DAY – 63 (InstaTest-63): Insta 75 Days Revision Plan-2022: Topic – MODERN INDIA, PREVIOUS YEAR UPSC PAPER 2011, January 2022 CA – INSIGHTSIAS

Solution: D

Delhi Proposals of Muslim League

Earlier, in December 1927, a large number of Muslim leaders had met at Delhi at the Muslim League session and evolved four proposals for their demands to be incorporated into the draft constitution. These proposals, which were accepted by the Madras session of the Congress (December 1927), came to be known as the ‘Delhi Proposals’. These were:

• joint electorates in place of separate electorates with reserved seats for Muslims;
• one-third representation to Muslims in Central Legislative Assembly;
• representation to Muslims in Punjab and Bengal in proportion to their population;
• formation of three new Muslim majority provinces— Sindh, Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province.

Solution: B

The Simon Commission Recommendations

The Simon Commission published a two-volume report in May 1930. It proposed the abolition of dyarchy and the establishment of representative government in the provinces which should be given autonomy. It said that the governor should have discretionary power in relation to internal security and administrative powers to protect the different communities. The number of members of provincial legislative council should be increased.

The report rejected parliamentary responsibility at the centre. The governor-general was to have complete power to appoint the members of the cabinet. And the Government of India would have complete control over the high court. It also recommended that separate communal electorates be retained (and extended such electorates to other communities) but only until tensions between Hindus and Muslims had died down. There was to be no universal franchise.

• It accepted the idea of federalism but not in the near future; it suggested that a Consultative Council of Greater India should be established which should include representatives of both the British provinces as well as princely states.
• It suggested that the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan should get local legislatures, and both NWFP and Baluchistan should have the right to be represented at the centre.
• It recommended that Sindh should be separated from Bombay, and Burma should be separated from India because it was not a natural part of the Indian subcontinent.
• It also suggested that the Indian army should be Indianized though British forces must be retained. India got fully equipped.
• But by the time the report came out, it was no longer relevant because several events overtook the importance of its recommendations.

Solution: D

The Ghadr

The Ghadr Party was a revolutionary group organized around a weekly newspaper The Ghadr with its headquarters at San Francisco and branches along the US coast and in the Far East.

These revolutionaries included mainly ex-soldiers and peasants who had migrated from the Punjab to the USA and Canada in search of better employment opportunities. They were based in the US and Canadian cities along the western (Pacific) coast. Pre-Ghadr revolutionary activity had been carried on by Ramdas Puri, G.D. Kumar, Taraknath Das, Sohan Singh Bhakna and Lala Hardayal who reached there in 1911. To carry out revolutionary activities, the earlier activists had set up a ‘Swadesh Sevak Home’ at Vancouver and ‘United India House’ at Seattle. Finally, in 1913, the Ghadr was established.

Komagata Maru Incident and the Ghadr

The importance of this event lies in the fact that it created an explosive situation in the Punjab. Komagata Maru was the name of a ship which was carrying 370 passengers, mainly Sikh and Punjabi Muslim would-be immigrants, from Singapore to Vancouver. They were turned back by Canadian authorities after two months of privation and uncertainty. It was generally believed that the Canadian authorities were influenced by the British government. The ship finally anchored at Calcutta in September 1914. The inmates refused to board the Punjab bound train. In the ensuing conflict with the police at Budge Budge near Calcutta, 22 persons died.

Solution: B

In the First World War (1914-1919), Britain allied with France, Russia, USA, Italy and Japan against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. This period saw the maturing of Indian nationalism. The nationalist response to British participation in the First World War was three-fold:

(i) the Moderates supported the empire in the war as a matter of duty;

(ii) the Extremists, including Tilak (who was released in June 1914), supported the war efforts in the mistaken belief that Britain would repay India’s loyalty with gratitude in the form of self-government;

(iii) the revolutionaries decided to utilize the opportunity to wage a war on British rule and liberate the country.

The Indian supporters of British war efforts failed to see that the imperialist powers were fighting to safeguard their own colonies and markets.

Solution: D

Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms and Government of India Act, 1919

In line with the government policy contained in Montagu’s statement of August 1917, the government announced further constitutional reforms in July 1918, known as Montagu-Chelmsford or Montford Reforms. Based on these, the Government of India Act, 1919 was enacted.

