Modern Indian History Mixed Bag (Set 4)

The correct answer is the first time the prize was awarded to a non-European. Tagore won the 1913 prize for verse he recast in English. The citation praised his English words.

Curzon’s dismissive assessment, made confidently but ultimately proven badly mistaken, reflected the colonial administration’s initial underestimation of the nationalist movement’s staying power, an underestimation his own Partition of Bengal policy would go on to spectacularly disprove by triggering the large-scale Swadeshi Movement. His tenure as Viceroy, marked by significant administrative reforms alongside deeply unpopular policies like the Bengal partition and attempts to increase government control over universities, made him one of the most consequential — and most nationalist-opposed — Viceroys of the entire colonial period. The stark contrast between Curzon’s confident prediction of Congress’s demise and the organisation’s subsequent growth into the central vehicle of Indian independence stands as one of history’s more notable miscalculations by a colonial official.

Lord Hardinge survived an assassination attempt by revolutionary nationalists during his ceremonial procession into Delhi in December 1912, an attack that underscored the continuing strength of the revolutionary terrorist strand of the nationalist movement even as the mainstream Congress pursued more constitutional methods during this period. The attack, though it caused Hardinge injury, did not derail the capital transfer itself, and Delhi went on to become the permanent seat of British Indian, and later independent India’s, government. This episode exemplifies how revolutionary and mainstream nationalist currents operated as parallel, if largely separate, strands of resistance to British rule during the early 20th century.

Sunayani Devi was Abanindranath Tagore’s sister. She was self-taught, developing a folk-influenced style distinct from her brother’s more classical approach.

The reforms, named after Secretary of State John Morley and Viceroy Lord Minto, introduced separate electorates specifically for Muslims in the Legislative Councils, a decision many historians regard as having significantly deepened communal political divisions that would echo through the following decades, ultimately contributing to Partition. While the reforms modestly increased the number of elected Indian members in the Legislative Councils, they carefully ensured British officials retained an overall majority in the Imperial Legislative Council, limiting any genuine transfer of power. The introduction of separate electorates is often cited as one of the most consequential and controversial single provisions in the entire history of British constitutional reform in India.

Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki carried out the bombing attempt on Magistrate Kingsford’s carriage in Muzaffarpur, intending to punish him for harsh sentences he had imposed on nationalist agitators, but the bomb mistakenly struck a different carriage, killing two British women instead of its intended target. Chaki took his own life to avoid capture, while Bose was arrested, tried, and executed at just 18 years old, becoming one of the most celebrated young martyrs of the revolutionary nationalist movement. The bombing’s investigation directly led to the wider Alipore Bomb Case, implicating Aurobindo Ghosh and other Anushilan Samiti-linked revolutionaries, with Ghosh’s defence handled by prominent nationalist lawyer Chittaranjan Das.

The rebellion was led by four brothers, Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand, and Bhairav Murmu, alongside their sisters Phulo and Jhano.

Syed Ahmad Khan believed Muslims needed modern scientific and administrative education to succeed within British India, contrasting sharply with Deoband’s traditionalism.

Direct Action Day, called by the Muslim League to press its demand for Pakistan following the collapse of Cabinet Mission negotiations over interim government formation, triggered several days of extremely severe communal rioting in Calcutta, resulting in thousands of deaths and marking a serious escalation of religious violence that would tragically foreshadow the much larger-scale communal bloodshed accompanying Partition itself the following year. The scale and intensity of the Great Calcutta Killing significantly hardened political positions on both sides, convincing many previously hesitant observers that continued Hindu-Muslim political union within a single state might no longer be practically sustainable given the depth of communal antagonism the violence had exposed. This tragic episode represents a critical inflection point in the final months before independence, after which the prospects for avoiding outright territorial partition diminished substantially.

Canning’s tenure spanned the transition from the East India Company’s direct rule to Crown administration, a transition directly triggered by the 1857 Revolt’s severe challenge to Company authority, with Canning subsequently formally reading Queen Victoria’s Proclamation announcing this transfer of power at Allahabad on 1st November 1858. His administration also saw the significant ‘White Mutiny’ — a protest by European Company soldiers objecting to their transfer to direct Crown military service under altered terms — an episode that, while less consequential than the main 1857 Revolt, illustrated the complex and multi-layered military and administrative challenges accompanying this pivotal transitional period. Canning’s relatively measured, sometimes criticised-as-lenient approach to post-revolt reconciliation (earning him the pejorative nickname ‘Clemency Canning’ from some contemporary critics) nonetheless helped establish the basic framework of direct Crown rule that would govern India for the following nine decades until independence.

