Which of the following Englishmen was among the accused in the Meerut Conspiracy Case?
- A.Allan Octavian Hume
- B.Philip Spratt
- C.William Digby
- D.Henry Cotton
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is B, Philip Spratt. Spratt had been sent to India by the Communist Party of Great Britain and worked with the Workers and Peasants Parties; he was arrested in March 1929 and tried at Meerut along with Benjamin Francis Bradley and Lester Hutchinson, the three Englishmen in the dock. Option A is wrong because Allan Octavian Hume, a retired civil servant, is remembered as the moving spirit behind the founding of the Indian National Congress in 1885. Option C is wrong because William Digby was a journalist and writer on Indian poverty who died in 1904, long before the case. Option D is wrong because Henry Cotton was a liberal civil servant who presided over the Bombay session of the Congress in 1904. The presence of three Englishmen among the accused is exactly the detail papers like to test.
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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