BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 75 of 150

Deleted by the Commission — no option is marked correct, and every candidate was awarded the mark. When BPSC disposed of objections and published its final revised key on 31 October 2025, it gave one reason for cancelling this question: the paper's correct name was 'Young India' and not 'The Young India'. That is a narrow ground, and it is worth knowing that the item is weak on a second and much larger one, because this is where the real learning sits. There are at least THREE different things called Young India, and none of the four people offered started the Bombay weekly the question is reaching for. First, a BOOK: 'Young India: An Interpretation and a History of the Nationalist Movement from Within', written by Lala Lajpat Rai and published in New York by B. W. Huebsch in 1916 during his wartime years in America — the same book in which the safety-valve attack on the Moderates appears, which is what Q71 of this very paper tests. Second, the ENGLISH MAGAZINE started at Bombay in 1915 by Indulal Yagnik, together with Jamnadas Dwarkadas and Shankarlal Banker, three men from Annie Besant's Home Rule circle; Yagnik edited it, began the Gujarati monthly Navjivan ane Satya the same year, and handed both papers to Mahatma Gandhi in 1919. Third, the WEEKLY GANDHI RAN from 1919 to 1931, which is the one every textbook list means — but Gandhi took it over from Yagnik; he did not found it. So the honest answer to 'who started Young India' is Indulal Yagnik with Jamnadas Dwarkadas and Shankarlal Banker, and their names appear nowhere in the options. Annie Besant inspired the circle the founders came from but did not start the paper. Gandhi inherited it. Tilak and Azad have no connection to it at all. A cancelled question is often the most instructive one on a paper, and this is such a case: the verb 'started by' is doing real work, and a list that pairs 'Young India — Mahatma Gandhi' is describing an editorship, not a founding.

• (a)Annie Besant — The nearest miss, and the one a well-read candidate might defend. The three men who launched Young India at Bombay in 1915 came straight out of her Home Rule circle, and Indulal Yagnik described himself as deeply influenced by her during his college years. But inspiring a circle is not starting a paper. Besant's own papers were The Commonweal, her weekly on Indian national questions, and the daily New India, and her Home Rule League dates from 1916; she was interned in June 1917, released that September, and presided over the Congress from December 1917.
• (b)Mahatma Gandhi — The answer the item was built to attract, and the reason the item looks answerable at all. Gandhi edited Young India from 1919 to 1931 and it was his principal English voice through Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience. But the paper already existed when it reached him: he took over the Bombay weekly Indulal Yagnik had been running since 1915, along with the Gujarati Navjivan. The papers Gandhi is properly credited with launching are Indian Opinion in South Africa from 1903 and Harijan from 1933, which ran until 1948 with Harijan Bandhu in Gujarati and Harijan Sevak in Hindi.
• (c)Bal Gangadhar Tilak — No connection to any paper of this name. Tilak's journalism is Kesari in Marathi and Mahratta in English, both begun at Poona in 1881, and it is through those two that he built the Extremist case against the Moderates. The only thread linking him to the milieu Young India came out of is the Indian Home Rule League he founded in April 1916, in the same Home Rule wave as Besant's — but he neither founded nor edited a paper called Young India.
• (d)Maulana Abul Kalam Azad — The odd name out even within the option set, and included for recognisability rather than plausibility. Azad's papers were in Urdu, not English: Al-Hilal, the weekly he established from Calcutta in 1912 and which was banned under the Press Act in 1914, and Al-Balagh, banned in 1916 under the Defence of India Regulations, after which he was moved to Ranchi and held there until 1 January 1920. Nothing in his record touches Young India.

Newspaper questions look like pure recall and are actually verb questions, which is why this one collapsed. 'Founded', 'edited', 'started' and 'took over' are four different claims, and coaching lists flatten them into one. Young India is the sharpest example in the whole syllabus. Trace it properly. In 1915 Indulal Yagnik, a Nadiad-born lawyer who had been drawn into Annie Besant's Home Rule circle, brought out an English magazine called Young India from Bombay with Jamnadas Dwarkadas and Shankarlal Banker; in the same year he began the Gujarati monthly Navjivan ane Satya, and he edited both until 1919, when he handed them to Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi turned Young India into the English weekly of the national movement from 1919 to 1931 and Navajivan into its Gujarati counterpart, then closed both and founded Harijan in 1933. Separately and with no connection at all, Lala Lajpat Rai published a book called Young India in New York in 1916, and the Indian Home Rule League of America he founded there in October 1917 also carried the name into its own journal. Three objects, one title, three different sets of people. Underneath sits the wider map of the nationalist press that both BPSC and UPSC mine every cycle: Kesari and Mahratta (Tilak, Poona, 1881), Bande Mataram (Calcutta, 1906), Al-Hilal (Azad, Calcutta, 1912), The Indian Sociologist (Shyamji Krishna Varma, London, 1905), The Commonweal and New India (Besant, Madras), Indian Opinion (Gandhi, South Africa, 1903), and the Ghadar weekly (San Francisco, 1913). Learn each with the founder, the language and the city, and questions of this shape stop being guesses.

