DAY – 49: Insights Self Study Guide for UPSC Prelims + Mains – 2015

Solution: c)

The rebel activity was marked by intense anti-British feelings and the  administration was invariably toppled. In the absence of any  leaders from their own ranks, the insurgents turned to the  traditional leaders of Indian society — the territorial aristocrats  and feudal chiefs who had suffered at the hands of the British.

The Revolt was not confined to major centres such as Delhi, Meerut etc. It had  embraced almost every cantonment in the Bengal and a few in  Bombay. Only the Madras army remained totally loyal.

Solution: a)

Why did

the sepoys revolt?

It was considered prestigious to be in the service of the Company; it provided economic stability. Why,  then, did the sepoys choose to forego these advantages for the  sake of an uncertain future? A proclamation issued at Delhi  indicates the immediate cause: ‘it is well known that in these  days all the English have entertained these evil designs — first, to  destroy the religion of the whole Hindustani Army, and then to  make the people by compulsion Christians. Therefore, we, solely  on account of our religion, have combined with the people, and  have not spared alive one infidel, and have re-established the  Delhi dynasty on these terms’

Solution: b)

Initially, the administration sought to accommodate the sepoys’ demands:  facilities were provided to them to live according to the dictates of  their caste and religion. But, with the extension of the Army’s operation not only to various parts of India, but also to countries outside, it was not possible to do so any more. Moreover, caste distinctions and segregation within a regiment were not conducive to the cohesiveness of a fighting unit. To begin with, the administration thought of an easy way out: discourage the recruitment of Brahmins; this apparently did not succeed and, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the upper castes predominated in the Bengal Army, for instance.

Solution: d)

All are correct.

The sepoys’ discontent was not limited to religion alone. They were equally unhappy with their emoluments. A sepoy in the infantry got seven rupees a month. A sawar in the cavalry was paid Rs. 27, out of which he had to pay for his own uniform, food and the upkeep of his mount, and he was ultimately left with only a rupee or two. What was more galling was the sense of deprivation compared to his British counterparts. He was made to feel a subordinate at every step and was discriminated against  racially and in matters of promotion and privileges. ‘

Solution: a)

Almost every agricultural family in Oudh had a  representative in the army; there were 75,000 men from Oudh.  Whatever happened there was of immediate concern to the sepoy.  The new land revenue system introduced after the annexation  and the confiscation of lands attached to charitable institutions  affected his well-being. That accounted for the 14,000 petitions  received from the sepoys about the hardships of the revenue  system. A proclamation issued by the Delhi rebels clearly  reflected the sepoy’s awareness of the misery brought about by  British rule. The mutiny in itself, therefore, was a revolt against the British and, thus, a political act. What imparted this character to the mutiny was the sepoy’s identity of interests with the general population.

The Revolt of the sepoys was accompanied by a rebellion of the civil population, particularly in the North Western Provinces and Oudh, the two areas from which the sepoys of the Bengal army were recruited. Except in Muzzafarnagar and Saharanpur, civil rebellion followed the Revolt of the sepoys. The action of the sepoys released the rural population from fear of the state and the control exercised by the administration.

Solution: c)

Apart from some honourable exceptions like the Rani of Thansi, Kunwar Singh and Maulvi Ahmadullah, the rebels were poorly served by their leaders. Most of them failed to realize the significance of the Revolt and simply did not do enough. Bahadur Shah and Zeenat Mahal had no faith in the sepoys and negotiated with the British to secure their safety. Most of the taluqdars tried only to protect their own interests.

Solution: d)

Socially, economically and politically, the semi-feudal leaders of these rebellions were backward looking and traditional in outlook. They still lived in the old world, blissfully unaware and oblivious of the modern world which had knocked down the defences of their society. Their resistance represented no societal alternative. It was centuries-old in form and ideological and cultural content. Its basic objective was to restore earlier forms of rule and social relations. Such backward looking and scattered, sporadic and disunited uprisings were incapable of fending off or overthrowing foreign rule. The British succeeded in pacifying the rebel areas one by one. They also gave concessions to the less fiery rebel chiefs and zamindars in the form of reinstatement, the restoration of their estates and reduction in revenue assessments so long as they agreed to live peacefully under alien authority. The more recalcitrant ones were physically wiped out. Velu Thampi was, for example, publicly hanged even after he was dead.

