BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 72 of 150

Correct — C, Lord Hardinge. On 23 December 1912 Charles Hardinge, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penshurst, Viceroy from 1910 to 1916, made his ceremonial state entry into Delhi to mark the transfer of the capital of British India from Calcutta. He and Lady Hardinge rode an elephant at the head of the procession; as it moved through Chandni Chowk a home-made bomb packed with screws was thrown into the howdah by Basanta Kumar Biswas, a young revolutionary from a village in Nadia. The Viceroy was wounded in the back, shoulders, legs and head — the flesh of his shoulders torn in strips — but survived. Lady Hardinge, the elephant and its mahout were unhurt; the attendant standing behind the Viceroy holding his ceremonial parasol was killed, a man who had held the same umbrella for Lord Curzon. The plot is known to history as the Delhi Conspiracy, or the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy. It was hatched by the Bengal and Punjab revolutionary underground affiliated to the Anushilan Samiti and was headed by Rash Behari Bose. Because the assassin was not identified on the spot, the Government announced a reward of Rs 10,000; Rash Behari Bose evaded capture for nearly three years, moved on into the Ghadar plan of 1915 and then escaped to Japan. The Delhi Conspiracy trial closed on 5 October 1914, when Lala Hanumant Sahai was sentenced to transportation for life to the Andaman Islands and four men — Basanta Kumar Biswas, Amir Chand, Avadh Behari and Bhai Balmukund — were sentenced to death; Biswas was hanged at Ambala Central Jail on 11 May 1915, aged twenty, one of the youngest revolutionaries ever executed in India. Note what actually fixes the answer. The stem does not merely say a bomb was thrown at a Viceroy — it says it happened at his state entry into Delhi, and only one Viceroy ever made such an entry, because Delhi became the capital during Hardinge's term and during nobody else's.

• (a)Lord Curzon — The reflex answer, because Curzon (Viceroy 1899-1905) is the Viceroy most associated with Delhi pageantry and with provoking Indian anger — he staged the Durbar of 1 January 1903 for Edward VII's accession and partitioned Bengal in 1905, the act that began the revolutionary decade. But no bomb was ever thrown at him. His only connection to this episode is grim and incidental: the parasol-bearer killed by the Delhi bomb had carried the umbrella for Curzon too.
• (b)Lord Minto — The best-informed wrong answer, because a bomb attack on a Viceroy did happen in his term: on 15 November 1909 two bombs were hurled at Lord and Lady Minto near the Raipur Gate at Ahmedabad, and neither was harmed. That was Ahmedabad, not Delhi, and Minto (1905-1910) had left India before the capital moved. His Indian record is the Simla Deputation of 1906 and the Morley-Minto reforms of 1909, not the new capital.
• (d)Lord Wavell — Chronologically impossible. Wavell was Viceroy from October 1943 to March 1947 — the era of the Simla Conference of 1945, the Cabinet Mission of 1946, Direct Action Day and the interim government. That is three decades after the revolutionary bomb-throwing phase of 1908-1915, and by then Delhi had been the capital for a generation, so no state entry was in question.

Two separate stories cross at Chandni Chowk on 23 December 1912. The first is imperial. At the Delhi Durbar of 12 December 1911 King George V — the only reigning British monarch crowned in India — announced both the annulment of the 1905 partition of Bengal and the shifting of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi. Calcutta had been the seat of British power since 1772 but had also become the headquarters of Swadeshi agitation; Delhi offered Mughal-imperial symbolism and distance from Bengali politics, and the state entry of December 1912 was staged to complete the move. The second story is revolutionary. The partition of Bengal had produced a decade of secret societies — the Anushilan Samiti in Dacca and Calcutta, and Jugantar — whose chosen method was the assassination of individual officials: the Muzaffarpur bomb of 30 April 1908 thrown by Khudiram Bose and Prafulla Chaki, the Alipore bomb case that followed, the Nasik conspiracy of 1909. Rash Behari Bose carried that method out of Bengal into Punjab and the United Provinces and aimed it, in 1912, at the Viceroy in person and at the very ceremony meant to display imperial permanence. He then linked the same network to the Ghadar plan for an army mutiny in February 1915, and when that failed escaped to Japan, where he founded the Indian Independence League and in 1943 handed leadership of the Indian National Army to Subhas Chandra Bose.

