrong because Pitt's India Act of 1784 created the Board of Control and the system of dual government. C is wrong because the Charter Act of 1813 opened Indian trade to all British merchants but kept the Company's monopoly of trade with China and in tea. Exam tip: 1813 – Indian trade opened except tea and China; 1833 – that exception also removed.

The correct answer is B, Arikamedu. Arikamedu, on the Ariyankuppam river near Puducherry on the Coromandel coast, began as a small fishing settlement and grew into a busy port that traded with the Romans and the Greco Roman world in the first centuries of the common era. Excavations there have brought out Roman amphorae that carried wine and olive oil, red glazed Arretine ware, glass and stone beads, lamps and Roman coins, along with the local rouletted pottery, which is why the site is identified with the Poduke named in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. A is wrong because Badami in Karnataka was the inland capital of the Chalukyas, known for its rock cut cave temples. C is wrong because Lothal in Gujarat is a Harappan site with a dockyard, far older and on the western coast. D is wrong because tulapurushadana was a ritual of weighing oneself against gold and giving it away, not a place at all. Exam tip: Arikamedu near Puducherry is the Poduke of Roman trade; Lothal is the Harappan dock in Gujarat.

The correct answer is D, Karnataka. Hampi stands on the south bank of the Tungabhadra river in the Vijayanagara district of Karnataka, and it was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire founded by Harihara and Bukka in 1336. At its height in the sixteenth century under Krishnadeva Raya it was among the largest cities in the world; the Persian envoy Abdur Razzaq and the Portuguese traveller Domingo Paes both wrote of its crowded bazaars and its ring of fortifications. The city was sacked after the battle of Talikota in 1565 and never recovered. Its ruins, including the Virupaksha temple and the Vittala temple with its stone chariot and musical pillars, were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986. A is wrong because Tamil Nadu holds the great Chola temples instead. B is wrong because Kerala lay outside the Vijayanagara heartland. C is wrong because the medieval capital in Telangana was Warangal of the Kakatiyas. Exam tip: Hampi is on the Tungabhadra in Karnataka, a UNESCO site since 1986.

The correct answer is B, Nizamuddin Auliya. Amir Khusrau served as a poet at the courts of several Delhi Sultans, but his spiritual allegiance was to Nizamuddin Auliya, and he was buried beside his master. He is called the Tuti-i-Hind, the parrot of India, wrote works such as the Khazain-ul-Futuh and the Nuh Sipihr, composed in the early Hindavi speech from which Hindi and Urdu grew, and tradition credits him with shaping qawwali. Option A, Fariduddin Ganjshakar, was the master of Nizamuddin Auliya himself and belongs to an earlier generation at Ajodhan. Option C, Shaikh Salim Chishti, lived in the sixteenth century at Sikri, where Akbar built Fatehpur Sikri near his hospice, three centuries after Khusrau. Option D does not belong to the line of Chishti masters that examiners test.