Social & religious reform movements

Answer: (c) Both I and II

Rammohun Roy combined respect for India's philosophical heritage with Western rationalism. He grounded the Brahmo Samaj in the Upanishads and argued against sati from the ancient texts, while pressing for Western education, reason and equality for women.

• ✓ I He valued the Vedantic tradition: the Brahmo Samaj believed in the Upanishads, and he argued that sati had no sanction in ancient texts rather than rejecting those texts.
• ✓ II He wanted Western education spread in India and sought greater freedom and equality for women, appealing to reason and humanitarian ideas.

Remember · Rammohun Roy (1772–1833): Brahmo Sabha 1828; anti-sati campaign (sati banned 1829); blended Western rationality with respect for Indian (Vedantic) tradition.

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Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2025, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (a) 'Periyar' E. V. Ramaswamy Naicker

The Self-Respect Movement was started in 1925 by E. V. Ramasami Naicker, known as Periyar, a former Congress worker who fought caste hierarchy and Brahmin dominance in Tamil Nadu and later founded the Dravidar Kazhagam.

• ✓ (a) NCERT records that Periyar started the self-respect movement in 1925 after leaving the Congress, and later founded the Dravidar Kazhagam.
• ✗ (b) Dr B. R. Ambedkar is linked with the struggle of the Depressed Classes for political safeguards such as separate electorates (NCERT), not with founding the Self-Respect Movement.
• ✗ (c) Bhaskarrao Jadhav is not credited with founding the Self-Respect Movement.
• ✗ (d) Dinkarrao Javalkar is not credited with founding the Self-Respect Movement.

Remember · Periyar (E. V. Ramasami Naicker) started the Self-Respect Movement in 1925; his later organisation was the Dravidar Kazhagam.

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Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2025, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (c) Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was the first Secretary of the school J.E.D. Bethune founded in Calcutta in 1849 for girls, then called the Hindu Female School and later Bethune School. Vidyasagar was a Bengali social reformer who backed women's education.

• ✓ (c) Bethune College's own history says Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar was the first Secretary of Bethune School, which grew out of the girls' school Bethune set up in 1849.
• ✗ (d) Sarojini Naidu (born 1879) was a poet and Congress leader of a later generation, long after the school was founded in 1849.
• ✗ (a) Annie Besant came to India in 1893 and is linked with the Theosophical Society and the Home Rule League, not this Calcutta school.

Remember · Bethune School, Calcutta (1849): founded by J.E.D. Bethune, with Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar as its first Secretary; it became Bethune College in 1879.

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2021, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (a) Gopal Baba Walangkar

Gopal Baba Walangkar, a retired Mahar soldier from Ratnagiri, began the first newspaper of the Mahar community and campaigned to have Untouchables taken back into the army.

• ✓ (a) Walangkar, a pensioned soldier from Ratnagiri, began the first Mahar newspaper, petitioned the British against the closure of army service to Untouchables and appealed publicly to Hindu leaders for better treatment.
• ✗ (b) Jyotiba Phule is remembered for founding the Satyashodhak Samaj and for his book Gulamgiri, not for this newspaper (Zelliot notes that Phule only helped and guided Walangkar in his early petition effort).
• ✗ (d) Ambedkar (born 1891), a distant relative of Walangkar, became a public leader later; Mooknayak was the first of his many newspapers.

Remember · Gopal Baba Walangkar, a retired Mahar army man from Ratnagiri, began the first Mahar newspaper.

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Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2020, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 1 Oct 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (b) 2 and 3 only

The Rakhmabai case (1884) was a husband's suit for restitution of conjugal rights, that is, to force his wife, married as a child, to live with him. It became a landmark in the age-of-consent controversy that ended with the Age of Consent Act of 1891. It was not a case about a woman's right to education.

• ✗ 1. Rakhmabai was educated, and she disliked her marital home's lack of intellectual atmosphere, but the legal question before the court was not education. It was whether she could be compelled to live with her husband.
• ✓ 2. The case, filed in 1884, kept the issue of child marriage in public debate until the 'consent' controversy of 1888 onwards, which produced the Age of Consent Act of 1891 (minimum age 12 for cohabitation with girl-brides).
• ✓ 3. Dadaji Bhikaji sued Rakhmabai for restitution of conjugal rights. She had been married at nine, her marriage was never consummated, and she was living in her parents' home.

Remember · Rakhmabai case (1884): Dadaji Bhikaji's suit for restitution of conjugal rights against his child-bride wife. It fed the age-of-consent debate leading to the 1891 Act.

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2020, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 1 Oct 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

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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Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2019, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (a) 1 and 2 only

Charles Wood's education despatch of 1854 set up a grants-in-aid system for schools that met government standards and led to universities at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1857. It wanted English for higher education but the vernacular languages at the school level, so statement 3 is wrong.

• ✓ 1. After 1854 the Company began supporting schools, including village pathshalas, with government grants on condition that they accepted its rules, routines and inspections.
• ✓ 2. Steps were taken to build a university system after the Despatch; in 1857, the year of the revolt, universities were being set up in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay.
• ✗ 3. The Despatch favoured English as the medium of higher education only; for elementary schooling it pushed improvement of vernacular education.