The stem carries two clues and only one of them discriminates. 'A bomb was thrown at a Viceroy' does not settle anything, because that also happened to Lord Minto at Ahmedabad in November 1909. 'On the occasion of his state entry into Delhi' settles it completely, because a state entry into Delhi as the capital of India could only ever be made once, by the Viceroy in office when the capital moved. So date-bracket the four names — Curzon 1899-1905, Minto 1905-1910, Hardinge 1910-1916, Wavell 1943-1947 — set them against the announcement of 12 December 1911, and only Hardinge is left. That is the single discriminating fact, and it is worth more than the anecdote, because BPSC and UPSC both build whole questions out of Viceroy date-brackets. Two further cautions. First, do not conflate the Durbar with the bomb: the Durbar was 12 December 1911 and the attack 23 December 1912, one year and eleven days apart, and popular accounts routinely print the wrong year. Second, do not read Hardinge as a hardline Viceroy because a bomb was thrown at him. He annulled the partition of Bengal, publicly criticised South Africa's treatment of Indians in 1913 while Gandhi was leading satyagraha there, and left India in 1916 with his reputation damaged not by Indian politics but by the Mesopotamian campaign and the surrender at Kut-al-Amara.

• The bomb was thrown into Lord Hardinge's howdah in Chandni Chowk on 23 December 1912 by Basanta Kumar Biswas; the Viceroy was wounded in the back, shoulders, legs and head but survived, while the attendant holding his ceremonial parasol was killed.
• The Delhi Conspiracy, also called the Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy, was headed by Rash Behari Bose and drew on the Anushilan Samiti network in Bengal and Punjab; because the bomb-thrower was not identified at once, the Government announced a reward of Rs 10,000.
• The Delhi Conspiracy trial ended on 5 October 1914: Lala Hanumant Sahai was transported for life to the Andamans, and Basanta Kumar Biswas, Amir Chand, Avadh Behari and Bhai Balmukund were sentenced to death. Biswas was hanged at Ambala Central Jail on 11 May 1915, aged twenty.
• Charles Hardinge, 1st Baron Hardinge of Penshurst (1858-1944), was Viceroy from 1910 to 1916 and was the grandson of Henry Hardinge, Governor-General of India from 1844 to 1848; the Hardinge Bridge over the Padma, opened in 1915, carries his name.
• At the Delhi Durbar of 12 December 1911 King George V announced the annulment of the 1905 partition of Bengal and the transfer of the capital from Calcutta to Delhi — the decision that the state entry of 23 December 1912 was staged to complete.

• Dating the bomb to 1911. The Delhi Durbar at which the capital transfer was announced was 12 December 1911; the bomb was thrown at the state entry a year later, on 23 December 1912.
• Choosing Minto because you remember a bomb thrown at a Viceroy. Two bombs were indeed thrown at Lord and Lady Minto at Ahmedabad on 15 November 1909, but not in Delhi and not at a state entry.
• Crediting Rash Behari Bose with throwing the bomb. He headed the conspiracy; the bomb was thrown by Basanta Kumar Biswas, who was hanged for it in 1915.

BPSC asks this as a single-fact recall with the answer hidden in one qualifying phrase — 'on the occasion of his state entry into Delhi' — so the skill being tested is reading the qualifier, not knowing the anecdote. UPSC almost never asks who was attacked; it asks the same body of knowledge as chronology or as event-to-Viceroy mapping (the correct order of Curzon, Chelmsford, Hardinge and Irwin in 2004; the Viceroy at the time of the Rowlatt Act in 2008), so for UPSC the useful revision unit is the date-bracket, not the story.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The bomb thrown at Viceroy Lord Hardinge during his state entry into Delhi in December 1912 formed part of which conspiracy case?

  • (a)Alipore Conspiracy Case
  • (b)Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy Case
  • (c)Kakori Conspiracy Case
  • (d)Meerut Conspiracy Case

  Answer(b) Delhi-Lahore Conspiracy Case — also called the Delhi Conspiracy Case, headed by Rash Behari Bose. Alipore (1908) followed the Muzaffarpur bomb, Kakori was the train robbery of 1925 and Meerut (1929) was the trade-union and communist trial.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The transfer of the capital of British India from Calcutta to Delhi was announced at

  • (a)the Delhi Durbar of 1877
  • (b)the Delhi Durbar of 1903
  • (c)the Delhi Durbar of 1911
  • (d)the Calcutta session of the Imperial Legislative Council, 1912

  Answer(c) the Delhi Durbar of 1911 — King George V announced both the transfer of the capital and the annulment of the partition of Bengal on 12 December 1911. The 1877 Durbar proclaimed Victoria Empress of India and the 1903 Durbar marked Edward VII's accession.