Day-533 | Daily MCQs | UPSC Prelims | HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA

Answer: D
Explanation:
● Decentralisation and local governance have been a major concern in India for long. It goes back to Lord Mayo’s Resolution of 1870, which advocated decentralisation and made arrangements for strengthening the municipal institutions and involving more and more Indians in these bodies. Hence, option D is correct.
● Lord Ripon’s Resolution of 1882 too strongly advocated the cause of decentralisation of administration through the establishment of local self-governing institutions. The Resolution of 1882 was hailed as the Magna Carta of local government.
● The Decentralisation Commission Report, 1909 and the Government of India Acts 1919 and 1935 also favoured local governance. The Government of India Act 1919 introduced ‘Dyarchy’ in the provinces and local self-government became a transferred subject under the charge of a popular minister of the provincial legislature. The Act increased the taxation powers of the local bodies, lowered the franchise, reduced the nominated element and extended the communal electorate to a large number of municipalities.
● The Act of 1935 for the first time introduced a federal form of government and conferred ‘Provincial Autonomy’ on the provinces and envisaged self-government for the country as a whole.

Answer: C
Explanation:
The answer to the puzzle, that why reform movements of the nineteenth century failed to bring remarkable changes in the condition of the women lies in the motives behind these reforms.
● It was not that reformers have failed to take initiative for women education. The initiative was taken in Calcutta by men like Radhakanta Deb and the School Book Society and later by Keshub Chandra Sen and the Brahmo Samaj, in western India by Mahadev Govind Ranade and Prarthana Samaj, in north India by Swami Dayanand and his Arya Samaj and in Madras by Annie Besant and the Theosophical Society.
● The colonial government from the administration of Lord Dalhousie (1848–56) also took particular interest in female education. J.E. Drinkwater Bethune, the law member in the governor general’s council opened in 1849 what eventually became the most well-known girls’ school in Calcutta. The Hunter Commission recommended liberal grants-in-aid and special scholarships for women’s education. During the next two decades significant improvements were seen in women’s enrolment in both universities and secondary schools.
● The aim of the reform movement was never the emancipation of women. The colonial government wanted female education as it wanted the Indian civil servants to be married to educated wives, so that they did not have to face the psychological trauma of a split household. Also, English educated mothers were expected to breed loyal subjects.
● The educated Indian middle-class males, on the other hand, dreamt of the Victorian ideal of companionate marriage. What they wanted was an educated bhadramahila (gentlewoman) who would be an ideal companion to the enlightened Hindu bhadralok.
Education thus far from being emancipatory, further confined women to idealised domestic roles as good wives and better mothers.

Answer: B
Explanation:
The non-Brahman movement in the Madras Presidency was associated with the Vellalas and a Dravidian identity. On the political front, the movement witnessed the formation of the Justice Party in 1916.
It opposed the Congress as a Brahman-dominated organisation, and claimed separate communal representation for the non-Brahmans as had been granted to the Muslims in the Morley–Minto reform. This demand, supported by the colonial bureaucracy, was granted in the Montagu- Chelmsford reform of 1919, as it allocated twenty-eight reserved seats to the non-Brahmans in the Madras Legislative Council.

Answer: A
Explanation:
The correct matches are given below:
● Hindu Mahasabha- B.S. Moonje
● Krishak Praja Party- A.K. Fazlul Huq
● Unionist Party- Chhotu Ram
Additional Information
● Hindu Sabha’s sprang up in Lahore in 1882 and by 1906 a Hindu Sabha was established in almost in each district of the Punjab. In 1915, the all India Hindu Mahasabha held its first session in (Haridwar) UP. Some of its important leaders included- Lala Lajpat Rai, Madan Mohan Malviya, S.P. Mukherjee, V.D. Savarakr, etc.
● In 1923 the Unionist Party was formed in British Punjab by Chhotu Ram of Rohtak district with the help of Sir Fazl-i-Husain. The party’s main agenda was to protect the agrarian society’s interests and curtail the growing communal sentiments in the region.
● The Krishak Praja Party was formed in July 1936 at Dacca. Sir Abdur Rahim became the President of the KPP; Fazlul Huq, Mujibur Rahman, Abdul Karim, Abdullah Suhrawardy and Abdul Momen were its Vice-Presidents; Mohammad Akram Khan became its Secretary and the Party’s Joint Secretaries were Shamsuddin Ahmed and Tamizuddin Khan. The KPP was almost entirely an East Bengal Party and its leadership was mainly in the hands of the educated Muslim middle class who came from different walks of life.

Answer: A
Explanation:
Till the end of World War One for various reasons the number of registered industrial enterprises had been steadily rising, while developments in the interwar period further strengthened their position.
The factors which facilitated a modest Indian industrial development, despite an obstructing colonial presence, were many, such as a
● growing tendency towards import substitution in consumer goods,
● shifting of attention towards the domestic markets,
● growth in internal trade,
● shifting of traditionally accumulated capital through trade, moneylending and landowning to industrial investments,
● the outflow of foreign capital creating a space for indigenous entrepreneurs.
Candidates should also keep in mind the difference between ‘import substitution’ and ‘export promotion’.
Import substitution generally means the satisfaction of a greater proportion of a country’s total demand for goods (production plus imports) through its own domestic production, while export promotion is a strategy to increase the export trade in a country.