The Gandhian era, 1917–1947

Answer: (c) The Bardoli Satyagraha was a campaign against the enhancement of land revenue, while the Eka Movement was a protest against excessive extraction of rents.

Bardoli (1928, Surat district, Gujarat) was a no-revenue campaign led by Vallabhbhai Patel against a steep increase in land revenue. The Eka ('unity') Movement of 1921-22 in northern Awadh was a tenants' protest over rents, with demands for cash rents and for resisting any demand above the recorded rent.

• ✓ (c) Bardoli peasants refused to pay the enhanced land revenue; the Eka associations of northern Awadh demanded commutation to cash rents and resisted any demand beyond the recorded rent.
• ✗ (a) It is the other way round: the Eka associations were aided at first by some Congressmen and Khilafatists but soon outgrew those beginnings, while Bardoli was led by Vallabhbhai Patel from the start.
• ✗ (b) The taluqdars were the landlords the Eka tenants were resisting, and Bardoli was a movement of land-owning peasants who paid revenue, not of landless labourers.
• ✗ (d) Eka was centred in northern Awadh, and Bardoli is a taluka of Surat district in mainland Gujarat, not Saurashtra.

Remember · Bardoli 1928: Surat, land revenue, Vallabhbhai Patel ('Sardar'). Eka 1921-22: northern Awadh, rents.

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Question and answer: UPSC's provisional GS Paper I (2026, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 1 Oct 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (b) 1, 2 and 4

Bose won the 1939 Congress presidency against Gandhi's candidate, Pattabhi Sitaramayya, but could not work with the Gandhian leadership after the Tripuri session (the Pant resolution) and resigned. The Left did not rally behind him either: the Congress Socialist Party was divided and its majority stayed neutral. Isolated, he launched the Forward Bloc to unify the more radical elements.

• ✓ 1. Gandhi took Sitaramayya's defeat as his own, and at Tripuri the Pant resolution required Bose to choose his Working Committee in consultation with Gandhi; Bose resigned.
• ✓ 2. The Left did not act as one group at Tripuri; the Congress Socialist Party was divided over supporting Bose and its majority stayed neutral, leaving him without a united Left behind him.
• ✗ 3. UPSC's official key treats this statement as incorrect; we could not confirm the detail from an official source, so we do not explain it here.
• ✓ 4. UPSC's official key treats this statement as correct; we could not confirm the detail from an official source, so we do not explain it here.

Remember · 1939: Bose beat Gandhi's nominee Pattabhi Sitaramayya, resigned over the Pant resolution at Tripuri, and founded the Forward Bloc to unify radical elements.

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Answer: (c) Only three

The 1920 programme asked Indians to boycott courts, schools, councils and foreign goods, to stay strictly non-violent, and to settle disputes through their own panchayats instead of British courts. Titles and honours were to be surrendered, not kept, so only item III is wrong.

• ✓ I Boycott of courts and foreign goods was central; lawyers gave up practice and foreign cloth was burnt in public bonfires.
• ✓ II Gandhi promised swaraj within a year only if people kept strictly to non-violence, and he called off the movement after the violence at Chauri Chaura in February 1922.
• ✗ III The first stage was the surrender of titles the government had awarded, not their retention.
• ✓ IV Gandhi's non-cooperation appeal asked people to boycott the law courts and to settle their quarrels before panchayats; the Congress resolution likewise called for settlement of disputes by private arbitration.

Remember · Non-Cooperation (1920–22): surrender titles; boycott schools, courts, councils, foreign cloth; panchayats, national schools, khadi; strict non-violence; withdrawn after Chauri Chaura.

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Answer: (c) Both I and II

At the Nagpur session of December 1920, which adopted the Non-Cooperation programme, the Congress adopted a new objective, the attainment of swaraj by the people of India by all legitimate and peaceful means. Gandhi planned the movement in stages, keeping civil disobedience and refusal to pay taxes in reserve for a later stage if the government turned to repression.

