Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 49

The correct answer is C, Cabinet Mission Plan. These three were the members of the Cabinet Mission that reached Delhi on 24 March 1946: Lord Pethick-Lawrence, the Secretary of State for India, who headed it, Sir Stafford Cripps and A. V. Alexander. Their plan rejected a sovereign Pakistan and proposed a three-tier union with grouping of provinces and an indirectly elected Constituent Assembly. Option A is wrong because the Wavell Plan of 1945 was the Viceroy's own proposal for a reconstructed Executive Council, discussed at the Simla Conference. Option B is wrong because the Mountbatten Plan, misspelt here, was the partition plan of 3 June 1947. Option D is wrong because the Cripps Mission of 1942 was a single-member mission; Cripps came alone then, which is why his name appears in both and makes this a favourite trap.

The correct answer is D, He was the first recipient of the Padma Shree Award. C. Rajagopalachari was one of the first three recipients of the Bharat Ratna in 1954, along with C. V. Raman and S. Radhakrishnan, not of the Padma Shri, so this statement is not true. Known as Rajaji, he took charge in 1948 as the last Governor General of India and the only Indian to hold that post, after Lord Mountbatten left. He had earlier been Premier of the Madras Presidency, Governor of West Bengal, Union Home Minister and Chief Minister of Madras State. A is true, since no other Indian held the office. B is true, because he founded the Swatantra Party in 1959 to oppose Nehru's policy of state control and land ceilings. C is true, as he was a close associate of Gandhi and a senior Congress leader. Exam tip: the first Bharat Ratna went to Rajaji, Raman and Radhakrishnan in 1954.

The correct answer is B, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The States Department was set up in early July 1947, weeks before independence, and Patel took charge of it as Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister, with V. P. Menon as its Secretary. In little more than a year the department secured the accession of around 565 states and then merged most of them into provinces or unions of states. Option A is wrong: Nehru as Prime Minister handled foreign affairs and dealt personally with Kashmir, but the department was not his. Option C is wrong: C. Rajagopalachari became Governor-General in 1948 and later Chief Minister of Madras, and had no charge of the states question. Option D is wrong: Maulana Azad was Education Minister in the first cabinet. The work earned Patel the titles Iron Man of India and Bismarck of India, and his birth anniversary on 31 October is observed as National Unity Day.

The correct answer is A, uzhavar. In the Tamil region of ancient India the ordinary ploughmen, the men who actually tilled the fields, were called uzhavar.

Inscriptions and Sangam poems show a graded village society there. At the top stood the vellalar, the large landowners; below them came the uzhavar, the ploughmen or small cultivators; and at the bottom were the landless labourers, including slaves. These words come from early Tamil literature of roughly the third century BCE to the third century CE, the Sangam age, whose poems describe the chiefdoms of the Cholas, Cheras and Pandyas and call their rulers the muvendar, the three crowned kings.

B is wrong: adimai means slaves, people owned by others. C is wrong: kadaisiyar were the landless labourers who worked in other people's fields. D is wrong: vellalar were the large landowners, the richest group in the village.

Exam tip: the Tamil village order was vellalar as big landowners, uzhavar as ploughmen, and kadaisiyar and adimai as landless labourers and slaves.

The correct answer is D, Direct Action Day. After withdrawing its acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan in July 1946, the Muslim League called for direct action to press the demand for Pakistan and fixed 16 August 1946 for it. The day ended in the Great Calcutta Killings, which spread violence to Noakhali, Bihar and the United Provinces and hardened opinion on both sides. Option A is wrong because Republic Day marks the commencement of the Constitution of India on 26 January 1950. Option B is wrong because the Congress had observed 26 January as Independence Day since 1930 after the Lahore session resolved on Purna Swaraj, and India's independence day is 15 August. Option C is wrong because Bloody Sunday is not associated with the Indian national movement; the term belongs to Russian and Irish history.

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, defence, external affairs and communications. The Instrument of Accession was kept deliberately narrow so that a ruler could sign it without feeling that he had surrendered his state, and all other powers stayed with him for the time being. Option B is wrong: taxation and police remained with the states at the stage of accession, and were brought under common administration only through the later merger agreements. Option C names the matters covered not by the Instrument but by the Standstill Agreement, which continued existing arrangements on customs, currency, posts and railways until new ones were settled. Option D lists subjects that were never part of the document; they were and remain largely provincial or state subjects. The point to remember is the two-step process: a narrow accession in 1947, and the real integration into provinces, unions of states and centrally administered areas in 1948 and 1949.

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 B, 24 August 1946. The Viceroy announced the formation of the interim national government on 24 August 1946, and the new Executive Council took office on 2 September 1946 with Jawaharlal Nehru as its Vice-President, which made him in effect the head of government. The Muslim League stayed out at first and joined only in October 1946. Options A, C and D are wrong because they shift the announcement by a day or two; the dates worth memorising in this chapter are the announcement on 24 August 1946 and the assumption of office on 2 September 1946. Candidates often confuse this interim government with the Constituent Assembly, which first met on 9 December 1946, so keep the two sequences separate: the interim government was the executive, the Assembly was the constitution-making body.

