Modern Indian History Mixed Practice — MCQs with Answers (Set 37)

The 1892 Act let council members discuss the budget and ask questions, but gave them no power to vote on financial matters.

The 1892 Act allowed indirect election through recommendation by bodies like universities and chambers of commerce, mainly reaching India’s small, English-educated elite.

The 1861 Act restored legislative powers to the Bombay and Madras presidencies, and allowed new legislative councils to be set up in other provinces.

The portfolio system was introduced under Governor-General Canning in 1861, giving individual council members specific departments to look after, much like a modern cabinet.

The 1861 Act allowed the Governor-General to nominate, not elect, Indian members to his legislative council for the first time.

Nizam-ul-Mulk asserted effective independence in Hyderabad. He stayed nominally loyal to the Mughal emperor but no longer took real orders from Delhi.

The jagirdari crisis arose because too many nobles competed for too few land grants (jagirs), causing constant infighting and administrative breakdown.

Muhammad Shah, nicknamed ‘Rangeela,’ ruled during a period of severe decline. His reign is often used to symbolise the Mughal Empire’s drift into weak leadership.

The Sayyid Brothers made and later assassinated Emperor Farrukhsiyar. Their control over the throne earned them the nickname ‘kingmakers.’

Aurangzeb died in 1707. The succession war that followed among his sons set the pattern for weak, contested transitions of power for decades afterward.

Kala Bhavana, the art institute at Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan, became a major later centre of Bengal School teaching. Nandalal Bose led it for many years.

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 Indian Society of Oriental Art, founded in 1907, gave the Bengal School an institutional base beyond informal teacher-student ties.

E.B. Havell was the British principal of the Calcutta School of Art. He worked with Abanindranath Tagore to push for an art education rooted in Indian tradition.

‘Bharat Mata’ shows a saffron-robed woman holding symbolic objects. It became one of the most iconic visual images of Indian nationalism.

Songs, prose, and theatre (as seen with IPTA) worked as parallel creative channels for the freedom struggle. A mass movement drew on every available artistic form at once.

The colonial government treated nationalist songs as a genuine political threat. It restricted or banned their public singing because of their power to mobilise and unite crowds.

‘Vande Mataram’ first appeared in Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel Anandamath. It later became a rallying cry sung as an act of defiance against colonial authority.

Subramania Bharati was a Tamil poet and freedom fighter. His nationalist verse carried the freedom movement’s message to Tamil-speaking audiences in their own language.

Muhammad Iqbal wrote ‘Sare Jahan Se Achha’ in 1904. It went on to become one of the most widely sung patriotic songs of the Indian freedom movement.

Elgin I’s earlier, deeply controversial role overseeing British military operations in China — including his direct order to burn the Old Summer Palace during the Second Opium War — reflected the broader pattern of senior British colonial administrators frequently rotating between different territories across the empire, bringing experience (and, in this specific case, considerable controversy) from other imperial contexts directly into their subsequent Indian administrative roles. His relatively brief Indian Viceroyalty, cut short by his 1863 death while still in office during a tour of the Himalayan region, meant his actual direct impact on Indian administration remained comparatively limited compared to longer-serving Viceroys, though his career trajectory exemplifies the interconnected, empire-wide nature of senior British colonial administrative careers during this period. His son, Elgin II, later also served as Viceroy of India in the 1890s, making them one of relatively few father-son pairs to both hold this senior colonial position.

Reading’s Jewish heritage made his appointment as Viceroy a notable historical milestone, occurring during a tenure that also saw the Kakori Conspiracy Case, the founding of the Communist Party of India, the formation of the Swaraj Party, and the Prince of Wales’s 1921 visit to India, situating him at the centre of a particularly eventful period spanning both intensifying revolutionary and left-wing political activity alongside more routine ceremonial imperial functions. His tenure also saw a significant administrative innovation in 1922, when Indian Civil Service examinations began being conducted simultaneously in both Delhi and London, providing Indian candidates a genuine domestic examination option rather than requiring travel to Britain, a modest but meaningful step toward greater accessibility for Indian aspirants to the prestigious and influential civil service. Reading’s own distinguished prior legal and diplomatic career in Britain, including service as Lord Chief Justice, brought a notably different professional background to the Viceroyalty compared to many of his predecessors’ more conventional administrative or military career paths.

Willingdon’s establishment of the Indian Military Academy reflected the gradual, still limited expansion of opportunities for Indians to receive proper officer training and eventually hold senior command positions within the British Indian Army, a development that, while still operating within an overall colonial military structure, represented meaningful institutional progress toward eventual Indian military self-sufficiency. His tenure also encompassed the Second Round Table Conference, the 1932 Communal Award, and the resulting Poona Pact, placing him at the centre of several of the most consequential communal-representation controversies of the entire pre-independence constitutional negotiation period. The Dehradun academy’s establishment, though a relatively modest institutional development compared to the major political controversies dominating Willingdon’s tenure, would prove significant for independent India’s own subsequent military officer training infrastructure well beyond the colonial period itself.

Dufferin’s dismissive ‘microscopic minority’ characterisation reflected the initial colonial administrative tendency to underestimate the nascent Congress’s genuine, if initially narrow, social base and its capacity to grow into India’s central nationalist political vehicle over the following decades, a pattern of underestimation later echoed even more confidently, and equally mistakenly, by Curzon’s own prediction of the Congress’s imminent ‘peaceful demise’. Ironically, some historians note that A.O. Hume’s own founding role in establishing the Congress occurred with at least tacit awareness and toleration from the same colonial administrative establishment Dufferin represented, adding a layer of complexity to how the relationship between the colonial state and the emerging nationalist movement should be understood during this formative founding period. Dufferin’s tenure also saw the Third Anglo-Burmese War, completing British annexation of the remainder of Burma, representing a significant further territorial extension of British Indian administrative control during the same general period as the Congress’s own founding.

The correct answer is Punjab. The frontier zone was part of Punjab until 1901. Then it became the North-West Frontier Province. Memory hook: 1901, NWFP, from Punjab.