• ✓ I The Nagpur Congress (December 1920) adopted as its object the attainment of swaraj by the people of India by all legitimate and peaceful means.
• ✓ II The first stage was surrender of titles and boycotts; a full civil disobedience campaign, including non-payment of taxes, was to follow only if the government used repression, and Gandhi promised swaraj within a year.

Remember · Non-Cooperation: Calcutta special session (Sept 1920) → Nagpur (Dec 1920) adopts it and new creed 'swaraj by peaceful and legitimate means'; staged plan; withdrawn after Chauri Chaura (Feb 1922).

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Answer: (b) publicly violating Salt Law at Dandi

Gandhi said this in his speech at Borsad on 18 March 1930, during the Salt March that ended with the breaking of the salt law at Dandi. He called sedition his dharma and said he was beginning his peaceful war against the Government by violating the salt law.

• ✗ (a) The remark belongs to the 1930 Salt March, not to the Champaran Satyagraha.
• ✓ (b) In the Borsad speech he said he was 'commencing' his war on the Government 'by violating the salt law'. NCERT records that the march set out on 12 March 1930 and that at its end he made a fistful of salt, breaking the law.
• ✗ (c) The Second Round Table Conference in London came after the 1930 civil disobedience campaign; the speech was made on the march itself.
• ✗ (d) The Quit India Movement was launched years later, in 1942; it is unconnected with this speech.

Remember · Gandhi's 'sedition my dharma' remark: Borsad speech, 18 March 1930, during the Salt March, when he said he was starting his peaceful war by violating the salt law.

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Answer: (b) Madan Mohan Malaviya and Krishna Kant

Madan Mohan Malaviya took up the defence of the men whom the Gorakhpur Sessions Court sentenced to death over the Chauri Chaura violence, and argued their case for four days. UPSC's option pairs him with Krishna Kant.

• ✗ (a) That account of the Chauri Chaura defence does not mention C. R. Das; it credits Malaviya.
• ✓ (b) PIB, describing the Collected Works of Malaviya, records his return to the Allahabad High Court to secure justice for the accused in the Chauri-Chaura incident. Banaras Hindu University's account adds that he decided to appear for those sentenced to death and argued the case for four days.
• ✗ (c) Kitchlew and Nizami are not named in that account of the defence.
• ✗ (d) M. A. Jinnah is not named in that account of the defence.

Remember · Chauri Chaura (1922): after 170 death sentences at Gorakhpur, Madan Mohan Malaviya appeared for the accused and argued the case for four days.

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Answer: (a) The Poona Pact

Gandhi's fast in Yeravada Jail in September 1932 ended with the Poona Pact, which replaced separate electorates for the Depressed Classes with reserved seats. While he was still in prison, the Harijan Sevak Sangh was founded and the weekly Harijan started, and after his release he devoted himself almost wholly to the campaign against untouchability.

• ✓ (a) The Poona Pact settled the 1932 dispute over separate electorates for the Depressed Classes; the anti-untouchability organisation and the paper Harijan were started while Gandhi was still in prison, and the campaign then became the centre of his work.
• ✗ (b) The Gandhi-Irwin Pact was signed in March 1931 and concerned calling off Civil Disobedience, releasing prisoners and salt manufacture along the coast. It came before the 1932 fast.
• ✗ (d) The Government of India Act, 1935 came about three years after the Poona Pact. NCERT narrates the campaign just after the 1935 reform, which can mislead, but the campaign followed the 1932 Pact.
• ✗ (c) The Quit India arrests of 1942 came about ten years after Gandhi had made the upliftment of the Harijans part of his programme.

Remember · The Poona Pact (September 1932) ended Gandhi's fast; the Harijan Sevak Sangh and the weekly Harijan followed, and Gandhi then took up the anti-untouchability campaign.

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Answer: (d) 3 only

Only Rash Behari Bose worked with the Ghadar plan for a pan-Indian mutiny in 1914-15. Barindra Kumar Ghosh and Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee belonged to the Bengal revolutionary groups, not the Ghadar Party.

