Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 59

The correct answer is C, Asaf-ud-Daulah. He moved the seat of government from Faizabad to Lucknow and in 1784 built the Bara Imambara there as a famine relief work, employing thousands on it, and so began the age of nawabi Lucknow with its architecture, cuisine and courtly culture. Option A is wrong because Saadat Khan founded the state in 1722 and ruled from Faizabad. Option B is wrong because Safdar Jung, his successor, divided his time between Awadh and Delhi, where he was wazir, but did not change the capital. Option D is wrong because Wajid Ali Shah was the last ruler of Awadh, deposed by Lord Dalhousie in 1856 on the plea of misgovernment, by which time Lucknow had been the capital for some seventy years.

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 B, the Second Anglo-Maratha War. After the Treaty of Bassein of December 1802, Scindia and the Bhonsle of Nagpur took the field against the Company. Arthur Wellesley, the younger brother of Governor-General Lord Wellesley, beat their combined armies at Assaye in September 1803 and again at Argaon, while General Lake captured Delhi and won at Laswari in the north. Option A is wrong because the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War was fought in 1799 and ended with the storming of Srirangapatna and the death of Tipu Sultan. Option C is wrong because the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817 to 1818 is marked by Khadki, Sitabuldi and Mahidpur, not Assaye. Option D is wrong because the First Anglo-Sikh War came four decades later, in 1845 to 1846, and was fought along the Sutlej.

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, Dadabhai Naoroji. In Poverty and Un-British Rule in India Naoroji gathered his estimates of India's national income and set out the theory of the drain of wealth, showing that a part of the country's wealth was carried to Britain every year without any return, through home charges, the salaries and pensions of British officials and the profits of British capital. He was called the Grand Old Man of India and was the first Indian to be elected to the British House of Commons. A is wrong because A. O. Hume, a retired civil servant, helped to found the Indian National Congress in 1885 but wrote no such work on Indian poverty. C is wrong because W. C. Bonnerjee presided over the first session of the Congress and was a lawyer, not an economic writer. D is wrong because S. Subramania Iyer was a Madras judge and public figure associated with the early Congress.

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 A, Nadia. The Indigo Revolt, called the Neel Bidroha, began in 1859 in the Nadia district of Bengal, where the ryots refused to sow indigo on the terms the planters forced on them. Digambar Biswas and Bishnu Biswas led the strike, which spread across Bengal; the government appointed the Indigo Commission in 1860 and the planters closed their factories. B, Pabna, is wrong because the agrarian leagues of 1873, directed against the illegal rent demands of zamindars, were formed there, not the indigo strike. C, Midnapore, is wrong because it is associated with the much earlier Chuar uprising of the Jungle Mahals. D, Birbhum, is wrong; it saw no rising of this name, and the option is placed only because it is a neighbouring Bengal district. Fix the district with the leaders' surname, Biswas, and the pair will not slip in the examination hall.

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, Mir Qasim. Installed by the Company in place of Mir Jafar, Mir Qasim moved his capital from Murshidabad to Munger in Bihar precisely to put distance between himself and the Company's establishment at Calcutta, raised a new army and abolished the inland duties that the Company's servants were evading; the quarrel that followed led to Buxar. Option A is wrong because Alivardi Khan ruled from Murshidabad after seizing power in 1740. Option B is wrong because Siraj-ud-Daulah also kept Murshidabad as his capital through his brief reign of about a year. Option C is wrong because Mir Jafar, a puppet in both his terms, never had the independence to make such a move. Munger also gave Mir Qasim an arsenal of his own, where muskets were manufactured on the European pattern, and it is this military independence that the Company found intolerable.

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, Bithur near Kanpur. Baji Rao II surrendered to the British in June 1818 at the close of the Third Anglo-Maratha War and was removed from the Deccan altogether, being granted a pension and a residence at Bithur in the Ganga plain. His adopted son Nana Saheb later made Bithur a centre of the Revolt of 1857, precisely because the pension was stopped on Baji Rao death. Option A is wrong because Satara was made into a small princely state for a descendant of Shivaji, not a home for the Peshwa, and it was later annexed by Dalhousie under the Doctrine of Lapse. Option C is wrong because Gwalior was the capital of Scindia, who signed a separate treaty in 1817. Option D is wrong because Nagpur was the seat of the Bhonsle, defeated at Sitabuldi in the same war.

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 A, industrial goods. The Great Depression that began in 1929 pulled down the prices of primary produce such as wheat, cotton and jute far more sharply, and for far longer, than the prices of the manufactured goods the peasant had to buy. Because his revenue demand and his old debt were fixed in money terms, the Indian cultivator had to sell much more grain to pay the same sum, and rural indebtedness rose. B is wrong because opium was a government monopoly crop of the China trade and not the general standard against which farm prices are compared. C is wrong because agricultural inputs of that time, mainly seed, bullocks and manure, came from within the village and were themselves farm produce, so they fell with other agricultural prices. D is wrong because indigo had already lost its market to synthetic dyes well before 1929.