Drawbacks

The reforms had many drawbacks—

(i) Franchise was very limited. The electorate was extended to some one-and-a-half million for the central legislature, while the population of India was around 260 million, as per one estimate.

(ii) At the centre, the legislature had no control over the viceroy and his executive council.

(iii) Division of subjects was not satisfactory at the centre.

(iv) Allocation of seats for central legislature to the provinces was based on ‘importance’ of provinces—for instance, Punjab’s military importance and Bombay’s commercial importance.

(v) At the level of provinces, division of subjects and parallel administration of two parts was irrational and, hence, unworkable. Subjects like irrigation, finance, police, press and justice were ‘reserved’.

(vi) The provincial ministers had no control over finances and over the bureaucrats; this would lead to constant friction between the two. Ministers were often not consulted on important matters too; in fact, they could be overruled by the governor on any matter that the latter considered special.

Solution: B

Tolstoy Farm

As it became rather difficult to sustain the high pitch of the struggle, Gandhi decided to devote all his attention to the struggle. The Tolstoy Farm was founded in 1910 and named as such by Gandhi’s associate, Herman Kallenbach, after the Russian writer and moralist, whom Gandhi admired and corresponded with. Besides being an experiment in education, it was to house the families of the satyagrahis and to give them a way to sustain themselves.

The Tolstoy Farm was the second of its kind established by Gandhi. He had set up the Phoenix Farm in 1904 in Natal, inspired by a reading of John Ruskin’s Unto This Last, a critique of capitalism, and a work that extolled the virtues of the simple life of love, labour, and the dignity of human beings. As at the Phoenix settlement, at Tolstoy Farm too, manual work went hand-in-hand with instruction. Vocational training was introduced to give “all-round development to the boys and girls”.

Solution: A

Champaran Satyagraha (1917)—First Civil Disobedience

Gandhi was requested by Rajkumar Shukla, a local man, to look into the problems of the farmers in context of indigo planters of Champaran in Bihar. The European planters had been forcing the peasants to grow indigo on 3/20 part of the total land (called tinkathia system). When towards the end of the nineteenth century German synthetic dyes replaced indigo, the European planters demanded high rents and illegal dues from the peasants in order to maximise their profits before the peasants could shift to other crops. Besides, the peasants were forced to sell the produce at prices fixed by the Europeans.

When Gandhi, joined now by Rajendra Prasad, Mazharul-Haq, Mahadeo Desai, Narhari Parekh, and J.B. Kripalani, reached Champaran to probe into the matter, the authorities ordered him to leave the area at once. Gandhi defied the order and preferred to face the punishment. This passive resistance or civil disobedience of an unjust order was a novel method at that time. Finally, the authorities retreated and permitted Gandhi to make an enquiry. Now, the government appointed a committee to go into the matter and nominated Gandhi as a member. Gandhi was able to convince the authorities that the tinkathia system should be abolished and that the peasants should be compensated for the illegal dues extracted from them. As a compromise with the planters, he agreed that only 25 per cent of the money taken should be compensated.

Solution: B

The Rowlatt Act

Just six months before the Montford Reforms were to be put into effect, two bills were introduced in the Imperial Legislative Council. One of them was dropped, but the other—an extension to the Defence of India Regulations Act 1915—was passed in March 1919. It was what was officially called the Anarchical and Revolutionary Crimes Act, but popularly known as the Rowlatt Act. It was based on the recommendations made in the previous year to the Imperial Legislative Council by the Rowlatt Commission, headed by the British judge, Sir Sidney Rowlatt, to investigate the ‘seditious conspiracy’ of the Indian people. (The committee had recommended that activists should be deported or imprisoned without trial for two years, and that even possession of seditious newspapers would be adequate evidence of guilt.)

The act allowed political activists to be tried without juries or even imprisoned without trial. It allowed arrest of Indians without warrant on the mere suspicion of ‘treason’. Such suspects could be tried in secrecy without recourse to legal help. A special cell consisting of three high court judges

was to try such suspects and there was no court of appeal above that panel. This panel could even accept evidence not acceptable under the Indian Evidences Act. The law of habeas corpus, the basis of civil liberty, was sought to be suspended.

Solution: A

The Khilafat issue paved the way for the consolidation of the emergence of a radical nationalist trend among the younger generation of Muslims and the section of traditional Muslim scholars who were becoming increasingly critical of British rule.

