Which of the following Acts was enacted in British India in the year 1878?

The correct answer is A, 1905. Lord Curzon announced the partition of Bengal on 19 July 1905 and it came into effect on 16 October 1905, splitting the province into a Muslim-majority eastern half and the rest of Bengal. The reason given in public was that Bengal had grown too large to administer, but the real aim was to weaken the nationalist movement there by dividing Hindus and Muslims. The protest against it began the Swadeshi and boycott movement, in which foreign cloth was burnt and Indian goods, schools and banks were promoted, and Rabindranath Tagore's song Amar Sonar Bangla belongs to those days. The anger was so wide that the partition was finally cancelled in 1911, when the capital was also moved from Calcutta to Delhi. B is wrong because 1901 is the year Queen Victoria died. C is wrong because 1907 is the year of the Surat split in the Congress. D is wrong because 1911 is the year the partition was revoked, not made. Exam tip: announced in 1905 by Curzon, revoked in 1911 under Hardinge.

The correct answer is D, land gifted to temples. Chola inscriptions use a separate term for every kind of land grant, and tirunamattukkani is the land whose produce was set apart for a temple. The Cholas ruled the Kaveri delta from the ninth to the thirteenth century and had their land settlements cut into temple walls in Tamil, which is why historians can still name each category. In the same lists, brahmadeya was land given to Brahmanas, vellanvagai was the land of ordinary non-Brahmana peasant owners who paid tax to the state, shalabhoga was land whose income ran a school, and pallichchhandam was land given to Jaina establishments. A is wrong because land gifted to Brahmanas was called brahmadeya. B is wrong because the holdings of non-Brahmana peasant proprietors were vellanvagai. C is wrong because a grant to Jaina institutions was pallichchhandam. Exam tip: brahmadeya to Brahmanas, vellanvagai to peasants, shalabhoga to a school, pallichchhandam to Jainas, tirunamattukkani to a temple.

The correct answer is A, 1856. The Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act was passed in July 1856 and made the remarriage of a Hindu widow lawful, so that the children of such a marriage were treated as legitimate. It came after a long campaign by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the Sanskrit scholar of Bengal, who argued from the shastras themselves that remarriage was allowed, and who gathered thousands of signatures in its support. The reformer also had to accept a condition in the Act by which a widow who remarried gave up the property she held from her first husband. B is wrong because 1858 is the year of Queen Victoria's Proclamation, which passed the rule of India to the Crown. C is wrong because 1859 is remembered for the Bengal Rent Act and the Indigo revolt, not for this law. D is wrong because 1862 is the year the High Courts were set up at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. Exam tip: 1829 sati banned, 1856 widow remarriage allowed, 1891 Age of Consent Act.

The correct answer is D, Charter Act – 1833. This Act ended the last trading rights of the East India Company, its monopoly of trade with China and of the tea trade, and turned the Company into a purely administrative body holding India in trust for the British Crown. The same Act made the Governor-General of Bengal the Governor-General of India, with William Bentinck the first to hold that title, gave him alone the power to legislate for the whole of British India, and added a Law Member to his council, a post first held by Macaulay, who led the work on a common code of law. A is wrong because the Regulating Act of 1773 was only the first step towards control, setting up a Supreme Court at Calcutta. B is wrong because Pitt's India Act of 1784 created the Board of Control and the system of dual government. C is wrong because the Charter Act of 1813 opened Indian trade to all British merchants but kept the Company's monopoly of trade with China and in tea. Exam tip: 1813 – Indian trade opened except tea and China; 1833 – that exception also removed.

The correct answer is C, Satyashodak Samaj – Maharashtra. Jyotirao Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj, the Truth Seekers' Society, at Pune in 1873 to fight caste rank and priestly control in Maharashtra. Phule, helped by his wife Savitribai, had already opened schools for girls and for children of the castes then called low, and in his book Gulamgiri he compared the state of the Shudras with that of slaves. The Samaj arranged marriages without Brahmin priests and spoke for peasants, workers and women. A is wrong because the Satnami movement was led by Guru Ghasidas among the leather-working castes of Chhattisgarh, not in Punjab. B is wrong because the Matua sect was started by Harichand Thakur among the Namasudras of Bengal, not in Tamil Nadu. D is wrong because the Arya Samaj was founded by Dayanand Saraswati in 1875 and was strongest in Punjab and north India, not Kerala. Exam tip: Phule – Satyashodhak Samaj, Pune 1873, Gulamgiri; Ghasidas – Satnami, Chhattisgarh.