Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 39

The correct answer is B, Sayyid dynasty. Timur invaded India in 1398 and sacked Delhi, the Tughlaq hold on the city collapsed after that blow, and the Sayyid dynasty was the next to rule from Delhi. Khizr Khan, whom Timur had left as governor of Multan, took Delhi in 1414 and founded the dynasty, the third of the five houses of the Delhi Sultanate. The Sayyids ruled till 1451, and their last ruler Alam Shah handed Delhi over to Bahlol Lodi. A is wrong because the Lodi dynasty came after the Sayyids, ruling from 1451 to 1526 and ending with Ibrahim Lodi's defeat at Panipat. C is wrong because the Tughlaq dynasty was in power when Timur invaded and was pushed aside by the invasion. D is wrong because the Khilji dynasty had ruled much earlier, from 1290 to 1320. Exam tip: the five dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate in order - Slave, Khilji, Tughlaq, Sayyid and Lodi.

The correct answer is C, 17. Mahmud of Ghazni, who ruled the Ghaznavid kingdom from 998 to 1030, is recorded as having led seventeen raids into India between about 1000 and 1027. His aim was plunder and not permanent rule, so he carried away treasure and left no settled administration east of the Punjab. The best known of the raids destroyed the Somnath temple in Gujarat in 1025; earlier he had defeated Jayapala of the Hindu Shahi dynasty in 1001 and sacked the rich temple towns of Mathura, Thanesar and Kanauj. The scholar Al-Beruni, who wrote the Kitab-ul-Hind, and the poet Firdausi belonged to his court. A is wrong because five is far short of the recorded total. B is wrong because fifteen is the figure most often confused with the right one. D is wrong because seven is not the accepted count either. Exam tip: Mahmud of Ghazni made 17 raids and struck Somnath in 1025, while Muhammad Ghori's win at Tarain in 1192 began Turkish rule.

The correct answer is A, Jagdishpur in Bihar. Kunwar Singh, a zamindar of Jagdishpur in the Shahabad region, was about eighty years old when he took up arms, fought the British at Arrah with his brother Amar Singh and carried the revolt into central India before returning to Bihar, where he died in 1858.

Option B is wrong because Rohilkhand, with Bareilly at its centre, was the country of Khan Bahadur Khan. Option C is wrong because Bundelkhand is the region of Jhansi and Rani Lakshmibai. Option D is wrong because Malwa, with Indore and Mhow, is associated with the Holkar state, whose ruler stayed with the British while some of his troops rose. Bihar questions on 1857 almost always turn on Jagdishpur and Arrah, so keep those two place names with Kunwar Singh.

The correct answer is B, Nagabhata-I. Nagabhata I founded the Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty in the middle of the eighth century, with his power centred on Avanti and Ujjain in western India. He is remembered mainly for stopping the Arab armies that pushed in from Sindh, a check that the Pratiharas were praised for long after. His successors Vatsaraja, Nagabhata II and Mihira Bhoja made the dynasty one of the three great powers of the age, and the Pratiharas, the Palas of Bengal and the Rashtrakutas of the Deccan fought the long tripartite struggle for Kannauj, which the Pratiharas finally held. A is wrong because Narasimhadeva I was an Eastern Ganga ruler of Odisha who built the Sun Temple at Konark. C is wrong because Harshavardhana belonged to the Vardhana dynasty of Thanesar and Kannauj. D is wrong because Ramachandra was the last important Yadava king of Devagiri. Exam tip: Nagabhata I founded the Pratiharas; Mihira Bhoja was their greatest ruler.

The correct answer is B, Swami Vivekananda. He founded the Mission in 1897 in the name of his teacher and established its headquarters at Belur Math near Calcutta in 1898, four years after his address to the Parliament of Religions at Chicago in 1893. The Mission's work is education, medical relief and disaster relief, on the principle that the service of man is the service of God. Option A is wrong because Ramakrishna Paramahansa, who died in 1886, founded no organisation; the Mission carries his name. Option C is wrong because Annie Besant led the Theosophical Society in India and founded the Central Hindu School at Banaras in 1898. Option D is wrong because Keshab Chandra Sen belonged to the Brahmo Samaj and died in 1884.

The correct answer is D, Chin Khilich Khan. Chin Qilich Khan, better remembered by his title Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah, was a Mughal noble appointed governor of the Deccan by Muhammad Shah. Tired of court intrigue at Delhi, he returned to the south, defeated his rival Mubariz Khan at Shakar Kheda in 1724 and from then on ruled the Deccan as an independent prince in all but name, founding the Asaf Jahi or Nizam dynasty of Hyderabad that lasted until 1948. He kept the forms of Mughal loyalty, struck coins in the emperor’s name, yet appointed his own officers and made war and peace on his own. Option A is wrong because Asaf Jah II, that is Nizam Ali Khan, was a later ruler of the same line, not its founder. Option B is wrong because Bahadur Shah was the Mughal emperor who ruled from 1707 to 1712. Option C is wrong because Alivardi Khan made himself independent in Bengal, not Hyderabad. Exam tip: Hyderabad 1724 Chin Qilich Khan, Awadh 1722 Saadat Khan, Bengal Murshid Quli Khan.

