Indian History Quiz: Revolutionary Movement

The correct answer is A, Germany. Bhikaji Cama unfurled a flag of Indian independence at the International Socialist Congress held at Stuttgart in Germany in 1907, and appealed to the delegates to support the Indian cause. The flag, designed with the help of Shyamji Krishna Varma and S. R. Rana, carried the words Vande Mataram and is treated as an early version of the national flag. Option B is wrong because Belgium is not connected with this episode, though Brussels hosted other socialist gatherings of the period. Option C is wrong because Poland was not an independent state in 1907 and had no such congress. Option D is wrong because Sweden is sometimes offered as a distractor by confusing Stuttgart with Stockholm, which is exactly the trap in this question. Remember the chain: Stuttgart, 1907, Bhikaji Cama, and her base in Paris with the paper Vande Mataram.

The correct answer is D, Lala Har Dayal. The Ghadar Party was founded in 1913 at San Francisco by Indian emigrants, mainly Punjabi workers and farmers on the Pacific coast of North America. Sohan Singh Bhakna was its president and Lala Har Dayal was its guiding intellect and the editor of its paper Ghadar, which is why he is the name offered in most papers. Option A is wrong because V. D. Savarkar founded the Abhinav Bharat Society in 1904 and worked from India House in London, not in America. Option B is wrong because Bhagat Singh belonged to a later generation and worked through the Naujawan Bharat Sabha and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. Option C is wrong because Chandra Shekhar Azad led the same HSRA in India in the late 1920s. Link the Ghadar Party with the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 and the failed Ghadar plan of 1915.

The correct answer is A, 1912. A bomb was thrown at Lord Hardinge during his ceremonial entry into Delhi in December 1912, when the capital was being shifted from Calcutta. The Viceroy was injured but survived, and the case became the Delhi Conspiracy Case; Rash Behari Bose planned the action and Basanta Kumar Biswas, who threw the bomb, was hanged. Option B is wrong because 1908 is the year of the Muzaffarpur bomb of Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki and of the Alipore Conspiracy Case. Option C is wrong because 1905 is the year of the partition of Bengal, which began the Swadeshi movement. Option D is wrong because 1901 has no revolutionary action of this kind. A useful anchor is that the bomb and the shifting of the capital to Delhi belong to the same year.

The correct answer is B, Bengal. The Anushilan Samiti, founded in 1902, was the largest revolutionary organisation of Bengal, and its Dhaka branch under Pulin Behari Das was the most tightly organised. It trained members in physical culture and secret work, and its members were involved in the Alipore and later conspiracy cases. Option A is wrong because the revolutionary current in Madras was weak in this period and expressed itself mainly through the Swadeshi press, with V. O. Chidambaram Pillai in the shipping agitation. Option C is wrong because Punjab produced the Ghadar Party abroad and later the Naujawan Bharat Sabha and the HSRA, not the Anushilan Samiti. Option D is wrong because Bombay and Maharashtra had the Abhinav Bharat Society of V. D. Savarkar instead. Pair each province with its society to avoid this common mix-up.

The correct answer is A, V. D. Savarkar. Savarkar had founded a youth body called Mitra Mela at Nasik in 1899 and converted it into the Abhinav Bharat Society in 1904, which spread in Maharashtra and later had branches in London through India House. Option B is wrong because Prafulla Chaki was a Bengal revolutionary who, with Khudiram Bose, attacked a carriage at Muzaffarpur in 1908 and shot himself to avoid arrest. Option C is wrong because Sachindra Nath Sanyal founded the Hindustan Republican Association at Kanpur in 1924 and wrote the memoir Bandi Jivan. Option D is wrong because Rash Behari Bose organised the Delhi bomb action of 1912 and later worked from Japan, where he helped form the Indian Independence League. Fix the year 1904 with Savarkar and Abhinav Bharat.

The correct answer is B, the magistrate Kingsford. Kingsford had passed harsh sentences on young Swadeshi workers as a magistrate at Calcutta and had been transferred to Muzaffarpur. Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki attacked a carriage they believed carried him, but it carried two British women, who were killed. Chaki shot himself and Khudiram Bose was hanged in August 1908, becoming one of the youngest martyrs of the movement. Option A is wrong because Lord Curzon had left India in 1905 and was never a target of this action. Option C is wrong because Curzon Wyllie was shot by Madan Lal Dhingra in London in 1909, a separate episode. Option D is wrong because Saunders, a police officer at Lahore, was shot in 1928 by Bhagat Singh and his comrades to avenge the assault on Lala Lajpat Rai. Keep the three targets and their years distinct.

