Which among the following places, was not an important centre of the Revolt of 1857?
(a) Agra
(b) Kanpur
(c) Jhansi
(d) Lucknow
Solution: (a)
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys of the East India Company’s army on 10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to present-day Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, northern Madhya Pradesh, and the Delhi region. Some of the famous leaders of the revolt were: Kanpur: Nana Saheb; Jhansi: Rani Laxmi Bai; and Lucknow: Begum Hazrat Mahal.
Who among the following was famous for framing the education minute?
(a) Lord Elgin
(b) Lord Macaulay
(c) Sadler
(d) None of these
Solution: (b)
Lord Macaulay introduced English education in India through his famous minute of February 1835. He called an educational system that would create a class of anglicized Indians who would serve as cultural intermediaries between the British and the Indi ans. Macaulay succeeded in implementing ideas previously put forward by Lord William Bentinck, the governor general since 1829.
Swami Dayanand Saraswati established the first Arya Samaj in 1875 at
(a) Bombay
(b) Lahore
(c) Nagpur
(d) Ahmadnagar
Solution: (a)
Arya Samaj is a Hindu reform movement founded by Swami Dayananda in Bombay on 7 April, 1875. The membership amounted to 100 persons, including Swami Dayanand. On the 24th of June, 1877, the second major Arya Samaj was established at Lahore.
Who started the Home Rule Movement?
(a) Annie Beasant
(b) Padmaja Naidu
(c) Kamla Devi Chattopadyaya
(d) Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur
Solution: (a)
The All India Home Rule League was a national political organization founded in 1916 to lead the national demand for self-government, termed Home Rule, and to obtain the status of a Dominion within the British Empire as enjoyed by Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Newfoundland at the time. When World War I broke out in 1914 Annie Besant helped launch the Home Rule League to campaign for democracy in India and dominion status within the Empire. This led to her election as president of the India National Congress in late 1917.
‘Neel Darpan’ a play depicting the revolt against the indigo planters was written by
(a) Dinbandhu Mitra
(b) Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
(c) Rabindranath Tagore
(d) Naveen Chandra Sen
Solution: (a)
Nil Darpan is a Bengali play written by Dinabandhu Mitra in 1858–1859. The play was essential to Nilbidraha, or Indigo revolt of February–March 1859 in Bengal, when farmers refused to sow indigo in their fields as a protest against exploitative farming under the British Raj. It was also essential to the development of theater in Bengal and influenced Girish Chandra Ghosh, who, in 1872, would establish The National Theatre in Calcutta (Kolkata) where the first ever play commercially staged was Nildarpan.
Who among the following implemented the Doctrine of Lapse?
(a) Lord Canning
(b) Lord Dalhousie
(c) Lord Hastings
(d) Lord Rippon
Solution: (b)
The Doctrine of Lapse was an annexation policy purportedly devised by Lord Dalhousie who was the Governor General for the East India Company in India between 1848 and 1856. According to the Doctrine, any princely state or territory under the direct influence (paramountcy) of the British East India Company (the dominant imperial power in the subcontinent), as a vassal state under the British Subsidiary System, would automatically be annexed if the ruler was either “manifestly incompetent or died without a direct heir.”
The Portuguese built their first fort on Indian soil in the territory of the Raja of
(b) Cochin
(a) Calicut
(c) Daman
(d) Bijapur
Solution: (b)
Afonso de Albuquerque was an exceedingly energetic commander of Portuguese India, who established a Portuguese fort at Cochin in 1503 on his initial voyage. It was a timber fortress, the first fortress erected by the Portuguese in India. In 1505 a stone fortress replaced the wooden fortress of Cochin.
The theory of ‘economic drain’ was propounded by
(a) B.G. Tilak
(b) R.C. Dutt
(c) Dadabhai Naoroji
(d) G.K. Gokhale
Solution: (c)
The acknowledged high priest of the drain theory was Dadabhai Naoroji. It was in 1867 that Dadabhai Naoroji put forward the idea that Britain was draining India. From then on for nearly half a century he launched a raging campaign against the drain, ham mering at the theme through every possible form of public communication.
Where was the first session of the Indian National Congress held?
(a) Lucknow
(b) Calcutta
(c) Bombay
(d) Madras
Solution: (c)
Founded in 1885 with the objective of obtaining a greater share in government for educated Indians, the first session of the Indian National Congress was held in Bombay during December 28-December 31, 1885. The first meeting was scheduled to be held in Pune, but due to a plague outbreak there, the meeting was later shifted to Bombay. The first session of the INC was attended by 72 delegates.
Who led the armed raid on the government armory at Chittagong in 1930?
(a) Chandra Shekhar Azad
(b) Bhagat Singh
(c) Surya Sen
(d) Sukhdev
Solution: (c)
Surya Sen was an Indian freedom fighter who is noted for leading the 1930 Chittagong armory raid in Chittagong of Bengal in British India on 18 April, 1930. Although the group could loot the arms, they failed to get the ammunition. They hoisted the nation al flag on the premises of the armory, and then escaped.