Remember · Wood's Despatch (1854), Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control: grants-in-aid, education departments, universities (1857), English for higher and vernacular for lower education.

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2018, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (d) 1, 2 and 3

All three were links in one chain. The Charter Act of 1813 first set aside public money for Indian education, the General Committee of Public Instruction (1823) was set up to spend it, and the Orientalist-Anglicist controversy inside that committee ended with Macaulay's Minute (1835) and the English Education Act, which made English the medium of higher education.

• ✓ 1. When the Company's charter was renewed in 1813, a clause required the governor-general to spend not less than 100,000 rupees a year on the education of Indians. This created the funds and the official responsibility for education.
• ✓ 2. The General Committee of Public Instruction, formed in Calcutta in 1823, disbursed the grant. Younger members on it later argued for spreading Western knowledge through English, which led to the controversy.
• ✓ 3. The dispute over funding Oriental learning or Western knowledge was settled for the Anglicists by Macaulay's Minute of 1835, followed by the English Education Act of 1835.

Remember · Route to English education: Charter Act 1813 (Rs 1 lakh grant), General Committee of Public Instruction 1823, Orientalist-Anglicist debate, Macaulay's Minute and English Education Act 1835.

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Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2018, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 1 Oct 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (b) Dinabandhu Mitra wrote Neeldarpan.

Dinabandhu Mitra's play Neeldarpan (Nildarpan), on the oppression of indigo growers, dates from 1860, which is earlier than the other three events (1863, 1875 and 1882). Line the four dates up and the earliest is the play.

• ✗ (a) Swami Dayananda Saraswati founded the Arya Samaj in 1875, fifteen years after Neeldarpan.
• ✓ (b) Neeldarpan is listed among Dinabandhu Mitra's plays as of 1860, the year of the indigo agitation in Bengal; this is the earliest date in the set.
• ✗ (c) Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's novel Anandamath came out in 1882, the latest of the four.
• ✗ (d) Satyendranath Tagore, eldest brother of Rabindranath, qualified for the Indian Civil Service in 1863, three years after Neeldarpan.

Remember · Order to remember: Neeldarpan (1860), Satyendranath Tagore in the ICS (1863), Arya Samaj (1875), Anandamath (1882).

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Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2018, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (b) 2 only

The Factories Act, 1881 (passed under Lord Ripon) was a limited measure about working conditions, chiefly of child workers in factories; it neither fixed wages nor recognised trade unions. Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, who founded the Bombay Mill Hands Association in 1884, is hailed as the father of the trade union movement in India.

• ✗ 1. The 1881 Act regulated factory conditions, mainly for children. Laws on wages (Payment of Wages Act, 1936; Minimum Wages Act, 1948) and on registering trade unions (Trade Unions Act, 1926) came decades later.
• ✓ 2. Lokhande set up the Mill Hand Association in 1884, which marked the institutionalisation of the labour movement; his agitation led to the Factory Labour Commission and the Factory Act of 1891.

Remember · N.M. Lokhande: Bombay Mill Hands Association (1884), father of India's trade union movement. Factory Act 1881 (Ripon) = child labour; trade unions legalised only by the Trade Unions Act, 1926.

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2017, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error

Answer: (c) an anti-caste movement in Maharashtra

Jotirao Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj (Truth Seekers Society) in 1873 in Maharashtra to secure human rights and social justice for low-caste people, so it organised an anti-caste movement in Maharashtra.

• ✓ (c) Phule denounced the injustice of the caste system and the Samaj propagated caste equality among the Shudras and Ati Shudras of Maharashtra.
• ✗ (a) Phule's Samaj worked on caste in Maharashtra; it was not a tribal upliftment movement in Bihar.
• ✗ (b) Nothing links the Samaj to a temple-entry movement in Gujarat; its cause was caste equality in Maharashtra.

Remember · Satyashodhak Samaj: founded by Jotirao Phule in 1873; an anti-caste movement of Maharashtra for the rights of low castes. Phule also wrote Gulamgiri.

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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

Answer: (b) 2 and 3 only

Keshab Chandra Sen set up the New Dispensation (Nava Vidhan) church (1881). The Calcutta Unitarian Committee (1821) was founded long before he was active, by William Adam and Rammohun Roy.

• ✗ 1. The Calcutta Unitarian Committee was founded in September 1821 by William Adam and Rammohun Roy. Keshab was born in 1838, so he had no hand in it.
• ✓ 2. Keshab founded the New Dispensation (Naba Bidhan or Nava Vidhan) in 1881, an institution meant to bring the truths of all great religions together. The question's 'Tabernacle of New Dispensation' is this church.
• ✓ 3. 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 · Keshab Chandra Sen: Brahmo Samaj of India (1866), New Dispensation (1881). The Unitarian Committee (1821) belongs to Rammohun Roy and William Adam.

Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2016, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 1 Oct 2026 (how we verify). Permalink · Report an error