Indian Modern History Test 3

Answer – a

• The story of Champaran begins in the early nineteenth century when European planters had involved the cultivators in agreements that forced them to cultivate indigo on 3/20th of their holdings (known as the tinkathia system). Towards the end of the nineteenth century, German synthetic dyes forced indigo out of the market and the European planters of Champaran, keen to release the cultivators from the obligation of cultivating indigo, tried to turn their necessity to their advantage by securing enhancements in rent and other illegal dues as a price for the release. Resistance had surfaced in 1908 as well, but the exactions of the planters continued till Raj Kumar Shukla, a local man, decided to follow Gandhiji all over the country to persuade him to come to Champaran to investigate the problem.
• Gandhiji and his colleagues, who now included Brij Kishore, Rajendra Prasad and other members of the Bihar intelligentsia, Mahadev Desai and Narhari Parikh, two young men from Gujarat who had thrown in their lot with Gandhiji, and J.B. Kripalani, toured the villages and from dawn to dusk recorded the statements of peasants

Answer  – c

• A dispute was brewing between them and the mill owners over the question of a ‘plague bonus’ the employers wanted to withdraw once the epidemic had passed but the workers insisted it stay, since the enhancement hardly compensated for the rise in the cost of living during the War. The British Collector, who feared a showdown, asked Gandhiji to bring pressure on the mill owners and work out a compromise.
• Ambalal Sarabhai, one of the leading mill owners of the town, was a friend of Gandhiji, and had just saved the Sabarmati Ashram from extinction by a generous donation. Gandhiji persuaded the mill owners and the workers to agree to arbitration by a tribunal, but the mill owners, taking advantage of a stray strike, withdrew from the agreement.

Answer – d

• The dispute in Ahmedabad had not yet ended when Gandhiji learnt that the peasants of Kheda district were in extreme distress due to a failure of crops, and that their appeals for the remission of land revenue were being ignored by the Government. Enquiries by members of the Servants of India Society, Vithalbhai Patel and Gandhiji confirmed the validity of the peasants’ case. This was that as the crops were less than one-fourth of the normal yield, they were entitled under the revenue code to a total remission of the land revenue.
• The Gujarat Sabha, of which Gandhiji was the President, played a leading role in the agitation
• Vallabhbhai Patel, a young lawyer and a native of Kheda district, and other young men, including Indulal Yagnik, joined Gandhiji in touring the villages and urging the peasants to stand firm in the face of increasing Government repression which included the seizing of cattle and household goods and the attachment of standing crops.

Answer – c

• The cultivators were asked to take a solemn pledge that they would not pay; those who could afford to pay were to take a vow that they would not pay in the interests of the poorer ryots who would otherwise panic and sell off their belongings or incur debts in order to pay the revenue. However, if the Government agreed to suspend collection of land revenue, the ones who could afford to do so could pay the whole amount.
• The peasants of Kheda, already hard pressed because of plague, high prices and drought, were beginning to show signs of weakness when Gandhiji came to know that the Government had issued secret instructions directing that revenue should be recovered only from those peasants who could pay. A public declaration of this decision would have meant a blow to Government prestige, since this was exactly what Gandhiji had been demanding. In these circumstances, the movement was

Answer – a

Even those who were willing to treat the happenings at Jallianwala Bagh and other
places in Punjab as aberrations, that would soon be ‘corrected’, were disillusioned when they discovered that the Hunter Committee appointed by the Government to enquire into the Punjab disturbances was an eye wash and that the House of Lords had voted in favour of General Dyer’s action, and that the British public had demonstrated its support by helping the Morning Post collect 30,000 pounds for General Dyer

Answer – d

• Gandhiji, who had been in close touch with the Khilafat leaders for quite some time, and was a special invitee to the Khilafat Conference in November 1919. In February 1920, he suggested to the Khilafat Committee that it adopt a programme of non-violent non-cooperation to protest the Government’s behaviour. On 9 June 1920, the Khilafat Committee at Allahabad unanimously accepted the suggestion of non-cooperation and asked Gandhiji to lead the movement.
• The movement was launched formally on 1 August 1920, after the expiry of the notice that Gandhiji had given to the Viceroy in his letter of 22 June, in which he had asserted the right recognized ‘from time immemorial of the subject to refuse to assist a ruler who misrules.’ Lokamanya Tilak passed away in the early hours of 1 August, and the day of mourning and of launching of the movement merged as people all over the country observed hartal and took out processions.
• Congress met in September at Calcutta and accepted non-cooperation as its own. By December, when the Congress met for its annual session at Nagpur, the opposition had melted away; the elections were over and, therefore, the boycott of councils was a non-issue

Answer – a

At Nagpur session of Congress, it was decided that Congress was now to have a Working Committee of fifteen members to look after its day-today affairs. This proposal, when first made by Tilak in 1916, had been shot down by the Moderate opposition. Gandhiji, too, knew that the Congress could not guide a sustained movement unless it had a compact body that worked round the year. Provincial Congress Committees were now to be organized on a linguistic basis, so that they could keep in touch with the people by using the local language. The Congress organization was to reach down to the village and the mohalla level by the formation of village and mohalla or ward committees. The membership fee was reduced to four annas per year to enable the poor to become members.

Answer – a

During NCM, the boycott of law courts by lawyers was not as successful as the educational boycott, but it was very dramatic and spectacular. Many leading lawyers of the country, like C.R. Das, Motilal Nehru, M.R. Jayakar, Saifuddin Kitchlew, Vallabhbhai Patel, C. Rajagopalachari, T. Prakasam and Asaf Ali gave up lucrative practices, and their sacrifice became a source of inspiration for many.

