Indian History Mixed Quiz: Set 66

The correct answer is B, the Hartog Committee, which reported in 1929 that most children left school before becoming literate and that the hurried expansion of primary schools had produced wastage and stagnation; it recommended consolidation of existing schools rather than further expansion. Option A is wrong because the Sadler Commission of 1917 to 1919 dealt with university education and the structure of the school and degree course. Option C is wrong because the Raleigh Commission of 1902 examined universities and led to Curzon's Indian Universities Act of 1904. Option D is wrong because the Wardha Scheme of 1937, worked out by the Zakir Husain Committee on Gandhi's idea of basic education, proposed teaching through a productive craft in the mother tongue. The committee is also remembered for its finding that the problem lay in compulsion without quality, so it asked for better trained teachers and longer school years rather than more schools.

The correct answer is A, Mahendravarman I. The Pallava king who ruled in the early 7th century took these titles, and they appear in the inscriptions of the cave temples he cut.

Mahendravarman I, son of Simhavishnu, was a poet, musician and builder. He wrote the Sanskrit farce Mattavilasa Prahasana, which gave him the title Mattavilasa. Vichitrachitta, meaning curious-minded, reflects his love of new ideas: his Mandagapattu inscription boasts that he built a shrine without brick, timber, metal or mortar, marking the start of rock-cut temples in Tamil country. Gunabhara is another of his many birudas. Tradition holds that he moved from Jainism to Shaivism under the influence of Appar, and he fought the Chalukya Pulakeshin II.

B is wrong: Simhavishnu founded the line's power and was known as Avanisimha.

C is wrong: Narasimhavarman I was called Mamalla and Vatapikonda after he took Vatapi.

D is wrong: Simhavarman was an earlier Pallava ruler with none of these titles.

Exam tip: Mahendravarman I = Mattavilasa Prahasana and Mandagapattu cave; Narasimhavarman I = Mamalla, Mahabalipuram and Vatapikonda.

The correct answer is C, Subhas Chandra Bose. After winning the Tripuri presidential election of 1939 against Pattabhi Sitaramayya and then resigning in April that year, Bose founded the Forward Bloc on 3 May 1939 as a left wing within the Congress, meant to gather all radical and anti-imperialist forces for an immediate struggle.

Option A, Mahatma Gandhi, led the Congress itself and supported Sitaramayya in that very election, so he founded no rival group. Option B, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, was among the Working Committee members who declined to serve under Bose and stayed with the Congress leadership. Option D, Jawaharlal Nehru, shared many of Bose's socialist views and had chaired the National Planning Committee set up by him, but he did not join the Forward Bloc and remained in the Congress. Bose was later debarred from holding Congress office for three years.

The correct answer is D, 1, 2 and 3. All three statements match what inscriptions tell us about how the decimal place-value system spread.

In the place-value system, the value of a digit depends on its position, so nine digits and a zero can write any number. Mathematicians such as Aryabhata already used place-value ideas around AD 499, but the oldest dated use on an Indian inscription is in the Mankani (Sankheda) copper plates of Gujarat, dated to AD 595-596. Older numerical notation, which had separate signs for tens and hundreds, gradually gave way, and by the ninth century place-value numerals were common in inscriptions across India; the Gwalior inscription of 876 shows a written zero. Inscriptions from Cambodia and Sumatra show place-value numerals in Sanskrit records by the late seventh century.

A is wrong: it leaves out statement 3, which is also correct.

B is wrong: it leaves out statement 2, which is also correct.

C is wrong: it leaves out statement 1, which is also correct.

Exam tip: place value in inscriptions = Mankani plates 595-596 (first), Southeast Asia 7th century, general in India by the 9th century, zero at Gwalior 876.

