Modern Indian History Gk Questions

Correct Answer:-B ( on the banks of Ravi at Lahore in 1929 )
Description:-  The Indian Tricolour was first unfurled on 26 January, 1930 at Lahore, by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. It was on the same day that the Indian National Congress declared 26 January as Independence Day or as the day for Poorna Swaraj (Complete Independence) which occurred 20 years later.

Correct Answer:-A ( 1909)
Description:-  The Indian Councils Act 1909, commonly known as the Morley-Minto Reforms, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that brought about a limited increase in the involvement of Indians in the governance of British India.

Correct Answer:-B ( Chota Nagpur )
Description:-  Birsa Munda was a tribal leader and a folk hero, belonging to the Munda tribe who was behind the millenarian movement that rose in the tribal belt of Jharkhand during the British raj, in the late 19th century. To the twin challenges of agrarian breakdown and culture change, Birsa along with the Munda responded through a series of revolts and uprisings under his leadership. The movement sought to assert rights of the Mundas as the real proprietors of the soil, and the expulsion of middlemen and the British.

Correct Answer:-B ( Mahatma Gandhi )
Description:-  In 1942, Gandhi organized Quit India movement and called on all Congressmen and Indians to maintain discipline via ahimsa, and Karo ya maro (‘Do or die’) in the cause of ultimate freedom. Quit India became the most forceful movement in the history of the struggle, with mass arrests and violence on an unprecedented scale.

Correct Answer:-B ( Lord Curzon )
Description:-  The decision to effect the Partition of Bengal was announced in July 1905 by the Viceroy of India, Lord Curzon. The partition took effect in October 1905 and separated the largely Muslim eastern areas from the largely Hindu western areas.

Correct Answer:-B ( 1930)
Description:-  Salt March, also called Dandi March or Salt Satyagraha was a major nonviolent protest action in India led by Mohandas K. Gandhi in March–April 1930. It was the first act in the larger campaign of civil disobedience (Satyagraha) Gandhi waged against British rule in India.

Correct Answer:-C ( Lord Canning )
Description:-  Lord Canning was an English statesman and Governor- General of India during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. For his tact and capabilities in dealing with the revolt, he was rewarded by being made the first Viceroy of India in 1858. In April 1859 he received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament for his great services during the rebellion.

Correct Answer:-B ( division in the Hindu Society )
Description:-  In August 1932, the then Prime Minister of Britain, Ramsay Macdonald gave his ‘award’ known as the Communal Award. According to it, separate representation was to be provided for the Muslims, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Anglo-Indians, Europeans, Dalit etc. The depressed classes were assigned a number of seats to be filled by election from special constituencies in which voters belonging to the depressed classes only could vote. Gandhi strongly opposed the communal award on the grounds that it would disintegrate Hindu society. He began an indefinite hunger strike from September 20, 1932 to protest this award.

Correct Answer:-A ( Rowlatt Act of 1999 )
Description:-  The Rowlatt Act was passed by the Imperial Legislative Council in London on 10 March, 1919, indefinitely extending ’emergency measures’ (of the Defence of India Regulations Act) enacted during the First World War in order to control public unrest and root out conspiracy. This Act effectively authorized the government to imprison for a maximum period of two years, without trial, any person suspected of terrorism living in the Raj and gave British imperial authorities power to deal with revolutionary activities.

Correct Answer:-B ( Civil Disobedience Movement )
Description:-  The Gandhi–Irwin Pact was a political agreement signed by Mahatma Gandhi and the then Viceroy of India, Lord Irwin on 5 March 1931 before the second Round Table Conference in London. One of the proposed conditions for the conference was the discontinuation of the civil disobedience movement by the Indian National Congress.

Correct Answer:-D ( Lala Har Dayal )
Description:-  Lala Har Dayal was an Indian nationalist revolutionary who founded the Ghadar Party in America. He was a polymath who turned down a career in the Indian Civil Service. His simple living and intellectual acumen inspired many expatriate Indians living in Canada and the USA to fight against British Imperialism during the First World War.

Correct Answer:-B ( Wahabi Movement )
Description:-  Wahhabism was a popular revivalist movement instigated by an eighteenth century theologian, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792) from Najd, Saudi Arabia. He began his movement through peaceful discussions with attendees of various shrines and eventually gained popular support by convincing the local Amir, Uthman ibn Mu’ammar, to help him in his struggle.

Correct Answer:-A ( Subhash Chandra Bose )
Description:-  Subhas Chandra Bose organised Indian National Army and sought the help of Japan for military assistance. He famously said, ‘Tum mujhe khoon do, mein tumhe azadi dunga’ (Give me your blood and I will give you freedom).

Correct Answer:-C ( working of dyarchy )
Description:-  The Government of India Act 1919 had introduced the system of dyarchy to govern the provinces of British India. However, the Indian public clamoured for revision of the difficult dyarchy form of government, and the Government of India Act 1919 itself stated that a commission would be appointed after 10 years to investigate the progress of the governance scheme and suggest new steps for reform. In the late 1920s, the Conservative government appointed seven MPs (including Chairman Simon) to constitute the commission that had been promised in 1919 that would look into the state of Indian constitutional affairs.

Correct Answer:-B ( Lord Mountbatten )
Description:-  Louis Mountbatten was the last Viceroy of India (1947) and the first Governor-General of the independent Union of India (1947–48), from which the modern Republic of India emerged in 1950. When India and Pakistan attained independence at midnight on the night of 14-15 August 1947, Mountbatten remained in New Delhi for ten months, serving as India’s first governor general until June 1948.

