Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 58

The correct answer is B, Mir Qasim, Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and Shuja-ud-Daulah of Awadh. At Buxar on 22 October 1764 Hector Munro defeated this alliance of the deposed Nawab of Bengal, the reigning Mughal emperor and the Nawab of Awadh, and the Treaty of Allahabad of 1765 followed. Option A is wrong because Mir Jafar was the Company's own candidate for the throne of Bengal and fought on its side, not against it. Option C is wrong on two counts: Mir Jafar was never in the opposing alliance, and Bahadur Shah II came to the Mughal throne only in 1837, long afterwards. Option D is wrong because Siraj-ud-Daulah had been killed in 1757 after Plassey and could not have been present seven years later.

The correct answer is B, Indian Opinion. Gandhi started Indian Opinion at Durban in 1903 to put the case of Indians settled in South Africa before the public.

The weekly was printed at the Phoenix Settlement near Durban and came out in English and Gujarati, with Tamil and Hindi sections in its early years. Gandhi later wrote that a struggle such as satyagraha could not be carried on without a journal of its own, and the paper carried his writings on the campaign against the Asiatic Registration Act.

Option A, Young India, was an English weekly Gandhi edited in India from 1919. Option C, Swaraj Hind, is not a paper associated with him. Option D, Navajivan, was his Gujarati weekly, also taken up in India in 1919.

Exam tip: Indian Opinion, 1903, South Africa; Young India and Navajivan, 1919, India.

The correct answer is C, the Treaty of Salbai, about twenty years. Signed in 1782 during the governor-generalship of Warren Hastings, the Treaty of Salbai restored to each side the territory held before the war, recognised Madhavrao II as Peshwa and gave the Company and the Marathas roughly twenty years of peace, until the Treaty of Bassein upset the balance in 1802. Option A is wrong because the Treaty of Purandhar of 1776 was made by the Calcutta Council to cancel the Bombay government engagement and came before the fighting, not after it. Option B is wrong because the Treaty of Surat of 1775, by which Bombay backed Raghunathrao, actually began the war. Option D is wrong because the Treaty of Bassein of 1802 started the Second Anglo-Maratha War rather than ending the first. The British humiliation at Wadgaon in 1779 falls within this same war.

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 A, the Diwani, or revenue collection rights, of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. After Buxar the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II granted the Company the Diwani of these provinces, which gave it a legal title to their revenues and turned a trading body into a territorial power. Option B is wrong because the Company never acquired the right to appoint the wazir at Delhi, an office that remained a matter of court politics. Option C is wrong because the Carnatic was under the Nawabs of Arcot and passed under Company control through the separate Carnatic wars and later arrangements. Option D is wrong because Bombay had come to the English crown as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza in 1661, and Salsette was obtained from the Marathas much later.

The correct answer is B, Separate electorates for untouchables. The conference met in Bombay in 1931 and resolved that the depressed classes must be allowed to elect their own representatives through separate electorates, a demand Dr B. R. Ambedkar carried to the Second Round Table Conference in London the same year. The British accepted it in the Communal Award of 1932, which gave separate electorates to the depressed classes. Gandhi opposed this as a step that would split Hindu society and began a fast unto death in Yerwada jail. The deadlock ended with the Poona Pact of September 1932, under which separate electorates were given up and replaced by a larger number of seats reserved for the depressed classes inside the general electorate. Option A is wrong because universal adult suffrage was a later, wider demand of the national movement. Option C is wrong because the conference spoke for the depressed classes, not minorities in general. Option D is wrong because the form of the state was not its subject. Exam tip: Communal Award 1932, then Poona Pact 1932 - separate electorates traded for reserved seats.

The correct answer is B, Lord Hastings, the Marquess of Hastings, who must not be confused with Warren Hastings. He fought the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817 to 1818 as one campaign against the Pindaris and the Maratha chiefs, defeating the Peshwa at Khadki, the Bhonsle at Sitabuldi and Holkar at Mahidpur. Baji Rao II surrendered in June 1818 and was pensioned to Bithur near Kanpur, the office of Peshwa was abolished and a small kingdom of Satara was created for a descendant of Shivaji. Option A is wrong because Lord Wellesley fought the Second Anglo-Maratha War from 1803 to 1805. Option C is wrong because Lord Cornwallis is associated with the Third Anglo-Mysore War and the Permanent Settlement of 1793. Option D is wrong because Lord Dalhousie came much later and is remembered for annexing Punjab in 1849 and for the Doctrine of Lapse.