In India, too, the Muslims demanded from the British

(i) that the Khalifa’s control over Muslim sacred places should be retained, and

(ii) the Khalifa should be left with sufficient territories after territorial arrangements.

In early 1919, a Khilafat Committee was formed under the leadership of the Ali brothers (Shaukat Ali and Muhammad Ali), Maulana Azad, Ajmal Khan and Hasrat Mohani, to force the British government to change its attitude towards Turkey. Thus, the ground for a country-wide agitation was prepared.

at the All India Khilafat Conference held in Delhi in November 1919, a call was made for the boycott of British goods. The Khilafat leaders also clearly spelt out that unless peace terms after the War were favourable to Turkey they would stop all cooperation with the Government. Gandhi, who was the president of the All India Khilafat Committee, saw in the issue a platform from which mass and united noncooperation could be declared against the Government.

Solution: C

Lahore Congress and Purna Swaraj

Jawaharlal Nehru, who had done more than anyone else to popularise the concept of purna swaraj, was nominated the president for the Lahore session of the Congress (December 1929) mainly due to Gandhi’s backing (15 out of 18 Provincial Congress Committees had opposed Nehru).

The following major decisions were taken at the Lahore session.

• The Round Table Conference was to be boycotted.
• Complete independence was declared as the aim of the Congress.
• Congress Working Committee was authorised to launch a programme of civil disobedience including non-payment of taxes and all members of legislatures were asked to resign their seats.
• January 26, 1930 was fixed as the first Independence (Swarajya) Day, to be celebrated everywhere.

Solution: B

Genesis of Congress-Khilafat Swarajya Party

After Gandhi’s arrest (March 1922), there was disintegration, disorganisation and demoralisation among nationalist ranks. A debate started among Congressmen on what to do during the transition period, i.e., the passive phase of the movement. One section led by C.R. Das, Motilal Nehru and Ajmal Khan wanted an end to the boycott of legislative councils so that the nationalists could enter them to expose the basic weaknesses of these assemblies and use these councils as an arena of political struggle to arouse popular enthusiasm. They wanted, in other words, to ‘end or mend’ these councils, i.e., if the government did not respond to the nationalists’

demands, then they would obstruct the working of these councils.

Those advocating entry into legislative councils came to be known as the ‘Swarajists’, while the other school of thought led by C. Rajagopalachari, Vallabhbhai Patel, Rajendra Prasad and M.A. Ansari came to be known as the ‘Nochangers’.

The ‘No-changers’ opposed council entry, advocated concentration on constructive work, and continuation of boycott and non-cooperation, and quiet preparation for resumption of the suspended civil disobedience programme. The differences over the question of council entry between the two schools of thought resulted in the defeat of the Swarajists’ proposal of ‘ending or mending’ the councils at the Gaya session of the Congress (December1922). C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru resigned from the presidentship and secretaryship respectively of the Congress and announced the formation of Congress-Khilafat Swarajya Party or simply Swarajist Party, with C.R. Das as the president and Motilal Nehru as one of the secretaries.

Solution: C

Spread of Marxist and Socialist Ideas

Ideas of Marx and Socialist thinkers inspired many groups to come into existence as socialists and communists. These ideas also resulted in the rise of a left wing within the Congress, represented by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) was formed in 1920 in Tashkent (now, the capital of Uzbekistan) by M.N. Roy, Abani Mukherji and others after the second Congress of Commintern. M.N. Roy was also the first to be elected to the leadership of Commintern.

In 1924, many communists—S.A. Dange, Muzaffar Ahmed, Shaukat Usmani, Nalini Gupta—were jailed in the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case.

In 1925, the Indian Communist Conference at Kanpur formalized the foundation of the CPI. In 1929, the government crackdown on communists resulted in the arrest and trial of 31 leading communists, trade unionists and left-wing leaders; they were tried at Meerut in the famous Meerut conspiracy case.

Workers’ and peasants’ parties were organized all over the country and they propagated Marxist and communist ideas.

All these communist groups and workers’ and peasants’ parties remained an integral part of the national movement and worked along with the Congress.

Solution: D

The revolutionary activity in this region was dominated by the Hindustan Republican Association/Army or HRA (later renamed Hindustan Socialist Republican Association or HSRA). The HRA was founded in October 1924 in Kanpur by Ramprasad Bismil, Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee and Sachin

Sanyal, with an aim to organize an armed revolution to overthrow the colonial government and establish in its place the Federal Republic of United States of India whose basic principle would be adult franchise.