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 B, Dinabandhu Mitra. Dinabandhu Mitra wrote the Bengali play Nil Darpan, published in 1860, which showed how indigo planters coerced the cultivators of Bengal, and it reached the English reading public and the administration soon after. A is wrong because Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay wrote Anandamath and other novels, and the song Vande Mataram, but not this play. C, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, is a strong distractor: he translated Nil Darpan into English, and the translation was published by Reverend James Long, who was prosecuted for it, but he did not write the original. D is wrong because Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's work lay in education and in the campaign for widow remarriage, not in this agitation. In exams this pair of names is the standard trap, so remember the author first and the translator second.

The correct answer is A, Chalukya. Vikramaditya VI ruled the Western Chalukya kingdom of Kalyani, and his court poet Bilhana wrote the Vikramankadevacharita on his life. Vikramaditya VI reigned from about 1076 to 1126 CE from Kalyani in present-day Karnataka, and he started the Chalukya-Vikrama era, a new reckoning counted from his accession, which very few Indian rulers ever did. Another scholar of his court was Vijnaneshwara, who wrote the Mitakshara, the best known commentary on the Yajnavalkya Smriti and a key text of Hindu law. B is wrong because the Pallavas ruled from Kanchi and had faded away by the tenth century. C is wrong because the Rashtrakutas of Manyakheta were displaced by these very Chalukyas in 973 CE. D is wrong because the Western Gangas ruled Talakad in southern Karnataka and are remembered for Shravanabelagola, not for Bilhana. Exam tip: Bilhana wrote Vikramankadevacharita for Vikramaditya VI, and Vijnaneshwara wrote the Mitakshara at the same court.

The correct answer is A, the Marathas and Ahmad Shah Abdali. On 14 January 1761 the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali defeated the Maratha army led by Sadashivrao Bhau, in which the young Vishwasrao was also killed, and the defeat ended the Maratha bid to succeed the Mughals as the paramount power of northern India. Option B is wrong because Babar defeated Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526. Option C is wrong because the forces of Akbar, under Bairam Khan, defeated Hemu at the Second Battle of Panipat in 1556. Option D is wrong because the Marathas fought the East India Company in the three Anglo-Maratha wars, which were waged elsewhere and in later decades. The battle is also remembered for the scale of the Maratha losses, which left the field open for the East India Company to become the paramount power in the north.

The correct answer is C, the Treaty of Mandasor and Holkar. Holkar was defeated at Mahidpur in the Third Anglo-Maratha War and signed the Treaty of Mandasor in 1818, accepting British control over his foreign relations. Option A is wrong because the Treaty of Deogaon of 1803 was signed with the Bhonsle of Nagpur, not Scindia. Option B is wrong because the Treaty of Surji-Anjangaon of 1803 was signed with Scindia, not the Bhonsle, so options A and B are simply swapped, a favourite examiner device. Option D is wrong because the Treaty of Rajghat of 1805 was signed with Yashwantrao Holkar at the close of the Second Anglo-Maratha War; the Peshwa treaty was the Treaty of Bassein of 1802, and it was he who had set off that war by accepting a subsidiary alliance.

The correct answer is B, Lord Cornwallis. Cornwallis, Governor-General from 1786 to 1793, made the settlement permanent in 1793 on the advice of John Shore, recognising the zamindars as proprietors of the soil against a revenue demand fixed for ever. A is wrong because Warren Hastings experimented earlier with the farming system, auctioning the revenue of districts for five years, which the Permanent Settlement replaced. C is wrong because Lord Wellesley is remembered for the Subsidiary Alliance system and the expansion of British territory, not for revenue settlement. D is wrong because Lord William Bentinck came much later, from 1828 to 1835, and is associated with the reform of the Mahalwari settlement in 1833 and with social legislation such as the abolition of sati. A common trap is to mark John Shore, who advised on the scheme but did not introduce it.

The correct answer is B, moneylenders. The Deccan Riots began in 1875 at Supa in Poona district and spread through Poona and Ahmednagar. Under the ryotwari settlement the peasant paid the revenue directly to the state, and to pay it in a year of falling cotton prices he borrowed from Marwari and Gujarati moneylenders; the rioters attacked them and burnt the bonds and account books that recorded their debts. The government's answer was the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act of 1879. A is wrong because indigo planters were the target of the Bengal rising of 1859. C is wrong because forest contractors were resented in the tribal tracts, as in the Santhal and Rampa risings, not in the Deccan of 1875. D is wrong; the Deccan Riots had no religious direction at all.