Indian History Quiz: Peasant and Tribal Movements

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 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 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.

The correct answer is B, the Deccan Agriculturists' Relief Act, 1879. After the riots of 1875 the government enquired into peasant indebtedness in the Deccan and passed this Act, which restricted the moneylender's power to have a debtor's land sold in execution of a decree and gave the courts power to look behind the bond. A is wrong because the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885 followed the Pabna agitation of 1873 and gave occupancy rights to tenants in Bengal. C is wrong because the Champaran Agrarian Act of 1918 followed Gandhi's satyagraha of 1917 and abolished the tinkathia system of indigo cultivation in Bihar. D is wrong because the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908 followed Birsa Munda's Ulgulan and protected khuntkatti land in the tribal tracts. Learning each rising with the Act that followed it turns this whole chapter into four or five safe marks.

The correct answer is B, Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu. The Santhal Hool, the largest tribal rising before 1857, was led by the brothers Sidhu and Kanhu Murmu, with Chand and Bhairav beside them, in the Damin-i-Koh tract of the Rajmahal hills. The Santhals rose against moneylenders, zamindars and railway contractors, declared the Company's rule at an end, and were suppressed after a year; the Santhal Parganas were then made a separate district in 1855. A is wrong because Birsa Munda led the Ulgulan of 1899 and Jatra Bhagat the Tana Bhagat movement of 1914. C is wrong because Chakra Bisoi led the Khond uprising in the Odisha hills and Tomma Sora the Koya rising of 1879. D is wrong because Tirot Singh led the Khasi uprising and Gomdhar Konwar the Ahom revolt of 1828.

The correct answer is A, great tumult. Ulgulan is the Mundari word for a great upheaval or tumult, and it is the name the Mundas gave to the rising Birsa Munda led in Chhotanagpur from 1899 to 1900 against landlords, moneylenders, contractors and missionaries. Birsa was called Dharti Aba, the father of the earth, and the rising forced the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act of 1908. B is wrong because the rising, though it had a religious side in Birsa's new faith, was never described as a holy war. C is wrong because the share of three parts, or two-thirds of the produce, is the demand of the Tebhaga movement of Bengal in 1946. D is wrong because the Mundas' land claim was expressed in the specific word khuntkatti, the right of the family that first cleared the land.

The correct answer is C, the Munda Ulgulan. The rising led by Birsa Munda from 1899 to 1900 compelled the government to pass the Chotanagpur Tenancy Act in 1908, which recognised the khuntkatti right by which a Munda family held the land its ancestors had cleared and prohibited beth begari, the practice of forced unpaid labour. A is wrong because the Santhal Hool of 1855 produced a different measure, the creation of the Santhal Parganas as a separate district closed to outsiders. B is wrong because the Kol uprising of 1831 to 1832, led by Buddhu Bhagat, led only to administrative changes in the south-west frontier agency. D is wrong because the Tana Bhagat movement of 1914, begun by Jatra Bhagat among the Oraons, was a non-violent reform movement that later merged with the Congress and produced no such Act.

The correct answer is C, the Bardoli Satyagraha. In 1928 the peasants of Bardoli in Surat district refused to pay a land revenue enhancement of about thirty per cent. Vallabhbhai Patel organised the refusal, an enquiry by Broomfield and Maxwell followed, and the enhancement was cut to about six per cent; the women of Bardoli gave Patel the title Sardar. A is wrong because the Kheda Satyagraha of 1918, in which Patel also took part, was led by Gandhi and sought remission of revenue after a crop failure. B is wrong because the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 was Gandhi's first satyagraha in India and concerned the tinkathia indigo system of Bihar. D is wrong because the Mappila rising of 1921 in Malabar was a tenants' revolt against janmi landlords, joined to the Khilafat agitation.

The correct answer is B, Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. The All India Kisan Sabha was founded at Lucknow in April 1936, and Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, who had built the Bihar Kisan Sabha, was elected its first president. A, N. G. Ranga, is the trap in this question: the peasant leader from Andhra was the organisation's first general secretary, not its president. C is wrong because Baba Ramchandra led the Awadh Kisan Sabha of 1920 in the United Provinces and was not the president of the national body. D is wrong because Indulal Yagnik worked with Gandhi and Patel in the Kheda Satyagraha of 1918 and in Gujarat's peasant politics, but he did not head the All India Kisan Sabha at its founding. Remember also that the body was renamed the All India Kisan Sabha and met alongside the Congress session at Faizpur the same year.

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 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 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.