While separate electorates for Muslims had already existed since the 1909 Morley-Minto Reforms, the Communal Award’s extension of a similar separate electorate specifically to the depressed classes provoked Gandhi’s fierce opposition, since he believed treating Dalits as a wholly separate political community (rather than integrated Hindus with reserved seats) would permanently entrench India’s caste divisions. Gandhi undertook a ‘fast unto death’ in protest, ultimately forcing negotiations that produced the 1932 Poona Pact with B.R. Ambedkar, which replaced separate electorates for depressed classes with reserved seats within a joint general electorate — a compromise that significantly increased the actual number of reserved seats compared to the original Communal Award. This tension between Gandhi’s integrationist approach and Ambedkar’s preference for guaranteed independent political representation reflected a genuine and lasting disagreement over the best path to Dalit political empowerment.

After suppressing the rebellion, the British created Santhal Parganas as a separate, non-regulation district on 28 January 1856, carved from parts of Bhagalpur and Birbhum.

As principal, Vidyasagar opened Sanskrit College’s admissions to students from lower castes, alongside promoting English study.

Sarat Chandra posthumously won the 1978 Filmfare Award for Best Story, for Swami (1977), based on a story he had written decades earlier.

Amherst’s tenure saw the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-26), a costly but ultimately successful conflict that secured British territorial gains including Assam and coastal regions of Burma, representing a significant eastward extension of British Indian territorial control beyond the subcontinent’s traditional boundaries. This conflict, though less centrally documented in general Indian historical narratives compared to the more extensively covered Anglo-Maratha or Anglo-Sikh wars, nonetheless represented a substantial and consequential military and territorial undertaking during Amherst’s administration. The war’s considerable expense and challenging jungle-warfare conditions made it a difficult campaign despite its ultimate success, foreshadowing similar later difficulties the British would encounter in subsequent Burmese and Afghan military engagements.

He enrolled at UC Berkeley to study chemistry, before becoming deeply involved with the Ghadar Party.

The Poona Pact’s negotiated compromise nearly doubled the number of reserved seats for depressed classes compared to the original Communal Award’s 71 seats, reaching approximately 147, even as it replaced Ambedkar’s originally sought separate electorate with a joint electorate system in which depressed-class candidates would still be elected primarily by depressed-class voters through a primary election process. This substantial increase in reserved seats represented a genuine, if partial, victory for Ambedkar’s underlying goal of guaranteed political representation, even though he had to concede on the specific separate-electorate mechanism he had originally sought. The Pact’s basic framework — reserved seats within joint electorates, rather than fully separate electorates — became the enduring model that independent India’s own Constitution would later adopt for Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe political representation.

He was exiled to Dhaka, where he died on 17 July 1835 — a date now marked annually in Meghalaya as U Tirot Sing Day.

65 Namdharis were executed by being bound to the mouths of cannons and blown apart, without trial, following the Malerkotla incident.

Her uncle performed shraddh, death rites, in protest of the interfaith marriage, given their religious and age difference.

The Kanpur case targeted early pioneers of the Indian Communist movement, including S.A. Dange (among the founders of the Communist Party of India) and Muzaffar Ahmad, prosecuted for allegedly conspiring to establish a Soviet-style Communist government in India through revolutionary means. This case predates the larger, more internationally publicised Meerut Conspiracy Case by several years, marking an earlier phase in the colonial state’s systematic surveillance and suppression of India’s nascent Communist and labour organising movement. Together, the Kanpur and Meerut cases illustrate the sustained, decade-long colonial effort to contain the growing influence of Marxist political ideas among India’s industrial working class during the interwar period.

The Residency at Koti was the target of the 1857 attack. Today the building houses the University College for Women.

Dupleix spent much of his own fortune funding French ambitions in India. The Company never reimbursed him, and he died in near-poverty in Paris, in 1763.