Solution: a)

The tribal people, spread over a large part of India, organized hundreds of militant outbreaks and insurrections during the 19th century. These uprisings were marked by immense courage and sacrifice on their part and brutal suppression and veritable butchery on the part of the rulers. The tribals had cause to be upset for a variety of reasons. The colonial administration ended their relative isolation and brought them fully within the ambit of colonialism. It recognized the tribal chiefs as zamindars and introduced a new system of land revenue and taxation of tribal products. It encouraged the influx of Christian missionaries into the tribal areas. Above all, it introduced a large number of moneylenders, traders arid revenue farmers as middlemen among the tribals. These middlemen were the chief instruments for bringing the tribal people within the vortex of the colonial economy and exploitation. The middlemen were outsiders who increasingly took possession of tribal lands and ensnared the tribals in a web of debt. hi time, the tribal people increasingly lost their lands and were reduced to the position of agricultural labourers, share-croppers and rack-rented tenants on the land they had earlier brought under cultivation and held on a communal basis.

Colonialism also transformed their relationship with the forest. They had depended on the forest for food, fuel and cattle-feed. They practiced shifting cultivation (jhum, podu, etc.), taking recourse to fresh forest lands when their existing lands showed signs of exhaustion. The colonial government changed all this. It usurped the forest lands and placed restrictions on access to forest products, forest lands and village common lands. It refused to let cultivation shift to new areas.

Oppression and extortion by policemen and other petty officials further aggravated distress among the tribals. The revenue farmers and government agents also intensified and expanded the system of begar — making the tribals perform unpaid labour.

Solution: a)

Among the numerous tribal revolts, the Santhal hool or uprising was the most massive. The Santhals, who live in the area between Bhagalpur and Rajmahal, known as Daman-i-koh, rose in revolt; made a determined attempt to expel the outsiders — the dikus — and proclaimed the complete ‘annihilation’ of the alien regime. The social conditions which drove them to insurrection were described by a contemporary in the Calcutta Review as follows: ‘Zamindars, the police, the revenue and court alas have exercised a combined system of extortions, oppressive exactions, forcible dispossession of property, abuse and personal violence and a variety of petty tyrannies upon the timid and yielding Santhals. Usurious interest on loans of money ranging from 50 to 500 per cent; false measures at the haul and the market; wilful and uncharitable trespass by the rich by means of their untethered cattle, tattoos, ponies and even elephants, on the growing crops of the poorer race; and, such like illegalities have been prevalent.’

Solution: d)

All were tribal rebellions.

The Kols of Chhotanagpur rebelled from 1820 to 1837. Thousands of them were massacred before British authority could be re-imposed. The hill tribesmen of Rampa in coastal Andhra revolted in March 1879 against the depredations of the government-supported mansabdar and the new restrictive forest regulations. The authorities had to mobilize regiments of infantry, a squadron of cavalry and two companies of sappers and miners before the rebels, numbering several thousands, could be defeated by the end of 1880.

The rebellion (ulgulan) of the Munda tribesmen, led by Birsa Munda, occurred during 1899-19. For over thirty years the Munda sardars had been struggling against the destruction of their system of common land holdings by the intrusion of jagirdar, thikadar (revenue farmers) and merchant moneylenders.

Solution: b)

The most militant and widespread of the peasant movements was the Indigo Revolt of 1859-60. The indigo planters, nearly all Europeans, compelled the tenants to grow indigo which they processed in factories set up in rural (mofussil) areas. From the beginning, indigo was grown under an extremely oppressive system which involved great loss to the cultivators. The planters forced the peasants to take a meager amount as advance and enter into fraudulent contracts. The price paid for the indigo plants was far below the market price.

The discontent of indigo growers in Bengal boiled over in the autumn of 1859 when their case seemed to get Government support. Misreading an official letter and exceeding his authority, Hem Chandra Kar, Deputy Magistrate of Kalaroa, published on 17 August a proclamation to policemen that ‘in case of disputes relating to Indigo Ryots, they (ryots) shall retain possession of their own lands, and shall sow on them what crops they please, and the Police will be careful that no Indigo Planter nor anyone else be able to interface in the matter.