The HSRA

Determined to overcome the Kakori setback, the younger revolutionaries, inspired by socialist ideas, set out to reorganize Hindustan Republic Association at a historic meeting in the ruins of Ferozshah Kotla in Delhi (September 1928). Under the leadership of Chandra Shekhar Azad, the name of HRA was changed to Hindustan Socialist Republican Association (HSRA). The participants included Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Bhagwaticharan Vohra from Punjab and Bejoy Kumar Sinha, Shiv Verma and Jaidev Kapur from the United Provinces. The HSRA decided to work under a collective leadership and adopted socialism as its official goal.

The famous statement of the revolutionary position is contained in the book The Philosophy of the Bomb written by Bhagwaticharan Vohra.

Solution: B

Indian Response

The Indian response to the Simon Commission was immediate and nearly unanimous. What angered the Indians most was the exclusion of Indians from the commission and the basic notion behind the exclusion that foreigners would discuss and decide upon India’s fitness for self-government. This notion was seen as a violation of the principle of self-determination, and as a deliberate insult to the self-respect of Indians.

Congress Response

The Congress session in Madras (December 1927) meeting under the presidency of M.A. Ansari decided to boycott the commission “at every stage and in every form”. Meanwhile Nehru succeeded in getting a snap resolution passed at the session, declaring complete independence as the goal of the Congress.

Other Groups

Those who decided to support the Congress call of boycott of the Simon Commission included the liberals of the Hindu Mahasabha and the majority faction of the Muslim League under Jinnah. The Muslim league had two sessions in 1927 – one under Jinnah at Calcutta where it was decided to oppose the Simon Commission, and another at Lahore under Muhammad Shafi, who supported the government.

Some others, such as the Unionists in Punjab and the Justice Party in the south, decided not to boycott the commission.

Solution: D

Sarhul is spring festival celebrated during spring season when the Saal trees get new flowers on their branches. It is a worship of the village deity who is considered to be the protector of the tribes. It marks the beginning of New Year and celebrated by the Oraon, the Munda and the Ho tribes, of the Jharkhand region.

Solution: B

Solution:

• Moringa oleifera is a fast-growing, drought-resistant tree of the family Moringaceae, native to the Indian subcontinent.Common names include moringa, drumstick tree(from the long, slender, triangular seed-pods), horseradish tree(from the taste of the roots, which resembles horseradish), and ben oil tree or benzolive tree.

It is widely cultivated for its young seed pods and leaves, used as vegetables and for traditional herbal medicine. It is also used for water purification. Although listed as an invasive species in several countries, M. oleifera has “not been observed invading intact habitats or displacing native flora”, so “should be regarded at present as a widely cultivated species with low invasive potential.”

Solution: A

Solution:

Ripening agents speed up the process of ripening of fruits after they are picked prior to full ripening. These agents are particularly Unsaturated hydrocarbons; acetylene, ethylene, etc. However, a chemical known as Calcium Carbide (CaC2) is most commonly used for artificial ripening of fruits.

Solution: B

Solution:

• The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) is an international organization which conducts agricultural research for rural development, headquartered in Patancheru (Hyderabad, Telangana, India) with several regional centers (Bamako (Mali), Nairobi (Kenya) and research stations (Niamey (Niger), Kano (Nigeria), Lilongwe (Malawi), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Bulawayo (Zimbabwe).

• It was founded in 1972 by a consortium of organisations convened by the Ford and the Rockefeller foundations. Its charter was signed by the FAO and the UNDP.

• Since its inception, host country India has granted a special status to ICRISAT as a UN Organization operating in the Indian territory making it eligible for special immunities and tax privileges.

ICRISAT is managed by a full-time Director General functioning under the overall guidance of an international Governing Board. The current Director General is Dr Jacqueline d’Arros Hughes who took the post in April 2020. The current chair of the Board is Prof. Prabhu Pingali.

Solution: D

Solution:

A restriction enzyme is a protein isolated from bacteria that cleaves DNA sequences at sequence-specific sites, producing DNA fragments with a known sequence at each end. The use of restriction enzymes is critical to certain laboratory methods, including recombinant DNA technology and genetic engineering.

