The Meerut Conspiracy Case, in which labour and communist organisers were prosecuted, began in which year?
- A.1924
- B.1927
- C.1929
- D.1934
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is C, 1929. Sweeping arrests were made in March 1929, soon after the great strikes of 1928, and the trial at Meerut went on until 1933, making it one of the longest political trials of the colonial period. Option A is wrong because 1924 is the year of the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case, a smaller prosecution with four men convicted. Option B is wrong because 1927 is the closing year of the Peshawar Conspiracy Cases, which were run against the muhajirs who had trained in Soviet Russia. Option D is wrong because 1934 is the year in which the Communist Party was declared unlawful and in which the Congress Socialist Party was formed, not the year of the Meerut arrests. Remember the sequence the examiner tests: Peshawar from 1922, Kanpur in 1924, Meerut from 1929 to 1933.
Read the full article: Trade Unions and the Left Movement in British India: Notes
Practice Questions
View allWho among the following was NOT associated with the Kanpur Conspiracy Case of 1924?
- A.Muzaffar Ahmed
- B.Nalini Gupta
- C.Shaukat Usmani
- D.M.A. Ansari
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Ansari. Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari was a physician and a Congress leader who presided over the Madras session of the Congress in 1927; he had nothing to do with the communist prosecutions and was never an accused in the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case.
Read the full explanation →The Bombay Mill-Hands Association, regarded as the first labour association in India, was founded in 1884 by
- A.Narayan Meghaji Lokhande
- B.Sasipada Banerjee
- C.B. P. Wadia
- D.Dewan Chaman Lall
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A follower of Jyotiba Phule and the editor of the Marathi paper Dinbandhu, Lokhande organised the Bombay mill workers in 1884 and placed their demands for shorter hours and a weekly holiday before the Factory Commission, which is why the body is called the first labour association in India.
Read the full explanation →The Madras Labour Union, considered the first trade union of India, was founded in 1918 by
- A.Singaravelu Chettiar
- B.B. P. Wadia
- C.N. M. Joshi
- D.S. A. Dange
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Bahman Pestonji Wadia, a theosophist associated with Annie Besant, organised the workers of the Buckingham and Carnatic Mills at Madras in 1918 into the Madras Labour Union, the first body in India with members, subscriptions and office bearers, and therefore the first trade union in the modern sense.
Read the full explanation →Who was the first president of the All India Trade Union Congress, founded in 1920?
- A.Dewan Chaman Lall
- B.Joseph Baptista
- C.Lala Lajpat Rai
- D.V. V. Giri
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The All India Trade Union Congress was founded at Bombay on 31 October 1920 and Lala Lajpat Rai, the Punjab Congress leader, took the chair as its first president, linking the labour cause to the national movement.
Read the full explanation →The Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association, known as the Majoor Mahajan Sangh and founded in 1920, grew out of a strike led by
- A.Mahatma Gandhi
- B.Vallabhbhai Patel
- C.Indulal Yagnik
- D.Lala Lajpat Rai
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In 1918 Gandhi led the Ahmedabad mill workers in their demand for a wage rise and undertook his first fast as a weapon in an industrial dispute; out of that struggle grew the Ahmedabad Textile Labour Association in 1920, which stood for arbitration between workers and owners rather than class…
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