Work out what the question is actually asking before deciding whether it can be answered. It asks who STARTED a nationalist paper called Young India — and on the Bombay weekly the founders are Indulal Yagnik, Jamnadas Dwarkadas and Shankarlal Banker, none of whom is on the list. That is the single discriminating fact of this card, and it is why the item had no defensible key even before the Commission's own objection about the title. If you had been forced to reason in the hall, the chain would run: Azad wrote in Urdu from Calcutta, so he is out; Tilak's papers are Kesari and Mahratta from Poona, so he is out; that leaves Besant and Gandhi, and both are half-right in ways that cancel — Besant's circle produced the founders but she was not one, and Gandhi ran the paper but inherited it. Two of four remaining, neither defensible, is the profile of a question to leave blank. The arithmetic supports that: with the booklet's own marking of +1 for a correct answer and −1/3 for a wrong one, a blind guess among four options has an expected value of exactly zero, so guessing gains nothing; it only pays once you can eliminate at least one option on evidence. Note finally that the Commission's stated ground — the definite article — is not pedantry. Titles are tested verbatim in this paper, and the very same title trap runs through Q71, where the Young India of 1916 is Lajpat Rai's book and not Gandhi's weekly.

• BPSC cancelled Q75 in its final revised key published on 31 October 2025, giving a single reason — the paper's correct name was 'Young India' and not 'The Young India' — and awarded the mark to every candidate; this paper carried five such deletions in all, at Q11, Q69, Q75, Q96 and Q118.
• The Bombay English magazine Young India was started in 1915 by Indulal Yagnik with Jamnadas Dwarkadas and Shankarlal Banker, all from Annie Besant's Home Rule circle; Yagnik edited it, launched the Gujarati monthly Navjivan ane Satya the same year, and handed both to Mahatma Gandhi in 1919.
• Gandhi edited Young India from 1919 to 1931 as his main English platform through Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience, but he took the paper over rather than founding it; the papers he did launch are Indian Opinion in South Africa from 1903 and Harijan from 1933 to 1948, with Harijan Bandhu in Gujarati and Harijan Sevak in Hindi.
• 'Young India: An Interpretation and a History of the Nationalist Movement from Within' is a separate object again — a book by Lala Lajpat Rai published in New York by B. W. Huebsch in 1916, and the source of the safety-valve attack on the Moderates that Q71 of this same paper tests.
• The four names offered and the papers they actually ran: Annie Besant — The Commonweal and New India; Mahatma Gandhi — Indian Opinion (1903) and Harijan (1933); Bal Gangadhar Tilak — Kesari in Marathi and Mahratta in English, both from Poona in 1881; Maulana Abul Kalam Azad — Al-Hilal (Calcutta, 1912, banned 1914) and Al-Balagh (banned 1916).

• Reading 'Young India' as a single publication. It names a Lajpat Rai book of 1916, a Bombay English magazine of 1915 and Gandhi's weekly of 1919-1931, and only the middle one is what a 'started by' question can be about.
• Answering Gandhi because every list pairs his name with Young India. He edited it from 1919; Indulal Yagnik started it in 1915 and handed it over.
• Adding a definite article to a masthead. The paper was Young India, and the Commission cancelled this question precisely because the stem printed 'The Young India'.

BPSC asks the press as bare paper-to-person recall and, as here, will lift a title from a coaching list without checking who founded it — so the defensive habit is to store each paper with its founder, its language and its city rather than with the famous name attached to it. UPSC asks the same material as matching or as a single-journal identification — persons against journals in 1999, the journal brought out by Abul Kalam Azad in 2008, the newspaper Shome Prakash in 2007 — which rewards exactly the founder-language-city triple that would have exposed this question as unanswerable.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The English weekly Young India, which Mahatma Gandhi edited from 1919 to 1931, was originally started at Bombay in 1915 by

  • (a)Indulal Yagnik
  • (b)Annie Besant
  • (c)Shyamji Krishna Varma
  • (d)Bipin Chandra Pal

  Answer(a) Indulal Yagnik — he brought it out in 1915 with Jamnadas Dwarkadas and Shankarlal Banker, out of Annie Besant's Home Rule circle, and handed it to Gandhi in 1919 along with the Gujarati Navjivan ane Satya.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which pair of nationalist papers was brought out by Annie Besant?

  • (a)Kesari and Mahratta
  • (b)The Commonweal and New India
  • (c)Al-Hilal and Al-Balagh
  • (d)Young India and Navajivan

  Answer(b) The Commonweal and New India — Besant's weekly on Indian national questions and her daily. Kesari and Mahratta were Tilak's, Al-Hilal and Al-Balagh were Abul Kalam Azad's, and Young India and Navajivan were papers Gandhi took over in 1919 from Indulal Yagnik.