Gandhi undertook his first fast in India during which of the following struggles?
- A.Champaran Satyagraha
- B.Ahmedabad Mill Strike
- C.Kheda Satyagraha
- D.Rowlatt Satyagraha
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, the Ahmedabad Mill Strike. The strike of 1918 arose when the cotton mill owners of Ahmedabad withdrew the plague bonus they had been paying their workers. Gandhi advised the workers to strike peacefully and to hold out for a thirty-five per cent increase in wages, and when their resolve began to weaken he went on a fast to keep them united; a tribunal later awarded them the thirty-five per cent. Option A is wrong because at Champaran Gandhi conducted an enquiry and practised civil disobedience of an order to leave the district, but he did not fast. Option C is wrong because the Kheda campaign was a refusal to pay land revenue. Option D is wrong because the Rowlatt Satyagraha of 1919 was a nationwide protest. The mill owner Ambalal Sarabhai was Gandhi's friend, and his sister Anasuya Sarabhai led the workers.
Read the full article: Gandhi in South Africa and the Early Satyagrahas
Practice Questions
View allIn which year did Mahatma Gandhi sail to South Africa as the lawyer of an Indian merchant firm?
- A.1888
- B.1891
- C.1893
- D.1896
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Gandhi left for South Africa in 1893 to appear for Dada Abdullah and Company, a Gujarati merchant firm of Durban, in a commercial dispute, and the one year engagement stretched into a stay of twenty-one years.
Read the full explanation →The Natal Indian Congress was founded by Mahatma Gandhi in which year?
- A.1894
- B.1903
- C.1906
- D.1913
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The Natal Indian Congress, founded in 1894, was the first political organisation of Indians in South Africa and it was created to oppose a bill that sought to take away the right of Indians to vote in Natal.
Read the full explanation →Which newspaper was started by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa?
- A.Young India
- B.Harijan
- C.Indian Opinion
- D.Navajivan
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Gandhi started the weekly Indian Opinion in 1903 in South Africa, and it was printed at the Phoenix Settlement in English and Gujarati, carrying the arguments of the Indian community against discriminatory laws.
Read the full explanation →Tolstoy Farm, set up by Gandhi in 1910, was established on land donated by which of his friends?
- A.Hermann Kallenbach
- B.Henry Polak
- C.C. F. Andrews
- D.Sonja Schlesin
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Tolstoy Farm was founded in 1910 near Johannesburg on land given by Hermann Kallenbach, a German-born architect and close friend of Gandhi, and it housed the families of satyagrahis who had gone to jail, training them in manual labour and self-discipline.
Read the full explanation →Which book inspired Gandhi to found the Phoenix Settlement and was translated by him into Gujarati as Sarvodaya?
- A.The Kingdom of God is Within You
- B.Unto This Last
- C.Civil Disobedience
- D.Walden
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Gandhi read John Ruskin's Unto This Last on a train journey in South Africa in 1904, and the idea that the good of the individual lies in the good of all led him at once to found the Phoenix Settlement near Durban; he later rendered the book into Gujarati under…
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