The correct answer is C, Lal Bahadur Shastri. Lal Bahadur Shastri was Prime Minister from 1964 to 1966 and led the country through the war with Pakistan in 1965. He gave the slogan Jai Jawan Jai Kisan, which linked the soldier at the border with the farmer in the field, and his years saw the beginning of the Green Revolution and the setting up of the Food Corporation of India. The war ended with the Tashkent Agreement, signed with Ayub Khan on 10 January 1966; Shastri died in Tashkent the same night. He was given the Bharat Ratna after his death, and 2 October is remembered as his birthday as well as Gandhi Jayanti. Option A is wrong because Morarji Desai became Prime Minister in 1977. Option B is wrong because Indira Gandhi took office in 1966 and led India in the 1971 war. Option D is wrong because Jawaharlal Nehru died in May 1964, before this war. Exam tip: 1962 China under Nehru, 1965 Pakistan under Shastri, 1971 Bangladesh war under Indira Gandhi.

The correct answer is B, set up by Robert Clive, abolished by Warren Hastings. Clive arranged after 1765 that the Company should hold the Diwani, the right to collect revenue, while the Nawab kept the Nizamat, the duty of administration and justice without the money to perform it; the result was a government in which nobody was answerable, and the famine of 1770 followed. Warren Hastings ended the arrangement in 1772. Option A is wrong because it reverses Hastings's role, making the man who abolished the system its author. Option C is wrong because Wellesley and Lord Hastings belong to a later period of subsidiary alliances and wars. Option D is wrong because Mir Jafar was a puppet Nawab and framed no such system. The famine of 1770, in which a large part of the population of Bengal perished, is the standard illustration of what the arrangement produced.

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 B, the Treaty of Amritsar. After the First Anglo-Sikh War the Treaty of Lahore of 9 March 1846 imposed a war indemnity of one and a half crore rupees on the Sikh state, which it could not pay. A week later, by the Treaty of Amritsar of 16 March 1846, the Company transferred Kashmir to Gulab Singh of Jammu for seventy-five lakh rupees, creating the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. Option A is wrong because the Treaty of Lahore took the Jalandhar Doab, limited the Sikh army and installed a British Resident, but did not itself transfer Kashmir to Gulab Singh. Option C is wrong because the Treaty of Bhairowal of December 1846 set up a council of regency with Henry Lawrence as Resident and removed Rani Jindan from the regency. Option D is wrong because the Treaty of Gwalior of 1817 was signed with Scindia during the Third Anglo-Maratha War.

The correct answer is A, Old stone age. The earliest and by far the longest phase of human prehistory is the Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age, when people lived by hunting and gathering and used rough, unpolished tools made mostly of quartzite. In India it is divided into the Lower, Middle and Upper Palaeolithic, and its well known sites are Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh with its rock shelters and paintings, Hunsgi in Karnataka and Attirampakkam in Tamil Nadu. Robert Bruce Foote, a geologist, picked up the first Palaeolithic tool in India at Pallavaram near Madras in 1863. Option B is wrong because the Mesolithic is the middle stone age of small microlithic tools, when animals were first tamed. Option C is wrong because the Iron Age is far later and belongs to history, not prehistory. Option D is wrong because the New Stone Age, or Neolithic, is the age of polished tools, farming and pottery. Exam tip: Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, then the Iron Age.

The correct answer is A, Tipu Sultan. Tipu openly identified with the French Revolution: he planted a Tree of Liberty at Seringapatam, allowed a Jacobin club to be formed there, let himself be addressed as a citizen and sought a French alliance against the English. Option B is wrong because Aurobindo Ghosh was a nationalist and later a philosopher of the early twentieth century, associated with the Swadeshi movement and the Alipore conspiracy case. Option C is wrong because Annie Besant led the Theosophical Society and the Home Rule League and presided over the Congress in 1917, more than a century after the Revolution. Option D is wrong because Badruddin Tyabji was an early Congress leader and its president in 1887, again of a much later generation.