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 B, V. P. Menon. As Secretary of the States Department he drafted the Instrument of Accession and the Standstill Agreement, travelled from court to court to collect signatures, and wrote the standard first-hand account of the episode, The Story of the Integration of the Indian States. Option A, H. M. Patel, was a senior civil servant who worked on the partition arrangements and later became a finance minister, but not on the states. Option C, K. M. Munshi, was a member of the Constituent Assembly and of its Drafting Committee, and was the agent-general in Hyderabad during the crisis, a related but different role. Option D, B. N. Rau, was the Constitutional Adviser to the Constituent Assembly, who prepared the first draft of the Constitution. Pairing Patel as the political head with Menon as the official head is the form in which this question is usually set.

The correct answer is A, Badruddin Tyabji. The Bombay Presidency Association was founded in 1885 by Badruddin Tyabji, Pherozeshah Mehta and Kashinath Trimbak Telang, three lawyers of Bombay who are often called the city's triumvirate.

The body was formed to press Indian political demands before the British Parliament, especially after the anger caused by the Ilbert Bill, and it came up in the very year the Indian National Congress was founded. Badruddin Tyabji later became the third president of the Congress at its Madras session in 1887, the first Muslim to hold that office.

Option B, Behramji M Malabari, was a social reformer and journalist who campaigned against child marriage. Option C, AK Fazlul Haq, was a Bengal leader who moved the Lahore Resolution in 1940. Option D, Zakir Husain, was the third President of India.

Exam tip: Bombay triumvirate — Tyabji, Mehta and Telang; Bombay Presidency Association 1885.

The correct answer is D, Clement Attlee. Attlee, the Labour Prime Minister of Britain, told the House of Commons on 20 February 1947 that His Majesty's Government intended to transfer power to responsible Indian hands by June 1948, and announced at the same time that Lord Mountbatten would succeed Lord Wavell as Viceroy. Option A is wrong because Nehru headed the interim government in India and could not make a declaration of British policy. Option B is wrong because Wavell was the Viceroy being replaced; the statement in effect ended his tenure. Option C is wrong because Mountbatten took office only on 24 March 1947 and later advanced the date of freedom to 15 August 1947 through his 3 June Plan. Remember the pair: the June 1948 deadline belongs to Attlee, the August 1947 date to Mountbatten.

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 B, Operation Polo. The Nizam of Hyderabad, Mir Osman Ali Khan, had signed a Standstill Agreement in November 1947 and then delayed accession while the Razakar militia under Kasim Razvi attacked villagers. The Government of India launched the police action from 13 to 18 September 1948, after which the Nizam acceded and became Rajpramukh of the state. Option A, Operation Vijay, was the action of December 1961 that ended Portuguese rule in Goa, Daman and Diu, and the name was used again in 1999 for the Kargil operations. Option C, Operation Meghdoot, was the 1984 operation on the Siachen glacier. Option D, Operation Cactus, was the Indian intervention in the Maldives in 1988. Examiners very often offer Operation Polo and Operation Vijay together, so fix the pairing of Polo with Hyderabad in 1948 and Vijay with Goa in 1961.

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 C, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. At the midnight sitting of the Constituent Assembly on 14 and 15 August 1947, Nehru moved the pledge resolution with his Tryst with Destiny speech, and Dr S. Radhakrishnan, then a member of the Assembly and later the first Vice-President and the second President of India, spoke after him. Option A is wrong because C. Rajagopalachari was not among the speakers that night; he became Governor-General in 1948. Option B is wrong because Rajendra Prasad presided over the sitting as President of the Constituent Assembly rather than speaking as one of the orators in this list. Option D is wrong because Sardar Patel, though a member of the interim cabinet and soon Deputy Prime Minister, did not address the House at that midnight session.

The correct answer is B, 26 October 1947. The Maharaja had hoped to stay out of both dominions and had signed a standstill arrangement, but when tribal raiders supported from across the border entered the valley and advanced towards Srinagar in late October 1947 he asked India for military help. India made accession the condition, the Instrument was signed on 26 October, and troops were airlifted to Srinagar the next day. Option A is wrong because no accession was signed on the day of independence; that is the date on which paramountcy lapsed. Option C, 26 January 1948, is close to the date the Constitution came into force two years later and has nothing to do with Kashmir. Option D, 17 September 1948, falls inside the Hyderabad police action, and is remembered in Telangana in connection with that event, not with Kashmir. The accession was later reflected in Article 370.

The correct answer is C, 18 July 1947. The Indian Independence Bill was introduced in the British Parliament on 4 July 1947 and received the royal assent on 18 July 1947, after which it came into force on 15 August 1947. Option A is wrong because 3 June 1947 is the date of the Mountbatten Plan, the policy statement that the Act gave legal shape to. Option B is wrong because 4 July 1947 is the date of introduction of the Bill, not of the assent, and this is exactly the confusion the question exploits. Option D is wrong because 15 August 1947 is the appointed day on which the Act took effect and the two Dominions came into being. The Act ended the office of Secretary of State for India, abolished British paramountcy over the princely states and gave each Dominion a sovereign Constituent Assembly.

The correct answer is C. The Act let paramountcy lapse with effect from 15 August 1947, so in strict law every princely state became free either to accede to India, to accede to Pakistan, or to attempt to remain outside both. That is why the States Department had to obtain a signed Instrument of Accession from each ruler rather than simply inherit authority over them. Option A is the commonest wrong answer, and it is wrong precisely because no transfer took place; India's authority over a state came from the ruler's own accession. Option B is wrong for the same reason, and the Act drew a boundary between the two dominions without dividing paramountcy. Option D is wrong because the Act set no such period; the Chamber of Princes created in 1921 simply ceased to matter. The lapse is the fact on which statement-based questions in this chapter usually turn.