BPSC 70th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 59 of 143

Correct — C, R. N. Madhulkar. The twenty-seventh session of the Indian National Congress met at Bankipore in Patna in December 1912, and it was presided over by Rao Bahadur Raghunath Narasinha Mudholkar — the booklet's 'R. N. Madhulkar' is a transliteration of Mudholkar, and no other name in the list is close to it. Mudholkar, born at Dhule on 16 May 1857 and long associated with Amravati in Berar, was a moderate in the Gokhale mould who held that the national movement should work constitutionally and with British cooperation; he held the presidency from December 1912 to December 1913 and died on 13 January 1921. The session's timing gives it a particular Bihar significance, because 1912 is the year Bihar was carved out of the Bengal Presidency into the new province of Bihar and Orissa, so the Congress met at Bankipore in the first year of Bihar's separate provincial existence. What makes this a good question rather than a rote one is that every wrong option is a genuine Congress president from within a few years of 1912, and two of the three are Bihar-connected figures. Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur presided at Karachi in 1913, the very next session. Satyendra Prasanna Sinha presided at Bombay in 1915; he had already become the first Indian member of the Viceroy's Executive Council in 1909, and he later served as Governor of Bihar and Orissa. Syed Hasan Imam, a Patna man, presided over the special session of the Congress at Bombay in August 1918. Getting this right therefore requires the year attached to the name, not merely a list of presidents who sound plausible for Bihar.

• (a)Sir S. P. Sinha — Satyendra Prasanna Sinha did preside over the Congress, but at the Bombay session of 1915, three years later. He is the strongest decoy because of his Bihar connection — he later served as Governor of Bihar and Orissa — and because he was the first Indian appointed to the Viceroy's Executive Council, which makes him the most eminent name on the list.
• (b)Saiyed Mohammad Bahadur — Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur presided over the very next session, at Karachi in 1913. Being one year out is the hardest kind of error to catch, because nothing about the name signals the wrong period — only the year attached to it does.
• (d)Saiyed Hassan Imam — Syed Hasan Imam was from Patna, which makes him look like the obvious choice for a session held at Patna, and he did preside over a Congress gathering — but the special session at Bombay in August 1918, six years later. Place of origin and place of session are separate facts, and this option exists to conflate them.

The Indian National Congress held an annual session in a different city each year, and the president changed with it, holding office for a single year until 1933. The presidency was largely honorific and often used to signal a political direction — a moderate, an extremist, a Muslim leader, a Briton, a woman — so the sequence of names and cities is a compressed history of the movement. The Bankipore session of December 1912 falls in the long trough after the Surat split of 1907, when the extremists had left and the Congress was a small, constitutionalist body dominated by moderates like Gokhale and Mudholkar; the reunion with the extremists came only at Lucknow in 1916, at the same session that produced the Lucknow Pact with the Muslim League. For a Bihar paper the local anchors matter especially: 1912 is the year the province of Bihar and Orissa was separated from the Bengal Presidency, and the Congress met at Bankipore in Patna in the same year. Later Bihar-linked presidents include Syed Hasan Imam at the special session of 1918 and Rajendra Prasad, who presided in 1934 and again in 1939 and 1947.

Learn Congress presidents as a triple of year, city and name, because a question can attack any one of the three and will supply the other two. Here the question gives the city and the year and asks for the name, and the option list is built entirely of real presidents from 1912 to 1918. That construction defeats every shortcut except the correct one. A Bihar candidate is especially exposed, because two of the three wrong names — Sinha, later Governor of Bihar and Orissa, and Hasan Imam of Patna — feel right for a session held at Patna; the tempting inference that a Patna session was presided over by a Patna man is exactly the trap. Note also the spelling. 'Madhulkar' is not a name; it is how the booklet prints Mudholkar, and a candidate who dismisses the option because the spelling looks wrong will discard the answer. In a bilingual paper set from a Devanagari source, unfamiliar surnames are frequently transliterated loosely, and the right response is to look for the nearest real name rather than to treat the variant as evidence that the option is fabricated.

• The twenty-seventh session of the Indian National Congress was held at Bankipore in Patna in December 1912, presided over by Rao Bahadur Raghunath Narasinha Mudholkar
• Mudholkar was born at Dhule on 16 May 1857, was a moderate and a follower of Gokhale who favoured constitutional methods, and died on 13 January 1921
• The province of Bihar and Orissa was separated from the Bengal Presidency in 1912, so the Bankipore session met in the first year of Bihar's separate existence
• Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur presided at Karachi in 1913 and Satyendra Prasanna Sinha at Bombay in 1915; Sinha had become the first Indian member of the Viceroy's Executive Council in 1909 and later served as Governor of Bihar and Orissa
• Syed Hasan Imam, from Patna, presided over the special session of the Congress held at Bombay in August 1918

• Assuming a session held in a city was presided over by a leader from that city; Syed Hasan Imam was from Patna but presided in Bombay in 1918
• Discarding an option because its spelling looks unfamiliar — 'Madhulkar' is the booklet's transliteration of Mudholkar
• Confusing adjacent years; Syed Muhammad Bahadur presided at Karachi in 1913, one session after Bankipore

BPSC asks the Congress sessions with the Bihar entry foregrounded — the Bankipore session of 1912, the Karachi resolution on fundamental rights, Rajendra Prasad's presidencies — and fills the option list with real presidents from nearby years so that a general sense of the period is not enough. UPSC rarely asks who presided at a given session; it asks what a session decided or which claim about a presidency is correct, such as who the first Muslim or first woman president was.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The twenty-seventh session of the Indian National Congress, held at Bankipore in 1912, took place in the same year as which of the following ?

  • (a)The partition of Bengal
  • (b)The separation of Bihar and Orissa from the Bengal Presidency
  • (c)The Lucknow Pact
  • (d)The Champaran Satyagraha

  Answer(b) The separation of Bihar and Orissa from the Bengal Presidency — both fall in 1912; the partition of Bengal was 1905, the Lucknow Pact 1916 and Champaran 1917.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Syed Hasan Imam presided over which Congress gathering ?

  • (a)The Bankipore session of 1912
  • (b)The Karachi session of 1913
  • (c)The special session at Bombay in 1918
  • (d)The Lucknow session of 1916

  Answer(c) The special session at Bombay in 1918 — held in August that year; Bankipore 1912 was Mudholkar's and Karachi 1913 was Syed Muhammad Bahadur's.