Answer – c

There was a complaint at a students meeting Gandhiji addressed in Madurai that khadi was too costly. Gandhiji retorted that the answer lay in wearing less clothes and, from that day, discarded his dhoti and kurta in favour of a langot. For the rest of his life, he remained a ‘half-naked fakir.’

Answer – a

• Tilak died on the morning of the day when Non Cooperation Movement was slated to start on August 1, 1920
• In July 1921, a new challenge was thrown to the Government. Mohammed Ali, at the All India
  Khilafat Conference held at Karachi on 8 July, declared that it was ‘religiously unlawful for the
  Muslims to continue in the British Army’ and asked that this be conveyed to every Muslim in the
  As a result, Mohammed Ali, along with other leaders, was immediately arrested.
• The next dramatic event was the visit of the Prince of Wales which began on 17 November, 1921

Answer – a

In Assam, labourers on tea plantations went on strike. When the fleeing workers were fired upon,
there were strikes on the steamer service, and on the Assam-Bengal Railway as well. J.M. Sengupta,
the Bengali nationalist leader, played a leading role in these developments.

Answer – a

In May 1921, Government had tried, through the
Gandhi-Reading talks, to persuade Gandhiji to ask the Ali brothers to withdraw from their speeches
those passages that contained suggestions of violence; this was an attempt to drive a wedge between
the Khilafat leaders and Gandhiji, but it failed.

Answer – b

Gandhiji had been under considerable pressure from the Congress rank and file as well as the
leadership to start the phase of mass civil disobedience. The Ahmedabad session of the Congress in
December 1921 had appointed him the sole authority on the issue. The Government showed no signs
of relenting and had ignored both the appeal of the All-Parties Conference held in mid-January 1922
as well as Gandhiji’s letter to the Viceroy announcing that, unless the Government lifted the ban on
civil liberties and released political prisoners, he would be forced to go ahead with mass civil
disobedience. The Viceroy was unmoved and, left with no choice, Gandhiji announced that mass civil
disobedience would begin in Bardoli taluqa of Surat district, and that all other parts of the country
should cooperate by maintaining total discipline and quiet so that the entire attention of the movement
could be concentrated on Bardoli. But Bardoli was destined to wait for another six years before it
could launch a no-tax movement. Its fate was decided by the action of members of a Congress and
Khilafat procession in Chauri Chaura in Gorakhpur district of U.P. on 5 February 1922.

Answer – a

1. Palme Dutt in India Today, have continued to condemn the decision taken by Gandhiji to withdraw NCM, and seen in it proof of the Mahatma’s concern for the propertied classes of Indian society. According to Dutt, he withdrew it because the action at Chauri Chaura was a symbol and an indication of the growing militancy of the Indian masses, of their growing radicalization, of their willingness to launch an attack on the status quo of property relations. Frightened by this radical possibility and by the prospect of the movement going out of his hands and into the hands of radical forces, and in order to protect the interests of landlords and capitalists who would inevitably be at the receiving end of this violence, Gandhiji cried halt to the movement.

Answer – a

• In 1914, Annie Beasant decided to enlarge the sphere of her activities to include the building of a movement for Home Rule on the lines of the Irish Home Rule League. For this, she realized it was necessary both to get the sanction of the Congress, as well as the active cooperation of the Extremists. She devoted her energies, therefore, to persuading the Moderate leaders to open the doors of the Congress to Tilak and his fellow-Extremists.
• But the annual Congress session in December 1914 was to prove a disappointment – Pherozeshah Mehta and his Bombay Moderate group succeeded, by winning over Gokhale and the Bengal Moderates, in keeping out the Extremists. Tilak and Besant thereupon decided to revive political activity on their own, while maintaining their pressure on the Congress to re-admit the Extremist group. She had inserted a condition by which, if the Congress did not start this activity by September 1916, she would be free to set up her own League.

Answer – c

In early 1915, Annie Besant launched a campaign through her two papers, New India and Commonweal, and organized public meetings and conferences to demand that India be granted selfgovernment on the lines of the White colonies after the War.

Answer – a

Tilak, not bound by any such commitment with Congress as Annie Beasant was, and having gained the right of readmission, took the
lead and set up the Home Rule League at the Bombay Provincial Conference held at Belgaum in April 1916.

Answer – d

• Annie Besant’s impatient followers, unhappy with her decision to wait till September, secured her permission to start Home Rule groups. Jamnadas Dwarkadas, Shankerlal Banker and Indulal Yagnik set up a Bombay paper Young India and launched an All India Propaganda Fund to publish pamphlets in regional languages and in English.

Answer – a

• Tilak’s League was to work in Maharashtra, (excluding Bombay city), Karnataka, the Central Provinces and Berar, and Annie Besant’s League was given charge of the rest of India.
• The reason the two Leagues did not merge was because, in Annie Besant’s words, ‘some of his followers disliked me and some of mine disliked him. We, however, had no quarrel with each other.’

Answer – a

• MN Roy was even instrumental in forming the Communist International in Soviet Union to integrate anti-colonial struggles across the world. However he got deranged with Communist politics in Soviet and even Karl Marx later, and he envisaged decentralised polity.
• Bose was hugely influenced by leftist politics as Nehru was.
• Sardar Patel was a conservative, or say “right wing” politician whose ideology revolved around Gandhiji also who was amalgamation of many ideas.