Modern Indian History Gk Questions

Correct Answer:-C ( Abbas Tyabji )
Description:-  Abbas Tyabji was an Indian freedom fighter from Gujarat, who once served as the Chief Justice of the (Baroda) Gujarat High Court. Mahatma Gandhi appointed Tyabji, at age seventy-six, to replace him as leader of the Salt Satyagraha in May 1930 after Gandhi’s arrest. Tyabji was arrested soon afterward and imprisoned by the British Indian Government. Gandhi and others respectfully called Tyabji the ‘Grand Old Man of Gujarat’

Correct Answer:-D ( Lahore )
Description:-  The Purna Swaraj declaration, or Declaration of the Independence of India was promulgated by the Indian National Congress on January 26, 1930, resolving the Congress and Indian nationalists to fight for Purna Swaraj, or complete self-rule independent of the British Empire. A very large number of Congress volunteers and delegates, members of other political parties and an especially large public gathering attended the session convened in Lahore. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, President Jawaharlal Nehru hoisted the tri-colour flag of India upon the banks of the Ravi river in Lahore, which later became part of Pakistan.

Correct Answer:-C ( Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel )
Description:-  The Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928, in the state of Gujarat, India during the period of the British Raj, was a major episode of civil disobedience and revolt in the Indian Independence Movement. Its success gave rise to Vallabhbhai Patel as one of the greatest leaders of the independence struggle. The background to this movement was provided in 1925 when the taluka of Bardoli in Gujarat suffered from floods and famine, causing crop production to suffer and leaving farmers facing great financial troubles. However, the Government of the Bombay Presidency had raised the tax rate by 30% that year, and despite petitions from civic groups, refused to cancel the rise in the face of the calamities.

Correct Answer:-D ( Daynand Saraswati )
Description:-  One of the main messages of Swami Dayanand Saraswati was for Hindus to go back to the roots of their religion, which are the Vedas. By doing this, he felt that Hindus would be able to improve the depressive religious, social, political, and economic conditions prevailing in India in his times.

Correct Answer:-B ( Bangladesh )
Description:-  Noakhali is a district in South-eastern Bangladesh. It is located in the Chittagong Division. This place is remembered for the genocide in form of a series of massacres, rapes, abductions and forced conversions of Hindus and looting and arson of Hindu properties, perpetrated by the Muslim community in the districts of Noakhali and Tipperah in the Chittagong Division of Bengal in October–November 1946, a year before India’s independence from British rule. Gandhi camped in Noakhali for four months and toured the district in a mission to restore peace and communal harmony.

Correct Answer:-B ( 1908)
Description:-  Gandhi went to South Africa in 1893 but he was shocked to see racism, prejudice and inequality against Indian citizens in South Africa and he established the Natal Indian Congress in 1894 and formed an Indian community in South Africa. In 1906, the Transvaal government of South Africa promulgated a new Act compelling registration of the colony’s Indian population. At a mass protest meeting held in Johannesburg on 11 September that year, Gandhi adopted his still evolving methodology of Satyagraha (devotion to the truth), or non-violent protest, for the first time. In June 1907, he organized Satyagraha against compulsory registration of Asiatics (The Black Act). In 1908, Gandhiji had to stand trial for instigating the Satyagraha. He was sentenced to two months in jail (the first time), however after a compromise with General Smuts he was released.

Correct Answer:-D ( Anniversary of the surrender of Japanese army before Admiral Mountbatten )
Description:-  In Lord Mountbatten’s words, as told to Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre: ‘The date I chose came out of the blue. I chose it in reply to a question. I was determined to show I was master of the whole event. When they asked had we set a date, I knew it had to be soon. I hadn’t worked it out exactly then — I thought it had to be about August or September and I then went out to the 15th August. Why? Because it was the second anniversary of Japan’s surrender.’

