Political Science Test - 2

The correct answer is option 2.

Key Points

• The Indian Independence Act of 1947 gave princely states an option to accede to the newly born dominions India or Pakistan or continue as an independent sovereign state.
• At that time Around 565 princely states have covered 48 percent of the area of pre Independent India and constituted 28% of its population.
  These kingdoms were not legally part of British India, but in reality, they were completely subordinate to the British Crown.
• For the British these states were the necessary allies, to keep in check the rise of other colonial powers and nationalist tendencies in India.
  Accordingly, the princes were given autonomy over their territories, but the British acquired for themselves the right to appoint ministers and get military support as and when required.
• Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (India’s first deputy prime minister and the home minister) with the assistance of V.P menon (the secretary of the Ministry of the States) was given the formidable task of integrating the princely states.
• By invoking the patriotism of the princes to remind them of the possibility of anarchy on event of their refusal to join, Patel kept trying to convince them to join India.
• He also introduced the concept of “privy purses”- a payment to be made to royal families for their agreement to merge with India.
  Bikaner, Baroda and few other states from Rajasthan were the first ones to join the union.
• There were several other states that were adamant to not join India. Some of them thought this to be the best moment to acquire independent statehood, while there were others who wanted to become a part of Pakistan.

The correct answer is option 2.

Key Points

• Before independence in 1947, there were two types of states in India.
• The Provinces and the Princely states. Provinces were ruled directly by British officials who were appointed by the Viceroy. examples include Bombay, Berar, Assam, Central provinces, Madras etc.
• Princely states were ruled by local, hereditary rulers, who acknowledged the sovereignty of the British in return for local autonomy. Examples of the rulers of Princely states are the Nizam of Hyderabad and Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir.

The correct answer is option 3.

Key Points

• British proceeded to establish an administrative province known as the Bombay Presidency. After India gained its independence in 1947, the province became Bombay state (1950). A number of former princely states (notably Baroda [now Vadodara]) subsequently were merged into the new state.
• On November 1, 1956, in a major linguistic and political reorganization of the states of peninsular India, Bombay state received large parts of Madhya Pradesh, as well as the northwestern portion of the dismembered Hyderabad state (which had been formed after Indian independence from the former Hyderabad princely state).
• The outcome of that reorganization, however, was still a linguistically divided state, in which most of the Gujarati-speaking peoples lived in the north and most of the Marathi-speaking peoples lived in the south.
• Demands by the two language groups that the state be divided into two parts resulted, on May 1, 1960, in the creation of Gujarat in the north and the newly renamed Maharashtra in the south. Bombay, remaining part of Maharashtra, became the new state’s capital. The city’s name was changed to Mumbai in the mid-1990s.

The correct answer is Option 1.

Key Points

• Amrita Pritam was an Indian maverick writer and poet. She is considered the first eminent female Punjabi writer, novelist and poet of the 20th century.
• Her writing is equally loved by the people of India and Pakistan. In her over 6 decades long career, she produced over hundred works, including poetry, essays, novels, biographies, etc.
• She was honoured with prestigious awards like the ‘Sahitya Akademi,’ ‘Bharatiya Jnanpith,’ and ‘Padma Vibhushan’ among many others. One of her most famous novels titled ‘Pinjar’ was made into a movie of the same name. She also penned an autobiography, in which she expressed her audacity by writing about her personal life, which might be considered ‘controversial’ by many, even in contemporary India. 
• After the partition of the British India in 1947, Amrita moved from Lahore to New Delhi. Being a part of one of the most violent mass migrations in the history of mankind, she later came up with one of her most famous poems titled ‘Ajj akhaan Waris Shah nu,’ which expressed her anguish over massacres during the partition of India. Until 1961, she worked at the national public radio broadcaster ‘All India Radio’ in Delhi, apart from producing a number of impressive literary works.

The correct answer is option 2.

Key Points

• It was during the gruesome partition of India that In the name of religion, people of one community killed and mained people of the other community.
• Cities like Lahore, Calcutta and Amritsar were titled as communal zones, because refugees who settled in these areas stayed in areas dominated by their own religion. 
• People went through social sufferings also be forced to abandon their homes especially minorities, who took shelter in a refugee camp.

The correct answer is option 4.

Key Points

• Meghalaya, state of India, located in the northeastern part of the country. It is bounded by the Indian state of Assam to the north and northeast and by Bangladesh to the south and southwest.
• The state capital is the hill town of Shillong, located in east-central Meghalaya.
• In 1947 the rulers of the region acceded to the newly independent country of India. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, evolved a policy to preserve and protect the way of life of the tribal peoples.
• Along with other tribal areas, the region was given special protection in the Indian constitution, and, though included within the state of Assam, it retained a great deal of autonomy.
• When Assamese became the state’s official language in 1960, agitation for autonomy and self-rule gathered strength. Unlike in many other hill regions in northeastern India, this movement was largely peaceful and constitutional. Meghalaya was created as an autonomous state within Assam in 1970 and achieved full statehood on January 21, 1972.

The correct answer is option 2.

Key Points

• Haryana, state in north-central India. It is bounded on the northwest by the state of Punjab and the union territory of Chandigarh, on the north and northeast by the states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, on the east by the state of Uttar Pradesh and the union territory of Delhi, and on the south and southwest by the state of Rajasthan.
• The city of Chandigarh, within the Chandigarh union territory, serves as the capital of not only that territory but also of the states of Haryana and Punjab.
• Haryana was constituted on November 1, 1966, as a result of the partition of the former state of Punjab into two separate states-Punjabi-speaking Punjab and Hindi-speaking Haryana.
• Although the reorganization followed demands made by the Sikh community for a Punjabi suba (Punjabi-speaking province), it also substantially met the aspirations of people in the Hindi-speaking region of Punjab for a Vishal Haryana (Greater Haryana).  

The correct answer is option 3.

Key Points

• The Tryst with Destiny was delivered to the Indian Constituent Assembly in Parliament by Pt Jawaharlal Nehru, just before midnight on August 15, 1947, the speech has been referenced over the years to show how the idea of India was an experiment in many ways.
• It has been widely praised as one of the greatest speeches of 20th century. It encompasses the ancient aspects of Indian history and marks the end of Indian freedom struggle.

The correct answer is option 1.

Key Points

• Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan was the foremost 20th-century leader of the Pashtuns (Pakhtuns, or Pathans; a Muslim ethnic group of Pakistan and Afghanistan), who became a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and was called the “Frontier Gandhi.”
• Ghaffar Khan met Gandhi and entered politics in 1919 during the agitation over the Rowlatt Acts, which allowed the internment of political dissidents without trial. In the following year he joined the Khilafat movement, which sought to strengthen the spiritual ties of Indian Muslims to the Turkish sultan, and in 1921 he was elected president of a district Khilafat committee in his native North-West Frontier Province.

Additional Information

• Rajendra Prasad: Indian politician, lawyer, and journalist who was the first president of the Republic of India (1950–62).
• Mohd Ali Jinnah: Indian Muslim politician, who was the founder and first governor-general (1947–48) of Pakistan.