BPSC 71st CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 79 of 150

Correct — B, M.A. Jinnah. The phrase is a retort, and it only makes sense as one. In August 1942 the Congress demanded that the British Quit India, leaving a single undivided country behind them. The Muslim League's answer, in three words, was that they should divide first and then quit — independence yes, but not to one successor state. The Commission, disposing of objections to this question on 31 October 2025, placed Jinnah's retort after the Congress's Quit India call of August 1942 and reached the answer by elimination rather than by citation: M. A. Ansari and Jawaharlal Nehru were Congress leaders opposed to the partition of India, and Muhammad Iqbal had died in 1938, two years before the Muslim League adopted the Lahore Resolution in 1940. Be told plainly what this card will not do. We could not verify from any primary or scholarly source the session, the place or the date at which Jinnah used these words, so no such detail is supplied here; the attribution rests on the Commission's own published reasoning and on the fact that no other name on the list can carry it. The elimination itself is airtight, and on two of the three it is stronger than the Commission needed. Ansari was not merely a Congressman opposed to Partition — he had been dead since 10 May 1936, six years before the Quit India call. Iqbal died on 21 April 1938. Nehru fought Partition to the last and signed on to the 3 June Plan of 1947 only when the alternative had run out. That leaves the one man on the list whose entire political programme from 1940 onwards was exactly this proposition. Guard against one confusion that trips up half the internet: Divide and Quit is also the title of a 1961 memoir of Partition by Sir Penderel Moon, a British Indian Civil Service officer who served in Punjab and Bahawalpur. The book borrowed the slogan; it did not create it.

• (a)M.A. Ansari — Wrong twice over, and the second reason is decisive. Dr Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari was a Congress nationalist — President of the Indian National Congress in 1927-28, President of the All-India Muslim League as early as 1920-21, and a founder and then Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia — who stood for a composite India and against separatist politics. He also could not have said it: he died of a heart attack on 10 May 1936, on a train travelling from Mussoorie to Delhi, six years before the Quit India call to which this slogan replies.
• (c)Jawaharlal Nehru — The opposite of his position. Nehru was a Congress leader who resisted the partition demand throughout, called the Lahore Resolution 'Jinnah's fantastic proposals', and accepted the 3 June Plan of 1947 only as the last option left. He was also in prison from 9 August 1942 along with the rest of the Congress Working Committee, arrested precisely for making the Quit India demand that 'Divide and Quit' was framed to answer.
• (d)Muhammad Iqbal — The most tempting wrong answer, because his 1930 Allahabad Address to the Muslim League is routinely described as the intellectual seed of a separate Muslim homeland, so a candidate reaching for 'the man behind the Pakistan idea' lands on him. But he was a poet and philosopher, not the League's negotiator, and the chronology forbids it: Sir Muhammad Iqbal died on 21 April 1938 — nearly two years before the Lahore Resolution of 1940 and more than four years before the Quit India call of August 1942.

The last decade of the Raj was fought in slogans, and each was written against another. 'Divide and rule' was the nationalist charge against British policy, from the partition of Bengal in 1905 through separate electorates under the Indian Councils Act 1909 to the Communal Award of 1932. 'Quit India' was the Congress demand of 8 August 1942: leave, and leave one country. 'Divide and Quit' was the counter-demand — accept the same departure but perform a partition on the way out. Behind the three words sits the two-nation argument the Muslim League had been building since Jinnah broke with the Congress in the 1920s: his Fourteen Points of 1929, framed as the Muslim reply to the Nehru Report of 1928, which he had dismissed as a 'Hindu Document'; Iqbal's Allahabad Address of 1930; and then the Lahore Resolution of 1940, which committed the League to independent states in the Muslim-majority regions of the north-west and the east. From 1940 the two demands ran in parallel and could not both be met, which is why the endgame moved so fast once the British decided to go: Direct Action Day on 16 August 1946, the League's entry into the interim ministry in October 1946, Attlee's announcement of 20 February 1947, Mountbatten's 3 June Plan of 1947, and finally the Indian Independence Act, which received Royal Assent on 18 July 1947 and split the country on 15 August. Jinnah became Pakistan's first Governor-General.