The correct answer is C, Aruna Asaf Ali. With Gandhi and the entire Congress Working Committee arrested in the early hours of 9 August 1942, she hoisted the flag at the Gowalia Tank Maidan, the ground where the Quit India resolution had been passed the previous evening, and then went underground to direct the movement. Option A is wrong because Usha Mehta's contribution to the same movement was the secret Congress Radio she ran from Bombay, broadcasting bulletins until she was caught. Option B is wrong because Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay belongs mainly to the salt satyagraha of 1930 and to the revival of handicrafts after independence. Option D is wrong because Sucheta Kriplani worked in the 1942 underground too, but the flag at Gowalia Tank is attributed to Aruna Asaf Ali; she later became the first woman Chief Minister of an Indian state.

The correct answer is B, 2 and 3 only. Rakhmabai had been married as a child and refused to join her husband's household as an adult; he went to court for the restitution of conjugal rights, so statement 3 is part of the case. The judgment and the uproar that followed turned on whether a girl married as a child could be compelled to cohabit, and the campaign it fuelled produced the Age of Consent Act of 1891, which raised the age from ten to twelve years, so statement 2 is also part of it. Statement 1 is not: although Rakhmabai later studied medicine in England and became one of India's first practising woman doctors, the litigation itself was not about a right to education, which is why options A, C and D, each of which includes statement 1, are wrong.

The correct answer is B, 2-1-3-4. The operations fall in 1965, 1971, 1984 and 1999, in that order: Riddle, Cactus Lily, Meghdoot, Safed Sagar.

Operation Riddle was the Indian Army's thrust towards Lahore in September 1965, during the second India–Pakistan war. Operation Cactus Lily was the 1971 operation in the eastern theatre in which troops were airlifted across the Meghna river by helicopters, hastening the fall of Dhaka and the birth of Bangladesh. Operation Meghdoot, launched in April 1984, secured the Siachen Glacier. Operation Safed Sagar was the Indian Air Force's part in the 1999 Kargil war, alongside the Army's Operation Vijay.

A is wrong: it puts Cactus Lily (1971) before Riddle (1965).

C is wrong: it opens with Safed Sagar, the latest of the four (1999).

D is wrong: it also starts with Safed Sagar and places Meghdoot (1984) last.

Exam tip: Riddle 1965 → Cactus Lily 1971 → Meghdoot 1984 (Siachen) → Safed Sagar 1999 (IAF in Kargil).

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, a large wheel with earthen pots tied to the outer ends of its spokes. The araghatta was a water-lifting wheel that carried a chain or ring of pots down into a well and brought them up full.

Early medieval Sanskrit texts and inscriptions mention the araghatta as a common device for irrigating fields from wells. As the wheel turned, each pot dipped into the water, rose with it and emptied into a channel at the top. It is the ancestor of the Persian wheel (rahat) that later spread widely in north India under the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals, when gearing worked by bullocks was added.

A is wrong: a leather bag drawn over a pulley is the charsa or mot, a different device.

C is wrong: a single large pot driven by bullocks does not describe a wheel with many pots.

D is wrong: a bucket pulled up by hand on a rope is the simplest well-lift, not the araghatta.

Exam tip: araghatta = wheel with a ring of pots; charsa or mot = leather bag; dhenkuli or shaduf = lever-and-bucket lift.

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 C, Mohan Singh. The first Indian National Army was raised in 1942 by Captain Mohan Singh from Indian prisoners of war captured at the fall of Singapore, with the support of the Japanese army. It was dissolved in December 1942 after a breakdown of trust with the Japanese command.

Option A, Rash Behari Bose, was the revolutionary of the Ghadr days who led the Indian Independence League from Bangkok and handed over its leadership and the army to Subhas Chandra Bose, but he did not raise the force. Option B, Bhagat Singh, was hanged in 1931, eleven years before the INA was formed. Option D, Subhas Chandra Bose, revived and reorganised the army after taking charge at Singapore on 4 July 1943, and became its supreme commander, which is why he is often wrongly named as the one who raised it.

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, Pritilata Waddedar. She led a party of revolutionaries of Surya Sen's Chittagong group against the Pahartali European Club on 23 September 1932 and swallowed cyanide to avoid capture, becoming the first woman martyr of Bengal's armed revolutionary movement. Option A is wrong because Kalpana Datta belonged to the same Chittagong group and was to have taken part in the raid, but she was arrested shortly before it and was later tried and transported for life in the Chittagong Armoury Raid case. Option C is wrong because Bina Das fired at Governor Stanley Jackson at the Calcutta University convocation on 6 February 1932, a separate action. Option D is wrong because Shanti Ghosh, with Suniti Choudhury, shot the District Magistrate of Comilla in December 1931.