The correct answer is A, the Hindustan Republican Association. The HRA had been founded at Kanpur in 1924 by Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee and Ram Prasad Bismil, and it needed money for arms, so its members stopped a train near Kakori in the United Provinces and took the government treasury it carried. The trial that followed led to the hanging of Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan, Rajendra Lahiri and Roshan Singh in 1927. Option B is wrong because the HSRA was formed only in 1928, when the HRA was reorganised at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi with a socialist aim. Option C is wrong because the Ghadar Party worked from North America and its plan of 1915 was a wartime one. Option D is wrong because the Anushilan Samiti was a Bengal body of the earlier phase. Note the order: HRA in 1924, Kakori in 1925, HSRA in 1928.

The correct answer is B, Curzon Wyllie. Sir William Hutt Curzon Wyllie was a political aide to the Secretary of State for India, and Madan Lal Dhingra, who belonged to the India House circle of Shyamji Krishna Varma, shot him at a meeting in London in 1909 and was hanged the same year. Option A is wrong because Lord Hardinge was the Viceroy attacked by a bomb in Delhi in 1912 and he survived. Option C is wrong because Kingsford was the magistrate the Muzaffarpur bomb of 1908 was aimed at. Option D is wrong because General Dyer, responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, was shot in London in 1940 by Udham Singh, who is often confused with Dhingra in such questions because both acted in London. Remember Dhingra in 1909 and Udham Singh in 1940.

The correct answer is B, Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi. Revolutionaries from the United Provinces, Punjab and elsewhere met at the ruins of Feroz Shah Kotla in September 1928 and reorganised the Hindustan Republican Association as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, adding socialism to its aim of independence; Chandra Shekhar Azad became its commander in chief. Option A is wrong because Kanpur is where the earlier HRA was founded in 1924. Option C is wrong because Lahore is the city of the Saunders action, the Lahore Conspiracy Case and the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru. Option D is wrong because Chittagong is associated with the armoury raid led by Surya Sen in 1930. The insertion of the word socialist in the name is the point examiners test.

The correct answer is A, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt. The two threw low-intensity bombs into the empty benches of the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929 while the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill were being pushed through, shouted slogans, threw leaflets and refused to escape, so that the trial could be used to explain their ideas. Option B is wrong because Sukhdev was a key organiser of the HSRA and was hanged with Bhagat Singh, but he was not in the Assembly that day. Option C is wrong because Chandra Shekhar Azad never allowed himself to be arrested and Rajguru took part in the Saunders action. Option D is wrong because Surya Sen and Kalpana Dutta belonged to the Chittagong group in Bengal. The slogan that the deaf must be made to hear is linked with this action.

The correct answer is A, Surya Sen. A schoolteacher known as Masterda, Surya Sen led the Indian Republican Army in a raid on the armoury at Chittagong in April 1930, hoisted the national flag and declared a provisional government before the group took to the hills. He was captured in 1933 and hanged in 1934, and Pritilata Waddedar and Kalpana Dutta came from the same circle. Option B is wrong because Pulin Behari Das led the Dhaka Anushilan Samiti in the first decade of the century. Option C is wrong because Barindra Kumar Ghosh belonged to the Maniktala group of 1908 and was convicted in the Alipore Conspiracy Case. Option D is wrong because Jatindra Nath Das died in Lahore jail in 1929 after a hunger strike of sixty-three days. Fix the pair Chittagong and Surya Sen, 1930.

The correct answer is B, Sachindra Nath Sanyal. Sanyal, a founder of the Hindustan Republican Association and the author of its manifesto The Revolutionary, wrote Bandi Jivan, an account of prison life and revolutionary faith that circulated widely among the youth of the 1920s. Option A is wrong because Ram Prasad Bismil is remembered for his autobiography written in the shadow of the gallows and for the poetry associated with his name, not for Bandi Jivan. Option C is wrong because Bhagat Singh wrote the essay Why I Am an Atheist and kept a famous jail notebook. Option D is wrong because Ashfaqullah Khan, hanged in the Kakori case in 1927, left letters and verses rather than a memoir of this kind. Author and book pairs from this period are a steady source of one-mark questions.