The correct answer is C, Motilal Nehru; Constitutional arrangements in India. The All Parties Conference set up a committee under Motilal Nehru in 1928, and the report it submitted that August, known as the Nehru Report, was a draft constitutional scheme for India. It was the Indian answer to Lord Birkenhead's taunt that Indians could never agree on a constitution of their own. The report asked for dominion status, full responsible government, a declaration of fundamental rights, joint electorates with seats reserved for minorities only where they were in a minority, and a federation with a strong centre. Jawaharlal Nehru sat on the committee but did not head it, and he and Subhas Chandra Bose opposed dominion status, demanding complete independence instead. A is wrong on both counts, the chairmanship and the subject. B is wrong because local self-government was not the subject. D is wrong because Jawaharlal Nehru was not the chairman. Exam tip: follow the chain Simon Commission 1927, Nehru Report 1928, Jinnah's Fourteen Points 1929.

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 A, Hyphasis. Hyphasis is the Greek name of the Beas, and it was on its bank in 326 BC that Alexander's tired soldiers refused to march any further east, which is why the Beas marks the eastern limit of his campaign. He turned back from there and went down the Indus towards the sea. Before that he had crossed every other river of the Punjab. Option B is wrong because the Acesines is the Chenab, which he crossed after his Jhelum campaign. Option C is wrong because the Hydraotes is the Ravi, crossed on the way east, where he stormed the town of Sangala. Option D is wrong because the Hydaspes is the Jhelum, the river he crossed to fight Porus in the battle of the Hydaspes, after which he treated the defeated king with honour and left him his kingdom. Exam tip: Hydaspes is the Jhelum, Acesines the Chenab, Hydraotes the Ravi, Hyphasis the Beas and Zaradros the Sutlej.

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, Neolithic. The word Neolithic is built from the Greek neos, meaning new, and lithos, meaning stone, so the Neolithic is the New Stone Age. Its tools are ground and polished instead of merely chipped, and it is the age in which farming, herding, pottery and settled village life begin. Mehrgarh in Balochistan shows early wheat and barley and goat herding, Burzahom in Kashmir its pit dwellings and dogs buried with their masters, Chirand in Bihar its bone tools and Koldihwa in Uttar Pradesh early evidence of rice. Option A is wrong because the Epipalaeolithic is only a late transitional phase of the Old Stone Age. Option B is wrong because the Mesolithic is the Middle Stone Age of tiny microlithic blades. Option C is wrong because the Palaeolithic is the Old Stone Age of rough quartzite tools. Exam tip: palaios means old, mesos middle and neos new, which fixes the order of the three ages.

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 A, Slave Dynasty. Razia Sultan was the daughter of Iltutmish, and Iltutmish belonged to the Slave dynasty, also called the Mamluk dynasty or the Ilbari Turks. She ruled Delhi from 1236 to 1240 and is the only woman to have sat on the throne of the Delhi Sultanate. Iltutmish named her his successor over his own sons, and she took the administration in hand, gave up the veil, held open court and led the army in person. The Turkish nobles, the group of forty, would not accept a woman ruler; she was overthrown and killed in 1240. B is wrong because the Khilji dynasty came to power only in 1290 under Jalaluddin Khilji. C is wrong because the Lodhi dynasty ruled from 1451 to 1526 and was the last house of the Sultanate. D is wrong because the Mughal empire was founded by Babur in 1526, nearly three centuries after her. Exam tip: Razia, daughter of Iltutmish, Slave dynasty, 1236 to 1240.

The correct answer is D, Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana and was one of the five founders of the Non-Aligned Movement. He took Ghana to independence in 1957, the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to break free of colonial rule, and served first as its Prime Minister and then as its President. The Non-Aligned Movement was built by five leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru of India, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, Sukarno of Indonesia and Nkrumah of Ghana, who refused to join either the American or the Soviet bloc during the Cold War. Their effort led to the first NAM summit at Belgrade in 1961. A is wrong because Nigeria became independent in 1960 and its early leader was Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. B is wrong because Kenya was led to freedom by Jomo Kenyatta. C is wrong because the first Prime Minister of Uganda was Milton Obote. Exam tip: remember the five founders of NAM and the Belgrade summit of 1961.

