In 1904, who organised Abhinav Bharat as a secret society of revolutionaries?

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 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.