Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 61

The correct answer is C, 1 and 3 only. The Rigveda describes armour and the horse as central to Aryan life, while the Harappan remains show neither armour nor clear use of the horse; but the Harappans did not know iron.

Statement 1 is correct: the Rigveda mentions the varman (coat of mail) and helmet, and the Aryans fought from horse-drawn chariots, whereas no defensive armour has been found at Harappan sites. Statement 3 is correct in the sense the question intends: the horse was vital to the Rigvedic people, but it does not appear on Harappan seals and there is no firm evidence that the Harappans used it. Statement 2 is wrong: the Indus people worked gold, silver, copper, bronze and lead, but not iron, which came into use in India only around 1000 BCE.

A is wrong because statement 3 is also correct.

B is wrong because statement 2 is false.

D is wrong because the Harappans knew no iron.

Exam tip: Harappans = Bronze Age, no iron, horse not on seals; Rigvedic Aryans = horse, chariot and armour.

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 D, Neither 1 nor 2. A jagir was a temporary, transferable revenue assignment given mainly in lieu of salary for military service, while zamindari rights were hereditary.

Under the mansabdari system, a mansabdar was paid either in cash or through a jagir, the right to collect revenue from a tract of land equal to his salary. The jagir was tied to his military rank, was transferred every few years and was not hereditary, so statement 1 is wrong about judicial and police duties being its basis. Zamindars held hereditary rights over a share of the produce and also had duties beyond revenue collection, such as keeping order and supplying troops to the state. So statement 2 has the hereditary part reversed.

A is wrong because statement 1 misstates both the jagir and the zamindar's role.

B is wrong because jagirs, not zamindari rights, were non-hereditary.

C is wrong because both statements are incorrect.

Exam tip: jagir = salary for military rank, transferable; zamindari = hereditary local right.

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 B, Romesh Chandra Dutt. A member of the Indian Civil Service who later presided over the Congress, Dutt documented in The Economic History of India how revenue policy, the decline of handicrafts and the pattern of trade impoverished the countryside, and his work stands beside Naoroji's as a classic of economic nationalism. A is wrong because Ranade, though a pioneer of Indian economic thought and the author of Essays on Indian Economics, did not write this book. C is wrong because Gokhale is remembered for his budget speeches in the Imperial Legislative Council and for founding the Servants of India Society in 1905. D is wrong because Surendranath Banerjee was an organiser and journalist, the founder of the Indian Association in 1876, and his writing was political rather than economic.

The correct answer is D, Kolkata. The Supreme Court set up in 1774 sat at Fort William in Calcutta, the city now called Kolkata.

It was created by the Regulating Act of 1773, the first British law to take direct notice of the Company's rule in India. That Act made the Governor of Bengal the Governor General, gave him a council of four members, and established a Supreme Court of judicature at Fort William with one chief justice and three other judges. Sir Elijah Impey was its first chief justice. The court could hear civil, criminal, admiralty and ecclesiastical cases, and its long quarrel with the Governor General's council led to the Act of Settlement of 1781.

A is wrong: Delhi was then under the Mughals and became the British capital only in 1911. B is wrong: Shimla served later as a summer capital and was never the seat of this court. C is wrong: Mumbai, then Bombay, got a supreme court of its own only in 1823.

Exam tip: the Regulating Act of 1773 created the Governor General of Bengal and the Supreme Court at Fort William, Calcutta, which opened in 1774.

The correct answer is B, two-thirds of the produce instead of one-half. Tebhaga means three shares. The bargadars or sharecroppers of Bengal, organised by the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha in 1946, demanded that the crop be divided so that the cultivator who supplied the labour and the seed kept two of the three shares, leaving one for the jotedar; the Floud Commission had already recommended as much. A is wrong because the demand was over the division of the produce, not over the title to the land. C is wrong because the abolition of forced labour, called vetti, was the demand of the Telangana struggle of 1946 to 1951 against the Nizam's jagirdars. D is wrong because the land revenue was paid by the landholder to the state and was not what the sharecroppers were disputing.

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, Raja Ram Mohan Roy, who brought out Sambad Kaumudi in Bengali in 1821 and the Persian weekly Mirat-ul-Akhbar the next year, closing the latter in protest against the Licensing Regulations of 1823. Option A is wrong because Rash Behari Bose was a revolutionary of a much later generation who worked from Japan and helped found the Indian Independence League. Option C is wrong because Sisir Kumar Ghosh, with his brother Motilal Ghosh, founded the Amrita Bazar Patrika, the paper that turned into an English weekly to escape the Vernacular Press Act. Option D is wrong because Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar is associated with Som Prakash and with widow remarriage and women's education, not with Sambad Kaumudi. Remember the pair that goes with this name: Sambad Kaumudi in Bengali of 1821 and Mirat-ul-Akhbar in Persian of 1822, both from Calcutta and both by the same reformer.

The correct answer is C, Razia Sultana. Razia was the only woman to sit on the throne of Delhi, so she was both the first and the last woman ruler of the Sultanate. She was the daughter of Iltutmish, who chose her over his sons, and she ruled from 1236 to 1240. She held court unveiled, rode an elephant and took the title Jalalat-ud-din Razia. The Turkish nobles of the Chalisa resented a woman on the throne, and she was overthrown and killed in 1240. A is wrong because Chand Bibi was a regent of Ahmednagar and Bijapur in the Deccan in the sixteenth century, not a Delhi sultan. B is wrong because Nur Jahan was the wife of the Mughal emperor Jahangir and wielded influence through him, but never ruled as sovereign. D is wrong because Rani Durgavati ruled Gondwana and fought Akbar’s general Asaf Khan in 1564. Exam tip: remember the pair - Iltutmish named his daughter Razia, who ruled Delhi from 1236 to 1240.

