Books by Freedom Fighters and Leaders: Author Pairs and MCQs

Book and author questions are the easiest marks in the general awareness paper, because nothing in them changes with the year. The leaders of the national movement were also writers: they wrote autobiographies in prison, argued their politics in pamphlets, and ran newspapers to reach people who could not attend a meeting. Examiners take one title, place four names against it, and move on. The only preparation that works is to fix each title to one person and to read the list often enough that the pairing comes back without effort. This chapter arranges the pairs in the order in which they are usually asked.

Gandhi and Nehru: the two most asked writers

Mahatma Gandhi wrote his autobiography in Gujarati under the title Satya Na Prayogo; it is known in English as The Story of My Experiments with Truth, and Mahadev Desai translated it. His other famous work is Hind Swaraj, written in 1909 during the voyage from London to South Africa, a dialogue between an editor and a reader in which he sets out his idea of self-rule and his criticism of modern civilisation. He also translated Ruskin's Unto This Last into Gujarati as Sarvodaya, and he edited the journals Indian Opinion, Young India, Navajivan and Harijan.

Jawaharlal Nehru wrote almost all his books in prison. The Discovery of India was written at Ahmednagar Fort during his last imprisonment; Glimpses of World History is a set of letters written to his daughter Indira from jail; the earlier Letters from a Father to His Daughter is the shorter collection written to her as a child; and his Autobiography also appeared under the title Toward Freedom.

Books of the early nationalists and revolutionaries

Autobiographies and memoirs

The word autobiography in the question is itself a clue, because only a few leaders wrote one. India Wins Freedom is the account of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, and it is the standard answer whenever the options carry the years around Independence. Rajendra Prasad wrote an Atmakatha and also the book India Divided. Lala Lajpat Rai wrote The Story of My Deportation after being sent to Mandalay in 1907. Among the writings of B. R. Ambedkar, the most asked are Annihilation of Caste, an address he prepared in 1936 that was never delivered, The Problem of the Rupee, Who Were the Shudras and The Buddha and His Dhamma. Sarojini Naidu, called the Nightingale of India, is asked for her poetry: The Golden Threshold, The Bird of Time and The Broken Wing.

Newspapers and journals started by leaders

How the traps are built

Three confusions account for most lost marks here. The first is between Gandhi's two famous works: the autobiography is The Story of My Experiments with Truth and the political tract of 1909 is Hind Swaraj, and a question that says autobiography rules the second one out. The second is between Nehru's three books, where Glimpses of World History and Letters from a Father to His Daughter are both collections of letters to Indira, while The Discovery of India is a continuous work on Indian history and civilisation. The third is the set of titles that sound like each other: Unhappy India by Lala Lajpat Rai, India Divided by Rajendra Prasad and India Wins Freedom by Maulana Azad. Read the exact words of the title in the question before choosing, because the examiner has chosen them with care.