Correct Answer:-D ( Cornwallis )
Description:-  The Permanent Settlement — also known as the Permanent Settlement of Bengal— was an agreement between the East India Company and Bengali landlords to fix revenues to be raised from land, with farreaching consequences for both agricultural methods and productivity in the entire Empire and the political realities of the Indian countryside. It was concluded in 1793, by the Company administration headed by Charles, Earl Cornwallis. It formed one part of a larger body of legislation enacted known as the Cornwallis Code.

Correct Answer:-D ( Bal Gangadhar Tilak )
Description:-  Lokmanya Tilak, born as Keshav Gangadhar Tilak (23 July 1856 – 1 August 1920), was an Indian nationalist, journalist, teacher, social reformer, lawyer and independence fighter who was the first popular leader of the Indian Independence Movement. The British colonial authorities derogatorily called him ‘Father of the Indian unrest’. Tilak professed a different ethics from that of Gandhi and followed a trend of extremism and violence, which earned him the appellation of the ‘father of Indian unrest’. He advocated ‘violence as the higher duty’ based on his interpretation of the Bhagavad-Gita (‘Song of the Lord’).

Correct Answer:-C ( Trusteeship theory )
Description:-  Trusteeship is a socio-economic philosophy that was propounded by Mahatma Gandhi. It provides a means by which the wealthy people would be the trustees of trusts that looked after the welfare of the people in general. This concept was condemned by socialists as being in favor of the landlords, feudal princes and the capitalists. Gandhi believed that the rich people could be persuaded to part with their wealth to help the poor. The founder of the Tata group, JRD Tata was influenced by Gandhi’s idea of trusteeship. He developed his personal and professional life based on this idea.

Correct Answer:-A ( Tuoreau )
Description:-  Mahatma Gandhi got inspiration of Civil Disobedience by reading a book of David Thoreau who was an American author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state. Thoreau’s philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of such notable figures as Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Correct Answer:-B ( Minto-Morley reforms of 1909 )
Description:-  The Indian Councils Act 1909, commonly known as the Morley-Minto Reforms, introduced the system of communal electorate in India. It provided that Indian Muslims be allotted reserved seats in the Municipal and District Boards, in the Provincial Councils and in the Imperial Legislature; that the number of reserved seats be in excess of their relative population (25 percent of the Indian population); and, that only Muslims should vote for candidates for the Muslim seats (‘separate electorates’). These concessions were a constant source of strife during 1909-47.

Correct Answer:-C ( Sarojini Naidu )
Description:-  The Gandhi-Irwin Pact opened the way for Congress participation in this conference. Mahatma Gandhi was invited from India and attended as the sole official Congress representative accompanied by Sarojini Naidu and also Madan Mohan Malaviya, Ghanshyam Das Birla, Muhammad Iqbal, Sir Mirza Ismail Diwan of Mysore, S.K. Dutta and Sir Syed Ali Imam. Gandhi claimed that the Congress alone represented political India; that the Untouchables were Hindus and should not be treated as a ‘minority’; and that there should be no separate electorates or special safeguards for Muslims or other minorities. These claims were rejected by the other Indian participants.

Correct Answer:-D ( ‘Purna Swaraj’ for India )
Description:-  The Salt Satyagraha started on March 12, 1930, with the undertaking of the Dandi Yatra (Dandi March). The triggering factor for this movement was the British monopoly of salt trade in India and the imposition of a salt tax. According to the contemporary British laws, the sale or production of salt by anyone but the British government was a criminal offense. The goals of the movement were to end the British monopoly on salt, decrease dependence on foreign cloth, reduce land revenue assessments, build unity among Hindus and Muslims of all economic and social classes, and ultimately end British colonial rule over India and declare Purna Swaraj (complete independence).

Correct Answer:-C ( Vallabh Bhai Patel and M.A. Jinnah )
Description:-  In February 1946, the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) experienced a major mutiny, on a magnitude rare among modern navies. The Second Battalion of the Black watch was called from their barracks in Karachi to deal with this mutiny on Manora Island. Both Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Sardar Patel successfully persuaded the ratings to surrender. Patel wrote, ‘Discipline in the army cannot be tampered with. We will want [the] army even in free India’.