The correct answer is B, W. C. Bonnerjee. Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee, a Calcutta barrister, presided over the first session of the Congress at the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College in Bombay from 28 to 31 December 1885, attended by seventy-two delegates. A is wrong because Dadabhai Naoroji presided over the second session at Calcutta in 1886, and again in 1893 and 1906; he is the Grand Old Man of India but not the first president. C is wrong because Allan Octavian Hume founded the Congress and served as its general secretary for many years, yet he presided only later, in 1894 at Madras. D is wrong because Badruddin Tyabji presided over the Madras session of 1887 and is remembered as the first Muslim president of the Congress, two years after the first session.

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 B, Bombay and Thane. The line of about thirty-four kilometres was opened in 1853 during the governor-generalship of Lord Dalhousie, who had set out the policy of railway construction in his famous minute. The railways were built by private companies under a system of guaranteed interest, so the risk lay with the Indian taxpayer, and the routes ran from the interior to the ports to carry raw material out and manufactured goods in. A is wrong because the Howrah to Hooghly line came in 1854, as the first in eastern India. C is wrong because the first line in the Madras Presidency, from Royapuram to Arcot, was opened in 1856. D is wrong because the line in the Delhi region came later still. The 1853 date with Dalhousie and the Bombay to Thane route is the fact examiners want.

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 A, Alluri Sitarama Raju. The Rampa or Manyam rebellion of 1922 to 1924 was led by Alluri Sitarama Raju, who organised the Koya and other hill people of the Godavari agency against the forest laws that stopped their shifting cultivation and against the forced labour exacted for road building. He fought a guerrilla campaign and was shot in 1924. B, Tomma Sora, is wrong because he led the earlier Koya rising of 1879 to 1880 in the same tracts. C is wrong because Haipou Jadonang led the Zeliangrong movement in Manipur and the Naga hills and was hanged in 1931; Rani Gaidinliu carried it on. D is wrong because Madari Pasi led the Eka or unity movement of the peasants of Hardoi, Bahraich and Sitapur in 1921 and 1922.

The correct answer is C, Bronze/Copper. Muhammad bin Tughlaq issued token coins of bronze and copper in 1329-30 that were to pass at the value of the silver tanka. The idea itself was sound and had worked in China and Persia, but the sultan did not keep the minting of these coins in state hands. Goldsmiths across the empire forged them in their homes, the treasury was flooded with fake coins, and traders refused to accept them. The sultan had to withdraw the issue and exchange the token coins for silver, which drained the treasury. A is wrong because Rupak was a coin name of the ancient period, not of this experiment. B is wrong because the rupee was introduced much later by Sher Shah Suri as a silver coin. D is wrong because the tanka was the standard silver coin whose value the token coins were meant to carry. Exam tip: link the pair - Muhammad bin Tughlaq and the failed bronze token currency of 1329.

The correct answer is B, Wood's Despatch of 1854, sent by Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control, and called the Magna Carta of English education in India because it laid down a complete system: departments of public instruction in the provinces, universities in the presidency towns, a grants-in-aid scheme for private schools, vernacular primary education, teacher training and the education of women. Option A is wrong because Macaulay's Minute only settled the medium of instruction and the Anglicist case in 1835. Option C is wrong because the Hunter Commission of 1882 reviewed how far the Despatch had been carried out. Option D is wrong because the Sargent Plan of 1944 came at the end of British rule and was criticised for proposing a forty-year timetable for universal education.

The correct answer is B, Lahore, 1929. The Lahore session of December 1929, presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru, declared complete independence to be the goal of the Congress and called upon the country to observe 26 January 1930 as Independence Day; the tricolour was hoisted on the bank of the Ravi on 31 December 1929. A is wrong because the Karachi session of 1931 is remembered for the resolution on Fundamental Rights and the National Economic Programme and for endorsing the Gandhi-Irwin Pact. C is wrong because the Calcutta session of 1928 considered the Nehru Report, which still asked for dominion status rather than complete independence. D is wrong because the Nagpur session of 1920 adopted Non-Cooperation and rewrote the Congress constitution, defining the goal as swaraj by all legitimate and peaceful means.

The correct answer is B, 1765. After the Battle of Buxar in 1764 and the Treaty of Allahabad, the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II granted the Company the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha in 1765, which made it the revenue authority of the richest provinces of India and began the system of Dual Government. A is wrong because 1757 is the year of the Battle of Plassey, which gave the Company political mastery of Bengal but not the formal right to collect revenue. C is wrong because 1772 is the year Warren Hastings ended the Dual Government and began direct collection through English Collectors. D is wrong because 1793 is the year of the Permanent Settlement, which fixed the demand for ever on the zamindars of these same provinces.

The correct answer is A, the Punjab Land Colonisation Act and the canal water rates. In 1907 the peasants of the Punjab canal colonies agitated against the restrictive terms of the Punjab Land Colonisation Act of 1906 and against increases in the water rate and the land revenue. Ajit Singh and Kishan Singh led the movement, whose name comes from the song Pagri Sambhal Jatta, and the government withdrew the Act. B is wrong because army recruitment grievances belong to the years of the First World War, not to this agitation. C is wrong because the permanent settlement was introduced in Bengal, Bihar and Odisha in 1793, while Punjab was under the mahalwari system. D is wrong because indigo contracts were a Bengal and Bihar grievance. The song that gave the movement its name was written by Banke Dayal and was sung across the Punjab countryside in those years.