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, Sucheta Kripalani. She became Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in October 1963, the first woman to head a state government in India.

Sucheta Kripalani was a freedom fighter who took part in the Quit India Movement and later founded the All India Mahila Congress. She was a member of the Constituent Assembly and sang Vande Mataram in the Central Hall at the session held on the night of 14-15 August 1947. She led the Uttar Pradesh government from 1963 to 1967 and is remembered for firmly handling a long strike by state employees.

A is wrong: Sarojini Naidu was the first woman Governor of an Indian state (United Provinces, 1947) and the first Indian woman president of the Congress (1925).

C is wrong: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was the first woman President of the UN General Assembly (1953).

D is wrong: Hansa Mehta was a Constituent Assembly member who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Exam tip: first woman CM = Sucheta Kripalani (UP, 1963); first woman Governor = Sarojini Naidu (UP, 1947).

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 C, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. Bose raised this all-women fighting unit in 1943 and named it after Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, the heroine of the revolt of 1857. It was commanded by Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan, a doctor from Singapore who is better known by her later name, Lakshmi Sahgal, and its recruits came mostly from Indian families settled in Malaya and Burma.

Options A, B and D name queens who have no connection with the Indian National Army. Rani Padmini, or Padmawati, belongs to the traditions of Chittor; Didda was a queen of Kashmir in the tenth century; and Ahilyabai Holkar ruled Malwa from Maheshwar in the eighteenth century and is remembered for rebuilding temples. None of them gave a name to any INA formation, whose other units were the Gandhi, Nehru, Azad and Subhas brigades.

The correct answer is A, Captain Lakshmi Swaminathan, later known as Captain Lakshmi Sahgal. A doctor practising in Singapore, she was given command of the women's regiment that Subhas Chandra Bose announced in July 1943 and named after Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi. Option B is wrong because Rani Gaidinliu led the Heraka movement in the Naga hills, was arrested in 1932 and remained in prison till 1947; she had no connection with the Azad Hind Fauj. Option C is wrong because Durgabai Deshmukh organised satyagrahis in Madras, founded the Andhra Mahila Sabha and sat in the Constituent Assembly. Option D is wrong because Begum Hazrat Mahal belongs to the revolt of 1857 at Lucknow, nearly ninety years before the regiment was raised in South East Asia.

The correct answer is A, Cuttack, in present-day Odisha. Bose was born there on 23 January 1897, the ninth child of Janakinath Bose, a lawyer who practised in the town, and his school years were spent at the Protestant European School and the Ravenshaw Collegiate School in Cuttack. The Government of India declared 23 January as Parakram Diwas in 2021.

Option B, Calcutta, is where he studied at Presidency College and the Scottish Church College, where he lived at Elgin Road and from where he escaped in 1941, and where he was Mayor in 1930, but it is not his birthplace. Option C, Dhaka, had no part in his life, though the family's ancestral village of Kodalia lay in undivided Bengal. Option D, Midnapore, is a district of West Bengal that figures in revolutionary history for other reasons altogether.

The correct answer is B, Tamluk in Midnapore. Matangini Hazra, then more than seventy years old, was leading a procession of volunteers towards the Tamluk police station on 29 September 1942 when the police fired; she kept holding the tricolour and chanting Vande Mataram as she fell. Option A is wrong because Gohpur in Assam is where Kanaklata Barua was shot leading a procession on 20 September 1942, a very similar event that candidates often confuse with this one. Option C is wrong because Barisal is associated with the Swadeshi Movement of 1905 and with Aswini Kumar Dutta's work. Option D is wrong because Chauri Chaura, where a crowd burnt a police station in February 1922, led Gandhi to withdraw the Non-Cooperation Movement twenty years earlier.