The correct answer is D, Dadabhai Naoroji. Dadabhai Naoroji set up the East India Association in London in 1866 to place Indian questions before the British public and members of Parliament, and branches of it were soon opened in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. He had already started the London Indian Society a year earlier. Called the Grand Old Man of India, he wrote Poverty and Un-British Rule in India, in which he explained the drain of wealth from India to Britain, became the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons in 1892 and presided over the Indian National Congress three times. Option A is wrong because Gopal Krishna Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society in 1905. Option B is wrong because George Yule was the first English president of the Congress, at Allahabad in 1888. Option C is wrong because Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee was the first president of the Congress in 1885. Exam tip: London Indian Society 1865 and East India Association 1866, both of Dadabhai Naoroji.

The correct answer is D, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. Swami Sahajanand Saraswati set up the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha in 1929 to organise the peasants of Bihar against the zamindars. He was a sanyasi who turned to peasant work, and his Sabha pressed for an end to illegal cesses and begar and for security of tenancy for the raiyat. What he built in Bihar grew into the All India Kisan Sabha, founded at Lucknow in 1936 with Sahajanand Saraswati as its first president and N G Ranga as general secretary. A is wrong because Kunwar Singh led the revolt of 1857 in Bihar and died in 1858. B is wrong because J M Sengupta was a Congress leader of Bengal with no part in it. C is wrong because Jayaprakash Narayan, though a Bihar leader, was then building the Congress Socialist Party, which was founded in 1934. Exam tip: Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha 1929 and the All India Kisan Sabha at Lucknow in 1936, both with Sahajanand Saraswati.

The correct answer is A, Nizam Shahis : Bijapur, which is the mismatched pair. The Nizam Shahis ruled from Ahmadnagar, founded by Malik Ahmad in 1490, while Bijapur belonged to the Adil Shahis of Yusuf Adil Shah. All five Deccan Sultanates grew out of the break-up of the Bahmani kingdom between about 1490 and 1518, and four of them joined hands to crush Vijayanagara at the battle of Talikota in 1565. Bijapur is remembered for the Gol Gumbaz, Golconda for its fort and diamonds, and Ahmadnagar for Chand Bibi’s defence against the Mughals. Option B is a correct pair, because the Barid Shahis held Bidar, the last Bahmani capital. Option C is a correct pair, because the Qutb Shahis of Quli Qutb Shah ruled Golconda and later founded Hyderabad. Option D is a correct pair, because the Imad Shahis held Berar, the first province to break away and the first to be annexed by Ahmadnagar. Exam tip: Ahmadnagar Nizam Shahi, Bijapur Adil Shahi, Golconda Qutb Shahi, Bidar Barid Shahi, Berar Imad Shahi.

The correct answer is C, which is the statement that is not correct. The Kushana gold coins were struck on the same weight standard as the Roman aureus of the time, not on a different one, because the dynasty traded briskly with the Roman world and found it convenient to match that standard. The other three statements are sound. The Indo-Greeks issued the first Indian coins that carry the ruler’s name along with his portrait, a sharp change from the earlier punch-marked coins, which bore only symbols. The Kushanas, from Vima Kadphises and Kanishka onwards, issued the first gold coins in India in any quantity, with deities such as Shiva and the Buddha on the reverse. And their gold coins have indeed been found at many sites across north India and Central Asia, which is the clearest proof of how far their trade reached. Exam tip: punch-marked coins are the earliest, Indo-Greek coins the first with royal portraits, Kushana coins the first gold, and the Guptas issued the most gold coins.

The correct answer is D, Kakatiya. Rudramadevi ruled the Kakatiya kingdom from Warangal, called Orugallu then, in what is now Telangana, in the second half of the thirteenth century. Her father Ganapatideva had no son and named her his successor, so she governed in her own right, took the male title Rudradeva in inscriptions and led her armies herself, holding off rebel nobles and the Yadavas of Devagiri. She was followed by her grandson Prataparudra II, the last Kakatiya ruler, whose Warangal fell to the armies of Delhi in the fourteenth century. Option A is wrong because the Cholas ruled from Thanjavur in the Tamil country. Option B is wrong because the Vakatakas were an early Deccan dynasty of the third to fifth centuries, linked to the Guptas by marriage. Option C is wrong because the Western Gangas ruled from Talakad in Karnataka and built the Gommateshwara statue at Shravanabelagola. Exam tip: Kakatiyas means Warangal, Ganapatideva, Rudramadevi and the thousand-pillar temple at Hanamkonda.

The correct answer is B, the greased cartridges of the Enfield rifle. The new rifle needed a cartridge whose end had to be bitten open, and the sepoys believed the paper was greased with the fat of cows and pigs, which offended Hindus and Muslims alike. The refusal to use these cartridges led to the disbanding of regiments and then to the rising at Meerut.

Option A is wrong because the annexation of Awadh in 1856 was an important political cause but not the immediate one. Option C is wrong for the same reason: the Doctrine of Lapse of Lord Dalhousie created the grievances of Jhansi, Satara and Nagpur years earlier. Option D is wrong because the Vernacular Press Act belongs to 1878, two decades after the revolt, under Lord Lytton. Distinguish carefully between the long term causes and the immediate spark, since the question is set both ways.