Correct Answer:-B ( rituals and idol-worship )
Description:-  Arya Samaj unequivocally condemned practices such as polytheism, iconolatry, animal sacrifice, ancestor worship, pilgrimage, priestcraft, the belief in Avatars or incarnations of God, the hereditary caste system, untouchability and child marriage on the grounds that all these lack Vedic sanction. It believed in the infallible authority of the Vedas, but outrightly rejected rituals, idol worship and all the pretensions in the name of religion.

Correct Answer:-C ( Zamindars )
Description:-  By the Permanent Settlement Act of 1793, the Zamindars class became more powerful than they were in the Mughal period. Earlier zamindars in Bengal, Bihar and Orissa had been functionaries who held the right to collect revenue on behalf of the Mughal emperor and his representative or diwan in Bengal. The security of tenure of landlords was guaranteed; in short, the former landholders and revenue intermediaries were granted proprietarial rights (effective ownership) to the land they held. In addition, the land tax was fixed in perpetuity, so as to minimize the tendency by British administrators to amass a small fortune in sluiced-away revenue.

Correct Answer:-D ( Portuguese )
Description:-  Near the end of the 15th century, Portuguese sailor Vasco da Gama became the first European to reestablish direct trade links with India since Roman times by being the first to arrive by circumnavigating Africa (1497-1499). His subsequent visits laid the foundation of Portuguese rule in India. Trading rivalries brought other European powers to India. The Netherlands, England, France, and Denmark established trading posts in India in the early 17th century.

Correct Answer:-C ( Henry Vivian Derozio )
Description:-  The Young Bengal movement was a group of radical Bengali free thinkers emerging from Hindu College, Calcutta in the year 1905. They were also known as Derozians, after their firebrand teacher at Hindu College, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio. The Young Bengals were inspired and excited by the spirit of free thought and revolt against the existing social and religious structure of Hindu society.

Correct Answer:-A ( 1882-Adyar )
Description:-  The Theosophical Society was officially formed in New York City, United States, in November 1875 by Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, William Quan Judge and others. Its initial objective was the ‘study and elucidation of Occultism, the Cabala etc.’ After a few years Olcott and Blavatsky moved to India and established the International Headquarters at Adyar, in Madras (Chennai).

Correct Answer:-B ( Lala Har Dayal )
Description:-  Lala Har Dayal was an Indian nationalist revolutionary who founded the Ghadar Party in America. His simple living and intellectual acumen inspired many expatriate Indians living in Canada and the USA to fight against British Imperialism during the First World War.

Correct Answer:-B ( Dadabahai Naoroji )
Description:-  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, hammering at the theme through every possible form of public communication.

Correct Answer:-B ( Calcutta )
Description:-  In 1906, the session at Calcutta was presided by Dada Bhai Naoroji. It was under the leadership of Naoroji that the Congress adopted Swaraj as the goal of Indian people.

Correct Answer:-A ( Ahmedabad)
Description:-  The Salt March, also known as the Salt Satyagraha, began with the Dandi March on March 12, 1930. It was a direct action campaign of tax resistance and nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly in colonial India, and triggered the wider Civil Disobedience Movement. Mahatma Gandhi led the Dandi march from his base, Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad, to the sea coast near the village of Dandi.

Correct Answer:-D ( 1942)
Description:-  On August 8, 1942 the Quit India Resolution was passed at the Bombay session of the All India Congress Committee (AICC). In his Quit India speech that day at Gowalia Tank, Bombay, Gandhi told Indians to follow non-violent civil disobedience. He told the masses to act as an independent nation.

Correct Answer:-B ( Sir William Jones )
Description:-  The Asiatic Society was founded by Sir William Jones on January 15, 1784 in a meeting presided over by Sir Robert Chambers, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court at the Fort William in Calcutta, then capital of the British Raj, to enhance and further the cause of Oriental research. At the time of its foundation, this Society was named as ‘Asiatick Society’. In 1825, the society dropped the antique k without any formal resolution and the Society was renamed as ‘The Asiatic Society’. In 1832 the name was changed to ‘The Asiatic Society of Bengal’ and again in 1936 it was renamed as ‘The Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal.

Correct Answer:-C ( Jaya Prakash Narayan )
Description:-  Prison diary is by Jayaprakash Narayan. It was first published in 1977 by Popular Prakashan.

Correct Answer:-C ( London )
Description:-  India House was an informal Indian nationalist organisation based in London between 1905 and 1910. With the patronage of Shyamji Krishna Varma, its home in a student residence in Highgate, North London was launched to promote nationalist views among Indian students in Britain. India House published an anticolonialist newspaper, The Indian Sociologist, which the British Raj banned as ‘seditious.’

Correct Answer:-B ( Sarojini Naidu )
Description:-  Sarojini Naidu, also known by the sobriquet The Nightingale of India, was a child prodigy, Indian independence activist and poet. Naidu was one of the framers of the Indian Constitution. The reason behind this sobriquet was because of her many accomplishments. She was a distinguished poet. Her poetry was lyrical and musical filled with rich imagery. It dealt with love and death, separation and longing, and the mystery of life, all important themes for poetry. In the end the poetry tends to become monotonous and repetitive. For this reason she is called the nightingale of India.

Correct Answer:-C ( Warren Hastings )
Description:-  Warren Hastings became the Governor of Bengal in 1772 and in 1774. He became the first Governor- General of Bengal. He was the first Governor-General of India, from 1773 to 1785.