• ✗ 1. Barindra Kumar Ghosh (Barin Ghose) led the Bengali paper Yugantar and the revolutionaries linked to the Anushilan Samiti; he was jailed in the Alipore case and sent to the Cellular Jail. He was not part of the Ghadar Party.
• ✗ 2. Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee was a Bengal revolutionary of the Anushilan circle who later helped found the Hindustan Republican Association, not the Ghadar Party.
• ✓ 3. Rash Behari Bose, with Sachindra Nath Sanyal and Kartar Singh Sarabha, tried to get the army infiltrated as part of the Ghadar Movement's plan of 1914-15.

Remember · Ghadar Party: Indian migrants in North America (Lala Hardayal, Sohan Singh Bhakna); in India, Rash Behari Bose and Kartar Singh Sarabha. Barindra Ghosh belonged to the Bengal groups.

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Answer: (a) The Quit India Resolution was adopted by the AICC.

On 8 August 1942, at Bombay, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) endorsed the Quit India resolution, which called for a non-violent mass struggle across the country. The other options describe events of other dates.

• ✓ (a) The Congress Working Committee passed the 'Quit India' resolution at Wardha on 14 July 1942, and the AICC endorsed it in Bombay on 8 August 1942, the day Gandhi gave his 'Do or Die' speech.
• ✗ (c) The Congress ministries resigned in 1939, after talks with the Viceroy on India's part in the war broke down, not in 1942.
• ✗ (d) Stafford Cripps came to India in March 1942 with an offer of dominion status after the war; Indian leaders rejected it, and its failure led to Quit India.
• ✗ (b) Expanding the Viceroy's Executive Council with more Indians was the Viceroy's statement of 8 August 1940 (the August Offer), two years earlier, not an event of 8 August 1942.

Remember · 8 August 1942, Bombay: AICC endorses the Quit India resolution; Gandhi's 'Do or Die'. Cripps Mission: March 1942. Congress ministries resigned: 1939.

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Answer: (c) Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi is the person linked to 'Songs from Prison'. He translated hymns from the Ashram Bhajanvali into English while in Yervada jail in 1930, and John S. Hoyland published an adaptation in 1934 under this title.

• ✓ (c) The Bhajanvali was a collection of about 250 devotional songs from several languages, compiled for prayers at Gandhi's ashrams. Gandhi's jail translations of them became 'Songs from Prison'.
• ✗ (a) Tilak is known for his Gita commentary (Gita Rahasya) and for his newspapers, not for a translation of devotional lyrics called 'Songs from Prison'.
• ✗ (b) Nehru wrote from prison too (an autobiography and letters), but his prison writings are not a translation of ancient religious lyrics.

Remember · 'Songs from Prison' (1934): Gandhi's English translation of ashram hymns from the Bhajanvali, made in Yervada jail in 1930; adapted by John S. Hoyland.

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Answer: (d) officers of the Indian National Army

They were officers of the Indian National Army (INA) put on trial by the British at the Red Fort, Delhi, in the INA trials of 1945-46. Their trial drew nationwide protests and weakened British authority.

• ✓ (d) Colonel Prem Sahgal, Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon and Major General Shah Nawaz Khan were tried by the colonial government at the Red Fort. NCERT lists the INA trials among the events that weakened British authority.
• ✗ (a) The Swadeshi and Boycott Movement belongs to the anti-partition agitation of 1905 onwards, decades earlier, and these three officers played no part in it.
• ✗ (b) The 1946 Interim Government was formed from Congress and Muslim League nominees; these INA officers were not part of it.

Remember · INA trials at the Red Fort (1945-46): Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal, Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon; they helped turn public opinion decisively against British rule.

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Answer: (a) the final goal of a stateless society

Both thinkers saw the State as something the ideal society would do without. Marx expected a classless communist society with no government, while Gandhi described an 'enlightened anarchy' in which each person rules himself; they differed sharply on the means.

