Indian Modern History Test 1

Solution: d) 

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 1

All are correct.

The unhappiness of the sepoys first surfaced in 1824 when the 47th Regiment at Barrackpur was ordered to go to Burma. To the religious Hindu, crossing the sea meant loss of caste.

The rumours about the Government’s secret designs to promote conversions to Christianity further exasperated the sepoys.

The reports about the mixing of bone dust in atta and the introduction of the Enfield rifle enhanced the sepoys’ growing disaffection with the Government.

The sepoys’ discontent was not limited to religion alone. They were equally unhappy with their emoluments.

What was more galling was the sense of deprivation compared to his British counterparts.  He was made  to feel a subordinate at every step and was discriminated against racially and in matters of promotion and privileges.

Solution: d)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 1,

It seems to have been a sort of constitutional monarchical milocracy. The King was king and honoured as such like a constitutional monarch; but instead of a parliament, he had a council of soldiers in whom power rested and of whom he was in no degree a military commander. In other centres, also attempts were made to bring about an organization.

Solution: a)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 2

Machines arrived bit late to India. Hence first statement is incorrect (note 18th century in the question) However, machine produced goods from Britain ruined handicrafts in India.

Other reasons are correct.

The ruin of Indian handicraft industries, as a result of the imposition of free trade in India and levy of discriminatory tariffs against Indian goods in Britain, pauperized millions of artisans. The misery of the artisans was further compounded by the disappearance of their traditional patrons and buyers, the princes, chieftains, and zamindars.

Solution: b)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 2

The suppression of the civil rebellions was a major reason why the Revolt of 1857 did not spread to South India and most of Eastern and Western India. Through suppressions British made sure that there was no active participation by any section of the society in the 1857 Revolt.

Solution: d)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 2

The word Dikus means outsiders.Dikus were the people who made the tribal people depend on them, thereby causing them a lot of misery and suffering. The outsiders consist of traders and money lenders, who can come into the forest . They used to sell the goods not produced in the forests and offer cash loans with high rate of interests.

Solution: b)

India’s struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra Chapter – 3

First statement is wrong as it was the British planters who enforced these contracts (not Zamindars)

The indigo planters, nearly all Europeans, compelled the tenants to grow indigo which they processed in factories set up in rural (mofussil) areas.  The planters forced the peasants to take a meager amount as advance and enter into fraudulent contracts. The price paid for the indigo plants was far below the market price.

The planters could not withstand the united resistance of the ryots, and they gradually began to close their factories. The cultivation of indigo was virtually wiped out from the districts of Bengal by the end of 1860.

Solution: c)

India’s struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra Chapter – 3

Dinabandhu Mitra is primarily known for his play about the plight of indigo farmers Nil Darpan. The Indigo Revolt (1858) or Nilbidraha in Bengali was the revolt of the indigo farmers against the indigo planters. It was just one year after the Sepoy Revolt Bengal saw one more important revolt in its history. Mitra stormed the social and the literary circle of Bengal by his most notable play Nildarpan in the year 1860. It was published from Dhaka and soon after its publication it ignited a major argument in the newspapers.[1] His first hand experience of the indigo cultivators, while on the job as the post master in rural Orissa and Bengal, were reflected in the drama. Michael Madhusudan Dutt translated the play into English immediately after it was published

Solution: b)

India’s struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra Chapter – 3 

Note the word ‘END’ in the question. During the Civil War, cotton export boomed and farmers were happy. However, the end of War resulted in acute depression in cotton exports and a crash in prices in India because the British manufacturers reverted to procuring cotton from America.

Moneylenders who had lent money to ryots started forcing them to pay back loans. They did not make profits as they too suffered due to price crash as all ryots were not in a position to pay back.

Though third statement is subjective, the second one is the most appropriate and right answer.

Solution: b)

India’s struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra Chapter – 6

Akshay Kumar Dutt and Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar were agnostics who refused to be drawn into any discussion on supernatural questions. Asked about the existence of God, Vidyasagar quipped that he had no time to think about God, since there was much to be done on earth. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee and Vivekananda emphasized the secular use of religion and used spirituality to take cognizance of the material conditions of human existence.

Solution: c)

India’s struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra Chapter – 6

Gopal Hari Deshmukh (18 February 1823 – 9 October 1892) was an Indian activist, thinker, social reformer and writer from Maharashtra. His original surname was Shidhaye. Because of ‘Vatan’ (right of Tax collection) that the family had received,the family was later called Deshmukh.[2] Deshmukh is regarded as an important figure of the Social Reform Movement in Maharashtra.

To Gopal Han Deshmukh, popularly known as Lokahitavadi whether social reforms had the sanction of religion was immaterial. If religion did not sanction these, he advocated that religion itself should be changed as it was made by man and what was laid down, in the scriptures need not necessarily be of contemporary relevance.

Solution: b)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 8

Gandhiji had pleaded guilty to the charges.

Statement 2 is correct.

Tilak was arrested and tried on the charge of sedition. Justice Davar awarded him the sentence of six years’ transportation and after some time the Lokamanya was sent to a prison in Mandalay in Burma.

Solution: b)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 9 

The voting record of Indian nominees on the Council was poor. When the Vernacular Press Bill came up before the Council, only one Indian member, Maharaja Jotendra Mohan Tagore, the leader of the zamindari-dominated British Indian Association was present. He voted for it.

What was the role of Indian members in this Legislative Council? The Government had decided to add them in order to represent Indian views, for many British officials and statesmen had come to believe that one reason for the Revolt of 1857 was that Indian views were not known to the rulers. But, in practice, the Council did not serve even this purpose. Indian members were few in number — in thirty years, from 1862 to 1892, only forty-five Indians were nominated to it.