Missionaries were another group which extended active support to the indigo ryots in their struggle

Solution: b)

The Government’s response to the Revolt was rather restrained and not as harsh as in the case of civil rebellions and tribal uprisings. It had just undergone the harrowing experience of the Santhal uprising and the Revolt of 1857. It was also able to see, in time, the changed temper of the peasantry and was influenced by the support extended to the Revolt by the intelligentsia and the missionaries. It appointed a commission to inquire into the problem of indigo cultivation. Evidence brought before the Indigo Commission and its final report exposed the coercion and corruptio underlying the entire system of indigo cultivation. The result was the mitigation of the worst abuses of the system. The Government issued a notification in November 1860 that ryots could not be compelled to sow indigo and that it would ensure that all disputes were settled by legal means. But the planters were already closing down the factories they felt that they could not make their enterprises pay without the use of force and fraud.

Solution: d)

Though peasant discontent smouldered till 1885, many of the disputes were settled partially under official pressure and persuasion and partially out of the zamindar‘s fear that the united peasantry would drag them into prolonged and costly litigation. Many peasants were able to acquire occupancy rights and resist enhanced rents.

The Government rose to the defence of the zamindars wherever violence took place. Peasants were then arrested on a large sale. But it assumed a position of neutrality as far as legal battles or peaceful agitations were concerned. The Government also promised to undertake legislation to protect the tenants from the worst aspects of zamindari oppression, a promise it fulfilled however imperfectly in 1885 when the Bengal Tenancy Act was passed.

What persuaded the zamindars and the colonial regime to reconcile themselves to the movement was the fact that its aims were limited to the redressal of the immediate grievances of the peasants and the enforcement of the existing legal rights and norms. It was not aimed at the zamindari system. It also did not have at any stage an anti-colonial political edge. The agrarian leagues kept within the bounds of law, used the legal machinery to fight the zamindars, and raised no anti-British demands.

Solution: c)

http://www.banglapedia.org/HT/B_0477.htm

The Indian Association and many of the nationalist newspapers asked for permanent fixation of the tenant’s rent. They warned that since the Bill would confer occupancy rights even on non-cultivators, it would lead to the growth of middlemen — the jotedars — who would be as oppressive as the zamindars so far as the actual cultivators were concerned. They, therefore, demanded that the right of occupancy should go with actual cultivation of the soil, that is, in most cases to the under ryots and the tenants-at-will.

Solution: c)

Laxmikanth, Indian Polity, Chapter – 21

Solution: b)

A major agrarian outbreak occurred in the Poona and Ahmednagar districts of Maharashtra in 1875. Here, as part of the Ryotwari system, land revenue was settled directly with the peasant who was also recognized as the owner of his land. Like the peasants in other Ryotwari areas, the Deccan peasant also found it difficult to pay land revenue without getting into the clutches of the moneylender and increasingly losing his land. This led to growing tension between the peasants and the moneylenders most of whom were outsiders — Marwaris or Gujaratis.

Three other developments occurred at this time. During the early I 860s, the American Civil War had led to a rise in cotton exports which had pushed up prices. The end of the Civil War in 1864 brought about an acute depression in cotton exports and a crash in prices. The ground slipped from under the peasants’ feet. Simultaneously, in 1867, ‘the Government raised land revenue by nearly 50 per cent. The situation was worsened by a succession of bad harvests.

Solution: a)

http://kolhapur.nic.in/kolhapurgazetteer/finan_debtors.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pabna_Peasant_Uprisings

Solution: d)

http://www.gktoday.in/kuka-movement-1872/

http://books.google.co.in/books?id=zZDvBP0ZbnYC&pg=PR7&lpg=PR7&dq=The+Kuka+Revolt&source=bl&ots=mJuJp-yo31&sig=8pd7QF37mngfhwQXslKhTXCHQmo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=z1dOU-WpEcXc8AWIvoKYDg&ved=0CFsQ6AEwBzgU#v=onepage&q=The%20Kuka%20Revolt&f=false

Solution: d)