• ✓ (a) Gandhi wrote (Young India, 1931) that in the ideal state there is no political power because there is no State; IGNOU notes that socialism and communism likewise aim at a classless and stateless society.
• ✗ (b) Class struggle is central to Marxist and communist ideology, but Gandhi rejected class conflict and violence, seeking change through non-violence and a change of heart (IGNOU).
• ✗ (c) Marx held that private ownership of important economic resources is the root cause of entrenched inequality, so Marxism seeks public control of them (NCERT); Gandhi instead proposed trusteeship, in which the wealthy hold their wealth in trust for the community.
• ✗ (d) Economic determinism, the idea that the economic base shapes society, is Marxist; Gandhi held that material considerations had only a limited role in human life and gave primacy to moral and spiritual forces (IGNOU).

Remember · Gandhism and Marxism share only the end-goal of a stateless society. Means differ: non-violence and trusteeship (Gandhi) versus class struggle and revolution (Marx).

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UPSC dropped this question from evaluation in its final answer key.

UPSC dropped this question from evaluation in its final answer key. The facts: the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of March 1931 suspended civil disobedience in return for withdrawal of the civil-disobedience ordinances, release of prisoners held for non-violent offences and Congress participation in further constitutional talks. Gandhi's demand for a public enquiry into police excesses was not accepted; he agreed not to press it.

• ✓ 1. The settlement provided for the participation of Congress representatives in further discussions on constitutional reform, which followed at the Second Round Table Conference in London (late 1931), where Gandhi represented the Congress.
• ✓ 2. Paragraph 10 of the settlement says ordinances promulgated in connection with the civil disobedience movement would be withdrawn (the terrorism ordinance of 1931 was excluded).
• ✗ 3. Gandhi had asked for a public enquiry into police conduct, but the Government saw great difficulty in it, and the text records that he agreed not to press the matter.
• ✓ 4. Prisoners were to be released only if they had been imprisoned in connection with the movement for offences that did not involve violence (other than technical violence) or incitement to it.

Remember · Gandhi-Irwin Pact (March 1931): civil disobedience suspended; ordinances withdrawn; non-violent prisoners released; Congress to attend the Round Table Conference; no public enquiry into police excesses.

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Answer: (d) 1, 2 and 3

All three pairs are correct. The Anti-Untouchability League (later the Harijan Sevak Sangh) grew out of Gandhi's 1932 fast and was guided by him; Swami Sahajanand Saraswati led the Kisan Sabha movement and became the first president of the All India Kisan Sabha formed in 1936; Periyar E. V. Ramaswami Naicker started the Self-Respect Movement in 1925.

• ✓ 1. The All-India Anti-Untouchability League, soon renamed Harijan Sevak Sangh, was founded in September 1932 after Gandhi's fast against separate electorates, to carry out his campaign against untouchability (G. D. Birla was its president).
• ✓ 2. Sahajanand Saraswati founded the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha (1929) and was the leading figure of the All India Kisan Sabha set up at the Congress's Lucknow session in 1936, becoming its first president.
• ✓ 3. E. V. Ramaswami Naicker (Periyar) started the Self-Respect Movement in 1925 against caste hierarchy and Brahmin domination.

Remember · 1925 Self-Respect Movement (Periyar); 1929 Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha and 1936 All India Kisan Sabha (Sahajanand Saraswati); 1932 Anti-Untouchability League/Harijan Sevak Sangh (Gandhi).

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Answer: (b) 1 and 3 only

Statements 1 and 3 are correct. Gandhi led the all-India agitation of 1916–17 that forced the government to stop indentured emigration, and during the Civil Disobedience Movement that began with the Salt March the Congress was declared illegal. Statement 2 is wrong: at Chelmsford's War Conference in Delhi (April 1918) Gandhi supported the recruitment resolution.

