Indian History Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The campaign was started by Dasarath Deb.

In 1945 Dasarath Deb and his associates founded the Jana Shiksha Samiti, which opened schools in the tribal villages of Tripura and is remembered as the state's first mass literacy movement. Dasarath Deb later became a member of Parliament and, from 1993 to 1998, Chief Minister.

The two Maharajas were rulers of the princely state, and Nripen Chakraborty was a later Chief Minister (1978-88). None of them started that campaign.

Answer: C

Ujjayanta Palace was established by Maharaja Radha Kishore Manikya.

The palace was built between 1899 and 1901 in Agartala by Radha Kishore Manikya, and its name, Ujjayanta, is said to have been suggested by Rabindranath Tagore. It was the royal residence, later housed the Tripura Legislative Assembly, and is now the Tripura State Museum.

Dhanya Manikya ruled around 1500 and built the Tripura Sundari temple at Udaipur. Uday Manikya, of the sixteenth century, gave Udaipur its name. Bir Chandra Manikya, who ruled before Radha Kishore, died in 1896, before the palace was built.

Answer: C

The massacre took place on 13th April, 1919.

On the Baisakhi day of 1919, troops under Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer opened fire without warning on an unarmed crowd gathered in the enclosed Jallianwala Bagh at Amritsar, protesting against the Rowlatt Act and the arrest of local leaders. Hundreds were killed. Rabindranath Tagore renounced his knighthood in protest.

The other three dates fall in 1920, 1921 and 1930, after the event.

Answer: C

The Treaty of Yandabo was a peace treaty between the Kingdom of Ava and the East India Company.

Signed on 24 February 1826, it ended the First Anglo-Burmese War. The Burmese kingdom of Ava gave up its claims to Assam, Manipur, Cachar and Jaintia, ceded Arakan and Tenasserim, and paid a large indemnity. It brought much of the North-East under British control.

India, Bangladesh and independent Bhutan did not exist as states in 1826, so none of the other options can describe the treaty.

Answer: B

The capital moved to old Agartala in the 18th century.

Maharaja Krishna Manikya shifted the royal capital from Udaipur (Rangamati) in southern Tripura to old Agartala in 1760. The capital was moved again in 1849, from old Agartala to the present town of Agartala. The earlier site is still known as Old Agartala, a few kilometres east of the present city.

The 19th century is the trap, being the date of the second move. The 17th and 20th centuries do not match either move.

Answer: C

Kangleipak is the historic name of Manipur.

Kangleipak was the name of the Meitei kingdom of the Imphal valley, used in its old chronicles, and the Kangla fort in Imphal was its seat. The name Manipur came into general use later. Manipur became a full state of the Indian Union in 1972.

Assam's old names include Pragjyotisha and Kamarupa, and Mizoram and Nagaland were not known as Kangleipak.

Answer: B

The palace was restored by Maharaja Radha Kishore Manikya.

The earthquake of 1897 badly damaged the old royal palace at Agartala. Radha Kishore Manikya, who succeeded Bir Chandra Manikya in 1896, had the present Ujjayanta Palace built between 1899 and 1901, a little away from the old site. It now houses the Tripura State Museum.

Bir Chandra Manikya had died before the earthquake, and Birendra Kishore and Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya ruled later, in the twentieth century.

Answer: B

MBB College was established in 1947.

Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya founded the college at Agartala in 1947, the year of his death, as the first institution of higher education in Tripura. It still bears his name.

1939 is before the college existed, and 1950 and 1969 fall after the Maharaja's death and Tripura's merger with India, so they cannot be the founding year of a college he established.

Answer: B

The key's answer is Maharaja Ratna Manikya.

According to the Rajmala, the royal chronicle of Tripura, Ratna Fa was the first ruler to take the title Manikya, so he is traditionally regarded as the first king of the Manikya dynasty. The earliest known coins of Tripura were issued in his name in the fifteenth century.

Dhanya Manikya ruled in the early sixteenth century, and Bir Chandra Manikya in the late nineteenth century, so neither began the dynasty or its coinage.

Answer: C

The Rajmala was written under Dharma Manikya.

The Rajmala is the royal chronicle of the Manikya kings of Tripura, composed in Bengali verse. Its first part was compiled in the fifteenth century at the court of Dharma Manikya I, who had court scholars set down the traditional genealogy of the dynasty; later kings had it continued.

Durga Manikya and Ramgana Manikya reigned in the early nineteenth century and Birendra Kishore Manikya in the twentieth, centuries after the chronicle was begun, so none of them can be the king under whom it was written.