Press, Education & Economy under British Rule (Set 1)

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

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.

The colonial government banned Pather Dabi (1926) on 4 January 1927 for its anti-colonial content; the ban stayed in force until 1939.

Al-Hilal criticised British rule and urged Indian Muslims to join the freedom movement. The British banned it in 1914, under the Press Act.

The correct answer is 1920. The Aligarh Muslim University Act of that year turned Sir Syed’s college into a full university.

The Factories Act of 1881 banned employing children under seven and limited working hours for children aged seven to twelve, also mandating fencing of hazardous machinery.

Railways were built primarily for military movement and resource extraction, serving imperial interests rather than the convenience of ordinary Indian travellers.

The 1881 Act targeted child labour: banning employment under seven, limiting hours for under-twelves, and requiring dangerous machinery to be fenced.

Trade unions had no legal recognition in India until the Trade Unions Act, 1926, decades after the Factories Act, 1881.

Only statement 2 is correct. The 1881 Act did not fix wages or allow trade unions; N.M. Lokhande genuinely was a labour-movement pioneer.

The Trade Disputes Act, 1929 set up Courts of Inquiry and Conciliation Boards, and banned certain strikes, especially in public utility services without proper notice.

Naoroji set out his Drain of Wealth theory fully in ‘Poverty and Un-British Rule in India,’ arguing British policy drained India’s wealth to Britain.

All three, Naoroji, G. Subramania Iyer, and R.C. Dutt, were genuine economic critics of colonialism, each building an independent case using real trade and revenue data.

Dutt had served inside the Indian Civil Service himself, before turning his administrative experience into a critical, evidence-based history of British economic policy.

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. Statement 3 is wrong: Wood’s Despatch recommended English only for higher education, with vernacular languages at the primary level, not English at all levels.

The Despatch rejected Macaulay’s ‘downward filtration theory,’ which held that funding elite higher education would eventually filter knowledge down to the masses. Wood’s Despatch stressed mass education instead.