• ✓ 1. Gandhi had petitioned against indenture since 1894 and campaigned for its abolition, and a Congress resolution called for abolition; the government officially abolished indentured emigration on 13 March 1917, and NCERT records the system as abolished in 1921.
• ✗ 2. At the War Conference held in Delhi in April 1918, Gandhi spoke one sentence in Hindustani supporting the resolution on recruiting, and later ran a recruitment campaign in Kheda.
• ✓ 3. When Gandhi returned from the Second Round Table Conference (1931), he found Nehru and Ghaffar Khan in jail and the Congress declared illegal, as the government cracked down on civil disobedience.

Remember · Gandhi: anti-indenture campaign (1917); backed WWI recruitment at Chelmsford's Delhi War Conference (April 1918); Congress banned during Civil Disobedience (1930–32).

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Answer: (d) 1, 2 and 3

All three pairs are correct in UPSC's key. K. C. Neogy was elected to the Constituent Assembly from Bengal; the other two details are not explained here because we could not confirm them from an official source.

• ✓ 1. Moderates who left the Congress formed the (Indian) National Liberal Federation in 1918-19. UPSC's official key treats this pair as correct; we could not confirm the detail about its presidency from an official source, so we do not explain it here.
• ✓ 2. Kshitish Chandra Neogy was elected to the Constituent Assembly from Bengal on a Congress ticket; he later sat in Nehru's first cabinet and chaired the First Finance Commission (1951).
• ✓ 3. UPSC's official key treats this pair as correct; we could not confirm the detail from an official source, so we do not explain it here.

Remember · Liberal Federation (1919, moderates); K. C. Neogy - Constituent Assembly member, 1st Finance Commission chairman.

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Answer: (c) Lala Lajpat Rai

The clues of a stay in America and election to the Central Assembly fit Lala Lajpat Rai, the 'Lion of Punjab'. PIB records that he went to the United States and founded the Indian Home Rule League of America in October 1917, that he was a prolific author, and that he was elected Deputy Leader of the Swaraj Party in the Central Legislative Assembly.

• ✓ (c) Lajpat Rai spent time in the USA and founded the Indian Home Rule League of America in October 1917; he later sat in the Central Legislative Assembly as Deputy Leader of the Swaraj Party. PIB calls him a prolific author who wrote many books, which fits the clue about his writing.
• ✗ (b) Bipin Chandra Pal was, with Lajpat Rai and Tilak, one of the Lal-Bal-Pal trio, but no official page ties him to the stay in America and the Central Assembly seat that PIB records for Lajpat Rai.
• ✗ (d) Motilal Nehru helped found the Swaraj Party in 1923 to win seats in the Central Legislative Assembly (Britannica), but he is not recorded as having lived in America, so the combination of clues does not fit him.

Remember · Lala Lajpat Rai ('Punjab Kesari'): Lal-Bal-Pal leader, a founding figure of Punjab National Bank (NCERT), founded the Indian Home Rule League of America (1917), Deputy Leader of the Swaraj Party in the Central Legislative Assembly, died after the 1928 anti-Simon lathi charge.

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Answer: (c) Joining of peasant unrest to India's National Movement

The Champaran Satyagraha (1917-18) linked a peasant grievance, the harsh treatment of Bihar's peasants by British indigo planters, to the national movement under Gandhi's leadership. Earlier peasant revolts had stayed local and disconnected from the wider freedom struggle.

• ✓ (c) NCERT notes that peasant issues, under Gandhi's leadership, became partially linked to the Independence movement, and names the Champaran Satyagraha as an example.
• ✗ (a) Champaran was a regional peasant struggle in Bihar, not an all-India mobilisation of lawyers, students and women; wider participation of that kind came with the later mass movements.
• ✗ (b) The campaign was about tenants and indigo planters. Dalit and tribal communities were not its defining feature.
• ✗ (d) Gandhi sought security of tenure and freedom for peasants to grow crops of their choice; the campaign did not aim at, or cause, a drastic fall in plantation or commercial crops.

Remember · Champaran (1917), Gandhi's first satyagraha in India, against indigo planters: it tied peasant unrest to the national movement.