A powerful and long-lasting myth, the myth of ‘the safety valve,’ has arisen around this question. Generations of students and political activists have been fed on this myth. But despite widespread popular belief, this myth has little basis in historical fact. The myth is that the Indian National Congress was started by A.O. Hume and others under the official direction, guidance and advice of no less a person than Lord Dufferin, the Viceroy, to provide a safe, mild, peaceful, and constitutional outlet or safety valve for the rising discontent among the masses, which was inevitably leading towards a popular and violent revolution. Consequently, the revolutionary potential was nipped in the bud. The core of the myth, that a violent revolution was on the cards at the time and was avoided only by the foundations of the Congress, is accepted by most writers; the liberaIs welcome it, the radicals use it to prove that the Congress has always been compromising if not loyalist vis-a-vis imperialism, the extreme right use it to show that the Congress has been anti-national from the beginning. All of them agree that the manner of its birth affected the basic character and future work of the Congress in a crucial manner.

Solution: a)

Rajani Palme Dutt

1. Palme Dutt’s authoritative work India Today made the myth of the safety-valve a staple of left-wing opinion. Emphasizing the myth, Dutt wrote that the Congress was brought into existence through direct Governmental initiative and guidance and through ‘a plan secretly pre-arranged with the Viceroy’ so that it (the Government) could use it ‘as an intended weapon for safeguarding British rule against the rising forces of popular unrest and anti-British feeling.’ It was ‘an attempt to defeat, or rather forestall, an impending revolution.’

http://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article1607.html

Solution: c)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Blavatsky#Indian_Independence_Movement

Solution: c)

INC did not espouse the cause of untouchable and peasants when it was formed for the fear that it would lose the support of the industrialist and zamindars.

Solution: d)

The first strike was against railways owned by the British.

After the swadeshi movement, the labour movement took an even more organized form.

Solution: d)

The working class slowly got embedded in the national movement. The plight of workers was visible all over India and hence the strikes were also not limited to North India only.

Solution: d)

Refer to Bipin Chandra page no. 216.

Solution: d)

It was in the non-cooperation movement did a call for a nationwide movement was taken.

Public Safety and Trade Disuptes Act were designed to further control the workers.

Solution: a)

Refer to the page number 218 Bipin Chandra.

Solution: a)

The temples were not included in the movement. Besides, the control was to be taken from the government, and not given to it.

Solution: b)

The gurudwara movement became a movement very connected to the NCM. Some of the leaders leading the gurudwara reform were closely associated with it.

Solution: d)

Refer to page number 227 Bipin Chandra.

Solution: a)

The very first success of the temple entry movement was in the princely state of Travancore. It succeeded in both North and South India.

Solution: a)

Refer to pages 236-238 in Bipin Chandra.

It is important to note that both these streams of thought merged together in the years to come.

Solution: c)

Refer to pages 236-238 in Bipin Chandra.

It is important to note that both these streams of thought merged together in the years to come.

Solution: b)

Refer to pages 236-238 in Bipin Chandra.

It is important to note that both these streams of thought merged together in the years to come.

The Swarajists came to power and they defeated a number of legislations in the assembly. Besides, they exposed the anti-Indian nature of the british rule effectively in the assembly.

Solution: d)

The Demand for a new constitution was passed in the very first session that the swarajists had in the central assembly. Refer to page 241 for details.

Solution: c)

Ideologies derived from the Russian revolution heavily impacted the revolutionary politics in India. The ideas of worker’s movements; violent uprooting of governments; and that of a classless society inspired the leaders then.

Solution: d)

It was realized by the revolutionary leaders that the movement needs to be a mass movement. For this they have to include every section of society – a greater part of which was downtrodden. They believed social work could uplift them and they thus can become a part of the movement.

Solution: d)

Marxist ideas actually inspired him and they were totally relevant to both the fight for independence and post-independent order in India.

Solution: c)

Refer to page 263 Bipin Chandra.

Solution: d)

Refer to pages 265-267 Bipin Chandra.

Solution: b)

The objective of the Dandi March was not to repeal the salt Act, but only to break the law in public. (Beware of such questions in UPSC Prelims and read between the lines very very carefully. UPSC is fond of tricking students in such a manner.)