Correct Answer:-C ( Communal award of Ramsay MacDonald. )
Description:-  In 1932, a round table conference was organized and Ambedkar, an eminent lawyer and a Dalit leader was invited to attend the same. Through his campaigning, the government granted untouchables separate electorates under the new constitution. In protest Gandhi began a fast-unto-death while imprisoned in the Yerwada Central Jail of Pune in 1932 against the separate electorate for untouchables only. Ambedkar agreed under massive coercion from the supporters of Gandhi for an agreement, which saw Gandhi end his fast, while dropping the demand for separate electorates that was promised through the British Communal Award prior to Ambedkar’s meeting with Gandhi.

Correct Answer:-C ( Vallabh Bhai Patel in Rajkot )
Description:-  Gandhi was against Congress intervention in the affairs of Princely states. He at first showed ‘exceptional rigidity’ (some very limited attempts at ‘controlled mass struggle’) in Rajkot, where there was little danger of agrarian radicalism.

Correct Answer:-C ( E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker )
Description:-  The Self-Respect Movement is a movement with the aim of achieving a society where backward castes have equal human rights, and encouraging backward castes to have self-respect in the context of a caste based society that considered them to be a lower end of the hierarchy. It was founded in 1925 by Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (also known as Periyar) in Tamil Nadu, India. Periyar was convinced that if man developed self respect, he would automatically develop individuality and would refuse to be led by the nose by schemers. One of his most known quotes on Self-Respect was, ‘we are fit to think of ‘self-respect’ only when the notion of ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ caste is banished from our land’

Correct Answer:-C ( Indian Council Act, 1909 )
Description:-  The Indian Council act of 1909 also known as the Morley-Minto reforms named after the then Secretary of State for India, Lord Morley and the Viceroy Lord Minto. Its provisions were incorporated into the Indian Councils act of 1909 and were perhaps the first attempt at introducing a popular representative element in the government. In the provincial legislative councils, the number of non official members was increased, thereby reducing the official members to a minority. At the central legislative council however the official members still maintained their majority. The councils were given a little more power in the administration and could influence decisions on certain matters of the state.

Correct Answer:-A ( Saving the lower castes from hypocritical Brahmans and their opportunistic scriptures )
Description:-  Satya Shodhak Samaj was a religion established by Mahatma Jotirao Phule on September 24, 1873. This was started as a group whose main aim was to liberate the social Shudra and Untouchable castes from exploitation and oppression. While condemning the prevalent religion, Phule established Satya Shodhak Samaj with the ideals of human well being in broader aspects, human happiness, unity, equality, and easy religious principles and rituals.

Correct Answer:-C ( Ahmedabad Strike, 1918 )
Description:-  In 1918, Mahatma Gandhi intervened in a dispute between the workers and mill-owners of Ahmedabad. He advised the workers to go on strike and to demand a 35 per cent increase in wages. But he insisted that the workers should not use violence against the employers during the strike. He undertook a fast unto death (first among the 17 such fasts) to strengthen the workers’ resolve to continue the strike. But his fast also put pressure on the mill-owners who relented on the fourth day and agreed to give the workers a 35 per cent increase in wages.

Correct Answer:-D ( Sarojini Naidu )
Description:-  The Dandi march was undertaken by Gandhiji and about 78 of his followers, starting from Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad. The Satyagrahis set out on foot, for the coastal village of Dandi, Gujarat, about 240 miles away. The walk lasted for 23 days and passed through 48 villages. The marchers were received with great enthusiasm and the support from the masses was very evident. During the course of the journey, thousands of Satyagrahis joined the walk, including leaders like Sarojini Naidu.

Correct Answer:-C ( Lord William Bentinck )
Description:-  Historically, efforts to prevent Sati by formal means were extent even before the Mughal rulers came to power. Under the Delhi Sultanates (circa 1325) permission had to be sought prior to any Sati. In their own sphere of influence the Portuguese, Dutch and French banned Sati but efforts to stamp out Sati were formalised only under Lord William Bentinck after 1829. William Cavendish Bentinck succeeded Lord Amherst as the Governor General of India. He took over the charge of Indian administration in the year 1828. Bentinck took effective steps to root out social evils like Sati and infanticide.

