Which movement in India was led by Ali brothers Shaukat and Muhammad Ali?

The correct answer is B, Government of India Act of 1858. Passed after the Revolt of 1857, this Act ended the rule of the East India Company and transferred the government of India to the Crown. It abolished the Court of Directors and the Board of Control and created in their place the office of Secretary of State for India, a member of the British Cabinet answerable to Parliament, assisted by a Council of India of fifteen members. The Governor-General was now also styled Viceroy, Lord Canning being the first, which is why the Act is called the Act for the Good Government of India. Option A is wrong because the Indian Councils Act of 1861 added Indians as non-official members to the legislative council. Option C is wrong because the Regulating Act of 1773 was the first British step to control the Company and made Warren Hastings Governor-General of Bengal. Option D is wrong because the Charter Act of 1853 separated legislative from executive functions and began open competition for the civil service. Exam tip: 1858 means Crown rule, the Secretary of State and the first Viceroy.

The correct answer is C, Square or rectangular. At Mehrgarh the excavators found the remains of square and rectangular houses built of hand-made mud bricks, each divided into small compartments that appear to have been used to store grain. Mehrgarh lies on the Kachi plain near the Bolan Pass in Balochistan and was dug by Jean-Francois Jarrige from 1974. It is the earliest farming village known in the subcontinent, where wheat and barley were grown and sheep, goats and cattle were herded, so it is treated as the Neolithic forerunner of the Harappan world rather than a mature Harappan city. Burials there contained beads of lapis lazuli and turquoise and even show early dentistry. Option A is wrong because triangular houses are found at no site of this period. Option B is wrong because circular dwellings belong to Neolithic sites such as Burzahom in Kashmir, where people lived in pits. Option D is wrong for the same reason. Exam tip: Mehrgarh means the earliest evidence of farming, and square mud-brick houses with storage compartments.

The correct answer is C, Both 1 and 2. Wood's Dispatch of 1854, sent by Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control, is called the Magna Carta of English education in India, and both statements describe it correctly. It fixed English as the medium of instruction for higher education while keeping the vernacular languages for the primary stage, and it specifically pressed the government to promote the education of women and to open schools of a vocational and technical kind. It also asked each province to set up a department of public instruction, recommended universities on the model of London University, and favoured grants-in-aid to private schools. Acting on it, the universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were founded in 1857. Option A is wrong because it leaves out the Dispatch's clear support for female and vocational education. Option B is wrong because it denies the recommendation on English as the medium for higher studies. Option D is wrong because both statements are true. Exam tip: Wood's Dispatch 1854 led to the three universities of 1857.

The correct answer is C, Lord Linlithgow. Linlithgow was Viceroy from 1936 to 1944, so the Second World War, the resignation of the Congress ministries, the August Offer of 1940, the Cripps Mission of 1942 and the suppression of the Quit India Movement all fall in his tenure. Option A is wrong because Lord Irwin, Viceroy from 1926 to 1931, is remembered for the Dandi March, the First Round Table Conference and the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1931. Option B is wrong because Lord Willingdon, Viceroy from 1931 to 1936, is remembered for the Communal Award, the Poona Pact and the Government of India Act of 1935. Option D is wrong because Lord Wavell became Viceroy in 1944 and is remembered for the Wavell Plan and the Simla Conference of 1945 and for the Cabinet Mission of 1946.

The correct answer is A, indigo cultivators. At Champaran in Bihar the peasants were compelled under the tinkathia system to grow indigo on a part of their holding for the European planters. Gandhi, invited by Rajkumar Shukla, went there in 1917, defied the order to leave the district and secured a government committee of inquiry on which he served, after which the system was abolished. Option B is wrong because the mill workers were the subject of the Ahmedabad struggle of 1918, in which Gandhi used his first hunger strike to win a wage rise. Option C is wrong because the plantation workers of Assam were not the subject of a Gandhian satyagraha of this kind. Option D is wrong because the salt law was the target of the Dandi March of 1930, thirteen years later, and not of the Champaran struggle.