Indian History Questions and Answers

Answer: D

The place was Awadh.

A large share of the sepoys of the East India Company's Bengal Army were recruited from the peasant families of Awadh and the neighbouring parts of the present Uttar Pradesh, which is why Awadh was called its nursery. Its annexation in 1856 directly affected those soldiers' families and fed the discontent behind the revolt of 1857.

Calcutta was the capital of British India, and Dhaka and Midinapur were in Bengal, but none of them supplied the bulk of the Bengal Army's soldiers.

Answer: B

The keyed pair is Gandhi Cap, Khadi.

As Gandhian ideas reached the princely states of Rajasthan through the Praja Mandal movements, wearing khadi and the white khadi cap known as the Gandhi cap became the visible mark of a freedom worker, and the paper's source names this pair.

The charkha and the tricolour were also national symbols, so option C is a near miss, but it is not the pair the question is built on. The sickle is a symbol of later socialist and communist movements, and slogans and strikes are methods of protest rather than things worn as part of freedom.

Answer: B

The first session of the Congress was held at Bombay.

The Indian National Congress was to hold its first session at Poona in December 1885, but an epidemic there forced a move. (Most accounts name the disease as cholera; the question calls it plague.) The session met at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay, from 28 to 31 December 1885, with W.C. Bonnerjee presiding and 72 delegates.

Calcutta hosted the second session in 1886 and Madras the third in 1887. Lucknow came much later.

Answer: A

The Rajasthan Seva Sangh was founded at Wardha.

Vijay Singh Pathik, the leader of the Bijolia peasant movement, founded the Rajasthan Seva Sangh at Wardha in 1919. The next year its headquarters moved to Ajmer, from where it organised peasant agitations in the princely states of Rajputana.

Ajmer is the trap: it became the Sangh's base, but it was not where the Sangh was founded. Delhi and Calcutta are unconnected with it.

Answer: A

Operation Sard Hawa is conducted by the Border Security Force (BSF).

Sard Hawa (cold wind) is the BSF's winter exercise along the Rajasthan frontier with Pakistan, in which patrolling and alertness are stepped up during the foggy cold months. Its summer counterpart on the same border is Operation Garam Hawa.

The other forces do not guard this border. The CISF protects industrial units, airports and government installations, the CRPF is the main force for internal security, and the ITBP guards the border with China.

Answer: C

It was Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner.

Ganga Singh commanded the Bikaner Camel Corps (Ganga Risala) in the First World War and was a member of the Imperial War Cabinet. In 1919 he represented India at the Paris Peace Conference and signed the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on India's behalf.

Madho Singh II was the ruler of Jaipur, Fateh Singh the Maharana of Mewar, and Sardul Singh was Ganga Singh's son and successor at Bikaner. None of them represented India at Paris.

Answer: A

The slogan of Swadesh was first raised in Rajasthan by Swami Dayanand Saraswati.

During his stay in Rajasthan in the 1880s, Swami Dayanand, founder of the Arya Samaj, urged the princes and people to use goods made in their own country and to take pride in their own language and culture. Rajasthan's history books credit him with first giving the call for Swadeshi there.

Maharana Sajjan Singh of Mewar was his host and disciple, not the source of the slogan. Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose came much later in the national movement.

Answer: C

Kheda is in Gujarat.

Kheda (Kaira) is a district of central Gujarat. Gandhi led the Kheda Satyagraha there, with Vallabhbhai Patel, demanding that land revenue be suspended after the crops failed. It is usually dated to 1918, but the question asks only where the place is.

Bihar was the scene of the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917, which is why it is the tempting wrong answer. Bengal and Rajasthan have no connection with the Kheda movement.

Answer: A

They were disciples of Swami Dayanand Saraswati.

Swami Dayanand Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj, spent much of his last years in Rajasthan, at Udaipur and Shahpura, before his death at Ajmer in 1883, and the Rajasthan accounts of the national movement name these three among those he influenced. Shyamji Krishna Varma, from Kutch, studied Sanskrit with Dayanand and later founded India House in London; Kesari Singh Barhat of Shahpura and Damodar Das Rathi of Beawar became revolutionaries in Rajasthan.

Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda were associated with a different reform movement centred in Bengal. V.D. Savarkar was himself a younger revolutionary who stayed at India House, not the teacher of this group.

Answer: C

The chronological order is c, b, a, d: Ajayraj, Arnoraj, Vigrahraj IV, Rao Rai Singh.

1. Ajayraj (early 12th century), the Chauhan ruler who founded Ajmer (Ajayameru).
2. Arnoraj, his son, who built the Ana Sagar lake at Ajmer.
3. Vigrahraj IV (Visaladeva), Arnoraj's son, the most famous Chauhan ruler of the mid-12th century.
4. Rao Rai Singh of Bikaner, who ruled in the late 16th century under Akbar and built Junagarh fort.

The Chauhan kings are father, son and grandson, so any order not starting with Ajayraj is wrong.