Correct Answer:-B ( fitness of India for further reforms )
Description:-  The Indian Statutory Commission was a group of seven British Members of Parliament that had been dispatched to India in 1927 to study constitutional reform in Britain’s most important colonial dependency. It was commonly referred to as the Simon Commission after its chairman, Sir John Simon. The Indian national leaders had been continuously demanding constitutional reforms since 1919 when the Montague- Chelmsford Reform (1919) was introduced by the British government. Under the circumstances, in 1927 the British government in England formally constituted an enquiry commission to recommend further constitutional reform that may be introduced in India. It was meant to review constitutional progress so far and decide upon the future course.

Correct Answer:-B ( Aurangabad )
Description:-  Aurangzeb, the last great Mughal emperor, who spent the latter years of his reign, 1681–1707, in the Deccan, died at Khuldabad near Aurangabad in 1707, and a small monument marks the site.

Correct Answer:-B ( 1853)
Description:-  Two new railway companies, Great Indian Peninsular Railway (GIPR) and East Indian Railway (EIR), were created in 1853-54 to construct and operate two ‘experimental’ lines near Bombay and Calcutta respectively. The first train in India had become operational on 22 December, 1851 for localized hauling of canal construction material in Roorkee. A year and a half later, on 16 April, 1853, the first passenger train service was inaugurated between Bori Bunder in Bombay and Thane. Covering a distance of 34 kilometres, it was hauled by three locomotives, Sahib, Sindh, and Sultan.

Correct Answer:-A ( Khuda Baksh Oriental Public Library )
Description:-  Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library was opened to public in October, 1891 by Khan Bahadur Khuda Bakhsh with 4,000 manuscripts, of which he inherited 1,400 from his father Maulvi Mohammed Bakhsh. It is an autonomous organization under Ministry of Culture, Government of India, and is governed by a Board with the Governor of Bihar as its ex-officio Chairman. It is known for its rare collection of Persian and Arabic manuscripts. It also hosts paintings made during the Rajput and Mughal eras of India.

Correct Answer:-B ( Ryotwari Settlement of Madras )
Description:-  The Ryotwari system, instituted in some parts of British India, was one of the two main systems used to collect revenues from the cultivators of agricultural land. These revenues included undifferentiated land taxes and rents, which were collected simultaneously. Under the Ryotwari system, settlement of land revenue settlement was directly made between the government and the ryot, i.e., the cultivators or tenants. Moreover, in the ryotwari settlement the revenue was fixed for a period of thirty years, and not on a permanent basis as was in the case of the Permanent Settlement.

Correct Answer:-B ( Sardar Patel and V.P. Menon )
Description:-  At the time of Indian independence, India was divided into two sets of territories, the first being the territories of ‘British India,’ which were under the direct control of the India Office in London and the Governor-General of India, and the second being the ‘Princely states,’ the territories over which the Crown had suzerainty, but which were under the control of their hereditary rulers. In addition, there were several colonial enclaves controlled by France and Portugal. The integration of these territories into Dominion of India, created by the Indian Independence Act 1947 by the British parliament, was a declared objective of the Indian National Congress, which the Government of India pursued over the years 1947 to 1949. Through a combination of tactics, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon in the months immediately preceding and following the independence convinced the rulers of almost all of the hundreds of princely states to accede to India.

Correct Answer:-A ( 1851)
Description:-  In 1850, the first experimental electric telegraph line was started between Kolkata and Diamond Harbour. In 1851, it was opened for the use of the British East India Company. Subsequently, the construction of 6,400 km of telegraph lines connecting Kolkata (then Calcutta) and Peshawar in the north along with Agra, Mumbai (then Bombay) through Sindwa Ghats, and Chennai (then Madras) in the south, as well as Ootacamund and Bangalore was started in November 1853. William O’Shaughnessy, who pioneered the telegraph and telephone in India, belonged to the Public Works Department, and worked towards the development of telecom throughout this period.