Modern Indian History & Freedom Struggle Questions (MCQs)

Notes:
The Indian nationalists advocated a policy of peace, in place of an aggressive imperialism. C. Sankaran Nair, the Congress president in 1897, said, “Our true policy is a peaceful policy.”

Notes:
The Agra famine which happened in 1837–1838 was a famine in the newly established North-Western Provinces of Company-ruled India. It affected an area of 25,000 square miles (65,000 km2) and a population of 8 million people.

Notes:
Mahatma Gandhi visited Champaran in Bihar, near the Nepal border, on 10 April 1917 along with Dr Rajendra Prasad, and others. He was invited there by disgruntled tenant farmers of indigo plantations (blue dye) who alleged unfair treatment by their European masters: for many years, they had been forced into planting indigo (for dyes) on a portion of their land and then selling it at below-market prices to the British planters who had leased them the land. Reportedly, a Bihari farmer Rajkumar Shukla approached Gandhi in Lucknow in 1916 with a request to examine their plight, and pursued Gandhi wherever he went till Gandhi agreed to accompany him. WB Heycock, the district magistrate, ordered Gandhi to leave the district. Refusing to comply, Gandhi responded: “I feel it to be my duty to say that I am unable to leave this district, but if it pleases the authorities I shall suffer the penalty of disobedience. I have disregarded the order served upon me in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience.” The Raj conceded Gandhi’s right to conduct his inquiry, as a result of which the Champaran Agrarian Act came into force in Bihar on 29 November 1917.

Notes:
The Mont-Ford Reforms of 1918 and the GoI Act of 1919 had envisaged their review after 10 years. Accordingly, the Simon Commission, under the chairmanship of Sir John Simon, was set up in 1928. It comprised seven British Members of Parliament of the UK, including the Labour leader Clement Attlee (1883-1967) who was subsequently the British Prime Minister between 1945 and 1951. The Commission was tasked with reporting India’s constitutional progress, and for suggesting further constitutional reforms. Outraged at the exclusion of Indians from the Commission that was to determine India’s constitutional future, the Indian National Congress (INC), at its December 1927 meeting in Madras, resolved to boycott the Commission. The Simon Commission, upon its arrival in Bombay on 3 February 1928, was greeted with strikes, protests and black flags. The protests were repeated in each major city the Commission visited, accompanied by the slogan “Simon go back!” A faction of Muslim League, Hindus and Sikhs, however, cooperated with the Commission. An All-India Committee for Cooperation with the Simon Commission was established.
The Commission’s two-volume report published in May 1930 proposed, inter alia, abolition of diarchy and the establishment of representative government in the provinces; retention of separate communal electorates until tensions between Hindus and Muslims dies down. The Simon Commission ultimately led to the Government of India Act 1935, which established representative government at the provincial level; and is the basis of many parts of the current Indian Constitution. In accordance with the GoI Act 1935, the first elections were held in the Provinces in 1937 that brought Congress Governments in power in most of the Provinces.

Notes:
Surya Sen (1894-1934) was the Founder of the Chittagong Republican Army with the objective to liberate Chittagong from the British rule through an armed revolt and by attacking the imperialist strongholds. For the accomplishment of this plan, on April 18,1930, the Chittagong (or Indian) Republican Army, under Surya Sen raided the two government armories and completely disrupted the telephone, telegraph and railway systems, due to which Chittagong was cut off completely from the rest of India. After attacks Surya Sen called for the formation of a free national revolutionary government. But this endeavor didn’t go for long. After successive defeats, he used Guerrilla Warfare and spread his revolutionary activities to the adjoining districts. After 3 years of brave struggle he was arrested in February 1933, and was sentenced to death. He was one of the last revolutionary martyrs to get hanged and after his martyrdom, the revolutionary activities almost came to an end.

Notes:
The resolution for the establishment of a separate homeland for the Muslims of British India passed in the annual session of the All India Muslim League held in Lahore on 22–24 March 1940 is a landmark document of Pakistan’s history. This resolution was presented by A. K. Fazlul Huq. This resolution helped league gain ascendency in popular Muslim perception on the hope of a separate country.

Notes:
On 3 June 1947, Mountbatten announced the Partition Plan: Power to be relinquished to the two Governments of India and Pakistan on the basis of Dominion Status by 15 August 1947, much earlier than the original date of June 1948. In regard to the Princely States, the plan laid down that the policy of His Majesty’s Government towards the Indian Princely States contained in the Cabinet Mission memorandum of 12 May 1946 would remained unchanged—the British Paramountcy would lapse, and their status would revert to what it was before.

Notes:
Basanti Devi was the wife of C R Das. She took part in the Non Cooperation Movement. She renounced the active politics after death of C R Das. Basanti Devi was the first Indian woman to be arrested during the non-cooperation movement for selling khadi. In the year 1973, she was awarded the Padma Vibhushan.

Notes:
Kamla Devi Chaltopadhyaya was the first Indian women who contested the elections in 1926, also represented the Indian women delegation to the Women International Conference at Berlin and hoisted the flag there. As a result, she was awarded rigorous imprisonment for 9 months. Later, she was released from Jail but again arrested at a number of times during the year 1944. She was decorated with Padma Bhushan in independent India. She also worked towards promotion of handicrafts and handloom. She was president of the all-India women’s conference and the Indian cooperative union; chairperson, all-India handicrafts board, and all-India designs centre, etc. she was the recipient of the watumall award (1962) and of the Magsaysay award (1966) for community leadership.

Notes:
The Act of 1861 had two main objectives: the establishment and administration, under strict magisterial control, of a single unified police force in every province which was to be used it to keep the people of the country effectively under control.