The Women's Indian Association was founded in 1917 at which place?

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.