Solution: D

SolutIon:

• The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a large telescope array consisting of a global network of radio telescopes. The EHT project combines data from several very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) stations around Earth, which form a combined array with an angular resolution sufficient to observe objects the size of a supermassive black hole’s event horizon. The project’s observational targets include the two black holes with the largest angular diameter as observed from Earth: the black hole at the center of the supergiant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87*, pronounced “M87-Star”), and Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*, pronounced “Sagittarius A-Star”) at the center of the Milky Way

Answer D

Answer B

It is the fifth generation Python missile.

It is an air to air missile built by the Israeli weapon manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defence Systems.

ANswer A

• The Convention on Cybercrime, also known as the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime or the Budapest Convention, is the first international treaty seeking to address Internet and computer crime by harmonizing national laws, improving investigative techniques, and increasing cooperation among nations.
• It was drawn up by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, with the active participation of the Council of Europe’s observer states Canada, Japan, South Africa and the United States.
• It is open for ratification even to states that are not members of the Council of Europe.

India’s concerns over signing of this agreement:

• India did not participate in the negotiation of the Convention and thus is worried about it.
• The Convention — through its Article 32b — allows for transborder access to data and thus infringes on national sovereignty.
• The regime of the Convention is not effective, “the promise of cooperation not firm enough,” or that there are grounds for refusal to cooperate. 

Answer B

About DSCI:

• Data Security Council of India (DSCI), is a not-for-profit, industry body on data protection in India, setup by NASSCOM.
• It is committed to making the cyberspace safe, secure and trusted by establishing best practices, standards and initiatives in cyber security and privacy.
• To further its objectives, DSCI engages with governments and their agencies, regulators, industry sectors, industry associations and think tanks for policy advocacy, thought leadership, capacity building and outreach activities.

Answer C

The four distinct technology layers provided are

• Presenceless layer : Where a universal biometric digital identity allows people to participate in any service from anywhere in the country.
• Paperless layer : Where digital records move with an individual’s digital identity, eliminating the need for massive amount of paper collection and storage.
• Cashless layer : Where a single interface to all the country’s bank accounts and wallets to democratize payments.
• Consent layer : Which allows data to move freely and securely to democratize the market for data.

Benefits

Citizens : Brings millions of Indians into the formal economy by reducing friction.

Software ecosystem : Fosters innovation to build products for financial Inclusion, healthcare & educational services at scale.

Government : Brings a paradigm shift in the way government services are delivered in a transparent, accountable and leakage free model.

Answer : D

A is a conclusion, not corollary. B and C are extraneous to the above passage. D is correct

because BAT is a low cost device which can assist the visually impaired people of India.

Answer : B

SI for 5 Yrs = PTR/100 = 5PR/100

SI for 5 Yrs if invested at 3% more interest rate = 5P(R+3)/100

From data: Difference between the above interest rates = Rs.150

ie., 5PR/100 – 5P(R+3)/100 = 150

P= Rs. 1000, The principle amount

Answer : C

Total capacity of the cistern = LCM of 24 & 36 = 72

Time taken by Pipe A to fill cistern = 72/24 = 3

Time taken by Pipe B to fill cistern = 72/36 = 2

Pipe B should be closed after some , rest filling would be done by pipe A alone

Logic —> Pipe A worked for whole 18 minutes

Pipe A work = 18 * 3 = 54 units

Remaining work = 72 – 54 = 18

18 units of work is being done by pipe B in = 18/2 = 9 minutes

Therefore pipe B has to be shut after 9 minutes

Correct Answer : C

A’s oxen total days = 12 * 10 = 120 days

B’s oxen total days = 8 * 12 = 96 days

C’s oxen total days = 9 * 16 = 144 days

A : B : C = 120 : 96 : 144 = 10 : 8 : 12

C’s share = 12/30 * 7500 = ₹ 3000

Answer : B

Since we know that the difference between the age of any two persons remains always

constant, while the ratio of their ages gets changed as the time changes.

So, if the age of his child be x (presently)

Then the age of wife be x + 26 (presently)

Thus, the tool age = x + (x + 26) = 32 [ 252 – 220 =32]

x = 3

Therefore the age of her child is 3 years and her self is 29 years. Hence her age at the time of

the birth of her child was 26 years.

Alternatively: As we have mentioned above that the age difference remains always constant.

Therefore her age at the time of her child’s birth was 26 years.