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Answer: (a) All India Home Rule League

The All India Home Rule League, the self-government body of the 1916 Home Rule movement, changed its name to Swaraj (Swarajya) Sabha in 1920. Its Joint General Secretary, Jawaharlal Nehru, wrote in October 1920 of 'the Swaraj Sabha (till lately the All-India Home Rule League)'; the new name and new objects were adopted at a members' meeting in Calcutta under President M. K. Gandhi.

• ✓ (a) Nehru's letter of 18 October 1920 says the League's name was altered and its objects changed, and calls it 'the Swaraj Sabha (till lately the All-India Home Rule League)'.
• ✗ (b) The Hindu Mahasabha is a separate organisation; Nehru's letter names the All-India Home Rule League as the body renamed, and no source ties the Mahasabha to the renaming.
• ✗ (c) The South Indian Liberal Federation was the Justice Party of Madras; NCERT mentions the Justice party of Madras province. It was a separate body and not the Home Rule body named in Nehru's letter.
• ✗ (d) The Servants of India Society was founded by G. K. Gokhale (NCERT) for public service and is not the body Nehru's letter says was renamed the Swaraj Sabha.

Remember · The All India Home Rule League of 1916 was renamed Swaraj (Swarajya) Sabha in 1920, when its aim moved from home rule to swaraj.

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Answer: (d) a system of tribunals and a ban on strikes.

Passed amid the labour unrest of the late 1920s, the Trade Disputes Act, 1929 let the government refer an industrial dispute to a Court of Inquiry or a Board of Conciliation, and it put restraints on strikes and lock-outs in public utility services. Tribunals plus curbs on strikes is option (d).

• ✓ (d) The Act let the government set up Courts of Inquiry and Boards of Conciliation to investigate and settle disputes, and it restrained strikes and lock-outs, above all in public utility services.
• ✗ (a) The Act gave workers no role in management. Even Works Committees of employer and worker representatives came only with the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, which replaced the 1929 Act.
• ✗ (c) Disputes went to bodies the government itself appointed, not to a British court; the 1946 review noted that their findings were not even binding on the parties.

Remember · Trade Disputes Act, 1929: Courts of Inquiry and Boards of Conciliation + restraints on strikes in public utility services; replaced by the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947.

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Answer: (c) 3-2-1

The Second Round Table Conference was held in London in late 1931, the Quit India Movement began in August 1942, and the Royal Indian Navy ratings' mutiny broke out in Bombay in February 1946. So the order is 3-2-1.

• ✓ (c) 3 (December 1931), then 2 (August 1942), then 1 (February 1946) is the right order.
• ✗ (d) It places the naval mutiny of 1946 before Quit India; the mutiny came about three and a half years after Quit India.
• ✗ (b) It puts the Round Table Conference (1931) last, though it was the earliest of the three.
• ✗ (a) It reverses the true sequence and puts the 1931 Conference last.

Remember · Second Round Table Conference (Dec 1931) → Quit India (Aug 1942) → Royal Indian Navy mutiny (Feb 1946).

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Answer: (d) India should be given Dominion status

The Cripps Mission of 1942 offered India Dominion status once the Second World War ended. Indian leaders rejected the offer, and its failure led Gandhi to launch the Quit India Movement in August 1942.

• ✓ (d) NCERT's timeline records that the Cripps Mission in 1942 proposed post-war dominion status, and that Indian leaders rejected it.
• ✗ (a) Complete independence was not on offer. Dominion status, a lower position within the British Empire, was what the Mission proposed, which is why it was rejected.
• ✗ (b) The Cripps proposal did not promise partition of India into two before independence; that idea came up in the later 1946-47 negotiations.
• ✗ (c) The offer was of Dominion status, not of a republic bound by a condition to join the Commonwealth.

Remember · Cripps Mission, March 1942: post-war Dominion status; rejected by Indian leaders; followed by the Quit India Movement in August 1942.

📘 Read it in NCERT: Class 8 Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Part 2), Ch 2 (practise this chapter) · Class 10 India and the Contemporary World – II, Ch 2 (practise this chapter)

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2016, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error