Indian History Quiz: Women in the Freedom Struggle

The correct answer is B, Sarojini Naidu. She presided over the Kanpur session of the Congress in 1925 and was the first Indian woman to hold the office; she is also remembered as the Nightingale of India and as the leader of the Dharasana salt satyagraha of May 1930. Option A is wrong because Annie Besant, who presided at Calcutta in 1917, was the first woman President of the Congress but was Irish by birth, so she does not answer a question that asks for the first Indian woman. Option C is wrong because Nellie Sengupta, English by birth, presided over the Calcutta session of 1933, the third woman to hold the post. Option D is wrong because Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit never presided over the Congress; her distinction is that she became the first woman President of the United Nations General Assembly in 1953.

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 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, 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 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 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.

The correct answer is B, Awadh, with Lucknow as its centre. After the annexation of Awadh in 1856 and the exile of Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, Begum Hazrat Mahal proclaimed her young son Birjis Qadr as the ruler and led the rising at Lucknow; when the city fell she withdrew and finally took refuge in Nepal. Option A is wrong because the revolt at Jhansi was led by Rani Lakshmibai, who was killed near Gwalior in June 1858. Option C is wrong because Bareilly was led by Khan Bahadur Khan. Option D is wrong because Kanpur was led by Nana Saheb with Tantia Tope as his commander. Pairing each centre with its leader is the standard way this part of the revolt is tested, so the four names should be memorised together.

The correct answer is B, Sarala Devi Chaudhurani. A niece of Rabindranath Tagore, she set up the Bharat Stree Mahamandal in 1910 to work for the education of women across provinces and classes, and it is counted as the first women's organisation of all-India reach. Option A is wrong because Pandita Ramabai's institutions were the Arya Mahila Samaj of 1882 and the Sharada Sadan of 1889, both earlier but regional in their work and aimed chiefly at widows. Option C is wrong because Margaret Cousins helped found the Women's Indian Association at Madras in 1917 and founded the All India Women's Conference in 1927. Option D is wrong because Ramabai Ranade founded the Seva Sadan in Bombay and Poona, which trained women for work and service.

The correct answer is A, Savitribai Phule. She taught at the school the couple opened at Bhidewada in Pune in 1848 and is remembered as the first woman teacher of the modern Indian school; she also worked for widows and against caste discrimination through the Satyashodhak Samaj. Option B is wrong because Tarabai Shinde is known for her tract Stri Purush Tulana of 1882, a defence of women against the double standards of her time, not for the school. Option C is wrong because Anandi Gopal Joshi was one of the first Indian women to earn a degree in Western medicine, in 1886. Option D is wrong as the answer here because, although Fatima Sheikh taught alongside Savitribai Phule in the same enterprise, the question asks for the founder-teacher who worked with Jyotirao Phule.

The correct answer is C, Madras. The Women's Indian Association was started at Madras in 1917 by Annie Besant, Margaret Cousins and Dorothy Jinarajadasa, and it took up the franchise, education and the removal of social disabilities; its journal was Stri Dharma. Option A is wrong because Bombay is associated with the Seva Sadan and with the All India Women's Conference work of later years rather than with this body's founding. Option B is wrong because Calcutta was the seat of the Bharat Stree Mahamandal of 1910 and of the Congress sessions of 1917 and 1933 presided over by women. Option D is wrong because Lahore is remembered for the Congress session of 1929 and the Purna Swaraj resolution, not for this association. The year 1917 is easy to fix in memory because the same year brought the women's deputation to Montagu.

The correct answer is A, the Heraka movement of the Naga hills. Gaidinliu, a Rongmei Naga, joined her cousin Haipou Jadonang's Heraka movement, which combined religious revival with resistance to British rule, and took over its leadership after he was hanged in 1931. Arrested in 1932 while still in her teens, she remained in jail until 1947; Jawaharlal Nehru, who met her in Shillong jail, gave her the title Rani. Option B is wrong because the Ulgulan of Birsa Munda was in Chhotanagpur at the end of the nineteenth century. Option C is wrong because the Santhal rebellion of 1855 to 1856 was led by Sidhu and Kanhu. Option D is wrong because the Bardoli satyagraha of 1928 was a peasant movement in Gujarat led by Vallabhbhai Patel.

The correct answer is A. Fifteen women were members of the Constituent Assembly, and Begum Aizaz Rasul was the only Muslim woman among them; Dakshayani Velayudhan was its only Dalit woman member. Option B is wrong because Sarojini Naidu was one of several women in the Assembly, which also included Hansa Mehta, Durgabai Deshmukh, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, Renuka Ray, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit and Sucheta Kriplani. Option C is wrong on the plain fact; women took part in the debates on fundamental rights, on the uniform civil code and on the status of minorities. Option D is wrong because the Drafting Committee was chaired by Dr B. R. Ambedkar; Sucheta Kriplani's remembered moment in the Assembly is her singing of Vande Mataram at the session of 14 August 1947.