Solution: a)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 9

Born in 1845 in Bombay, Pherozeshah Mehta came under Dadabhai Naoroji’s influence while studying law in London during the 1860s. He was one of the founders of the Bombay Presidency Association as also the Indian National Congress. From about the middle of the 1890s till his death in 1915 he was a dominant figure in the Indian National Congress and was often accused of exercising autocratic authority over it. He was a powerful debater and his speeches were marked by boldness, lucidity, incisiveness, a ready wit and quick repartee, and a certain literary quality.

Solution: c)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 9

Gokhale was to gain great fame for his budget speeches which used to be reported extensively by the newspapers and whose readers would wait eagerly for their morning copy. He was to transform the Legislative Council into an open university for imparting political education to the people.

Gokhale was to be repaid in plenty by the love and recognition of his own people. Proud of his legislative achievement they were to confer him the title of ‘the leader of the opposition’. Gandhiji was to declare him his political guru. And Tilak, his lifelong political opponent, said at his funeral: ‘This diamond of India, this jewel of Maharashtra, this prince of workers, is taking eternal rest on the funeral ground. Look at him and try to emulate him.”

Solution: a)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 10

The reason behind the partition that was officially announced was that the Bengal province was too large to be administered by a single governor and so it would be partitioned on administrative purpose. The real reason behind the partition was political and not administrative. East Bengal was dominated by the Muslims and West Bengal by the Hindus. Partition was yet another part of the divide and rule policy.

Curzon reacted sharply to the almost instant furore that was raised in Bengal over the partition proposals and wrote to the Secretary of State. ‘If we are weak enough to yield to their clamour now, we shall not be able to dismember or reduce Bengal again: and you will be cementing and solidifying a force already formidable and certain to be a source of increasing trouble in the future’. The partition of the state intended to curb Bengali influence by not only placing Bengalis under two admininistrations but by reducing them to a minority in Bengal itself as in the new proposal Bengal proper was to have seventeen million Bengali and thirty-seven million Oriya and Hindi speaking people! Also, the partition was meant to foster another kind of division— this time on the basis of religion. The policy of propping up Muslim communalists as a counter to the Congress and the national movement, which was getting increasingly crystallized in the last quarter of the 19th century. was to be implemented once again.

Solution: d) 

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 7

Three names stand out among the large number of Indians who initiated and carried out the economic analysis of British rule during the years 1870-1905. The tallest of the three was Dadabhai Naoroji, known in the pre-Gandhian era as the Grand Old Man of India. Born in 1825, he became a successful businessman but devoted his entire life and wealth to the creation of a national movement in India. His near contemporary Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, taught an entire generation of Indians the value of modem industrial development. Romesh Chandra Dutt, a retired ICS officer, published The Economic History of India at the beginning of the 20th century in which he examined in minute detail the entire economic record of colonial rule since 1757.

These three leaders along with G.V. Joshi, G. Subramaniya lyer, G.K. Gokhale, Prithwis Chandra Ray and hundreds of other political workers and journalists analysed every aspect of the economy and subjected the entire range of economic issues and colonial economic policies to minute scrutiny.

Solution: a) 

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 7

At the same time, nearly all the early nationalists were clear on one question: However great the need of India for industrialization, it had to be based on Indian capital and not foreign capital. Ever since the1840s, British economists, statesman and officials had seen the investment of foreign capital, along with law and order, as the major instrument for the development of India. John Stuart Mill and Alfred Marshall had put forward this view in their economic treatises. In 1899, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy, said that foreign capital was ‘a sine qua non to the national advancement’ of India.

Similarly, the early nationalists pointed out that the railways had not been coordinated with India’s industrial needs. They had therefore, ushered in a commercial and not an industrial revolution which enabled imported foreign goods to undersell domestic industrial products. Moreover, they said that the benefits of railway construction in terms of encouragement to the steel and machine industry and to capital investment — what today we would call backward and forward linkages — had been reaped by Britain and not India. In fact, remarked G.V. Joshi, expenditure on railways should be seen as Indian subsidy to British industries.’ Or, as Tilak put it, it was like ‘decorating another’s wife.”

Solution: b)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 8

Indian newspapers began to find their feet in the 1870s. They became highly critical of Lord Lytton’s administration, especially regarding its inhuman approach towards the victims of the famine of 1876-77. As a result the Government decided to make a sudden strike at the Indian language newspapers, since they reached beyond the middle class readership. The Vernacular Press Act of 1878, directed only against Indian language newspapers, was conceived in great secrecy and passed at a single sitting of the Imperial Legislative Council. The Act provided for the confiscation of the printing press, paper and other materials of a newspaper if the Government believed that it was publishing seditious materials and had flouted an official warning.

Indian nationalist opinion firmly opposed the Act. The first great demonstration on an issue of public importance was organized in Calcutta on this question when a large meeting was held in the Town Hall. Various public bodies and the Press also campaigned against the Act. Consequently, it was repealed in 1881 by Lord Ripon.

INC was not formed yet. Hence statement 3 is incorrect.

Solution: c)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 8

Born in 1856, Tilak devoted his entire life to the service of his country. In 1881, along with G.G. Agarkar, he founded the newspaper Kesari (in Marathi) and Mahratta (in English). In 1888, he took over the two papers and used their columns to spread discontent against British rule and to preach national resistance to it. Tilak was a fiery and courageous journalist whose style was simple and direct and yet highly readable.

Solution: c)

India’s Struggle for Independence, Bipan Chandra, Chapter – 8 

In 1898, the Government amended Section 124A and added a new Section 153A to the penal code, making it a criminal offence for anyone to attempt ‘to bring into contempt’ the Government of India or to create hatred among different classes, that is vis-a-vis Englishmen in India. This once again led to nation-wide protest.