The correct answer is B, 1833. The Charter Act of 1833 ended the East India Company's last trading privilege, its monopoly over trade with China and in tea, and turned the Company into a purely administrative body holding India in trust for the British Crown. Pressure from British free-trade manufacturers, who wanted open access to Asian markets, forced the change. The same Act made the Governor-General of Bengal the Governor-General of India, with Lord William Bentinck the first to hold the title, centralised legislative power in his council and declared that no Indian was to be barred from office on grounds of religion, birth, descent or colour. Option A is wrong because the Charter Act of 1813 ended the monopoly on Indian trade but expressly kept the China and tea monopoly. Option C is wrong because 1838 saw no charter legislation. Option D is wrong because Company rule itself had ended in 1858 under the Government of India Act. Exam tip: 1813 Indian trade opened, 1833 China and tea monopoly ended, 1853 civil services opened to competition.

The correct answer is B, Lord Dalhousie. The Second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848 to 1849 began with the revolt of Mulraj at Multan and was decided by the battles of Chillianwala in January 1849 and Gujrat in February 1849. Dalhousie annexed Punjab on 29 March 1849, pensioned off Maharaja Dalip Singh, had the Kohinoor diamond sent to the Crown and placed the province under a Board of Three Administrators. Option A is wrong because Lord Hardinge was Governor-General during the First Anglo-Sikh War of 1845 to 1846 and stopped short of annexation, choosing instead the treaties of Lahore and Bhairowal. Option C is wrong because Lord Auckland is remembered for the disastrous First Anglo-Afghan War and the Tripartite Treaty of 1838. Option D is wrong because Lord Canning was Governor-General at the time of the Revolt of 1857 and became the first Viceroy of India.

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 D, Tipu Sultan. Mysore under Haidar Ali and then Tipu Sultan built iron-cased war rockets and organised regular rocket units, using them against the English in the Anglo-Mysore wars; specimens taken at Seringapatam were studied in England and shaped the rockets developed there. Option A is wrong because Lord Cornwallis was the Governor-General who fought Tipu in the Third Anglo-Mysore War and introduced the Permanent Settlement, not a maker of weapons. Option B is wrong because Babar is remembered for introducing field artillery and matchlocks at Panipat in 1526, which is a different technology and nearly three centuries earlier. Option C is wrong because Akbar II was a titular Mughal emperor of the early nineteenth century with no military role of any kind.

The correct answer is C, the Battle of Sobraon, fought in February 1846 on the Sutlej. It was the last and decisive engagement of the First Anglo-Sikh War and was followed within weeks by the Treaty of Lahore of 9 March 1846. Option A is wrong because Mudki, fought in December 1845, was the opening battle of that war, followed by Ferozeshah and Aliwal. Option B is wrong because Chillianwala, fought in January 1849, belongs to the Second Anglo-Sikh War and was so costly for the British that it caused alarm in England, though it did not end the war. Option D is wrong because the Battle of Gujrat of February 1849 ended the Second Anglo-Sikh War and led to the annexation of Punjab by Dalhousie in March 1849. Keeping 1846 and 1849 apart is the easiest way to sort these battles.

The correct answer is B, Battle of Seringapatam. The Fourth Anglo-Mysore War closed with the storming of Seringapatam, Tipu Sultan's capital, in which he was killed on 4 May 1799; Mysore then passed to a restored Wodeyar ruler under a subsidiary alliance. Option A is wrong because Vandiwash, fought in 1760, belongs to the Third Carnatic War and decided the contest between the English and the French in India, not the Mysore wars. Option C is wrong because Porto Novo, in 1781, was an English victory over Haidar Ali during the Second Anglo-Mysore War, which continued for three more years. Option D is wrong because Polilur, in 1780, was a serious English defeat early in that same Second war and settled nothing. Candidates should also note that the Wodeyar family was restored to a reduced Mysore after 1799, so the dynasty outlasted the man who had displaced it.

The correct answer is B, the Second Anglo-Mysore War. Hyder Ali led Mysore into that war in 1780, defeated a British force at Pollilur the same year and died of a carbuncle in December 1782 while the war was still being fought. His son Tipu Sultan took over the command and concluded the Treaty of Mangalore in 1784. Option A is wrong because Hyder Ali survived the First Anglo-Mysore War of 1767 to 1769 and came out of it with the favourable Treaty of Madras. Option C is wrong because the Third Anglo-Mysore War of 1790 to 1792 was fought by Tipu Sultan against Lord Cornwallis, long after his father death. Option D is wrong because the First Anglo-Maratha War was a separate conflict in western India, fought from 1775 to 1782 and ended by the Treaty of Salbai, in which Mysore was not a party.