This is a pure elimination question, so run the elimination properly instead of reaching for the famous name. Start with the death dates, because two of the four options fail on them alone. A slogan framed as an answer to Quit India cannot predate August 1942, and even the widest reading cannot predate the Lahore Resolution of 1940 — yet M. A. Ansari died on 10 May 1936 and Muhammad Iqbal on 21 April 1938. That removes half the paper in one move, and it is worth internalising as a general habit: on any attribution question, check whether the person was alive at the moment described. Next remove on position. Nehru spent his entire career arguing against partition and was in jail from 9 August 1942 for the very demand this phrase rebuts. One name is left, and it fits on substance rather than by default, because a partition-before-departure demand is exactly the Muslim League's programme from 1940. The single discriminating fact, then, is not any documented occasion of the phrase — none is verifiable — but the pairing: 'Quit India' belongs to the Congress in August 1942, and 'Divide and Quit' is its League-side twin. The second trap to avoid is bibliographic. Sir Penderel Moon's Partition memoir of 1961 is called Divide and Quit, so a search for those three words returns a book before it returns a slogan; the book is not the source of the cry.

• The Commission's own published reasoning on this question: Jinnah is the only correct option because M. A. Ansari and Jawaharlal Nehru were Congress leaders opposed to Partition and Muhammad Iqbal had died in 1938, two years before the Muslim League adopted the Lahore Resolution in 1940; it places Jinnah's retort after the Congress's Quit India call of August 1942.
• Dr Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari (25 December 1880 - 10 May 1936) was President of the Indian National Congress in 1927-28, President of the All-India Muslim League in 1920-21, and a founder and Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia from 1928 until his death — a composite-nationalist, and dead six years before Quit India.
• Sir Muhammad Iqbal (9 November 1877 - 21 April 1938) delivered the Allahabad Address to the Muslim League in 1930, the text usually treated as the intellectual origin of the idea of a separate Muslim homeland; he died nearly two years before the Lahore Resolution of 1940.
• Jinnah answered the Nehru Report of 1928, which he called a 'Hindu Document', with his Fourteen Points of 1929; under his leadership the Muslim League passed the Lahore Resolution in 1940, and he became the first Governor-General of Pakistan on 15 August 1947.
• Divide and Quit (1961) is a memoir of Partition by Sir Edward Penderel Moon, a British Indian Civil Service officer who served in Punjab and as finance minister of Bahawalpur State and stayed on in India after 1947 as Chief Commissioner of Himachal Pradesh and of Manipur. The book takes the slogan for a title; it is not its source.
• The exact session, place and date at which Jinnah used the phrase could not be verified against any primary or scholarly source for this card, so none is asserted here — a rare case where an answer is certain and its occasion is not.

• Choosing Muhammad Iqbal because the Allahabad Address of 1930 is called the origin of the Pakistan idea — he died on 21 April 1938, before the Lahore Resolution and long before Quit India
• Confusing the slogan with Sir Penderel Moon's 1961 Partition memoir of the same title, which is a book by a British civil servant and not the origin of the phrase
• Assuming M. A. Ansari must be a Muslim League figure because of his name — he was Congress President in 1927-28 and a founder of Jamia Millia Islamia, and he died in 1936

BPSC likes bare slogan-to-speaker attribution and builds the option list from names of one community or one decade, so that a candidate cannot shortcut by ethnicity or era and must eliminate on dates and stated positions. UPSC almost never asks a slogan cold; it asks about the manoeuvres around it — in 2002 which rejection cost the last chance to avoid partition, in 2000 what Gandhi proposed to Mountbatten as an alternative to it, in 1998 what instructions Mountbatten actually came with. Expect UPSC to test the sequence and the bargaining, and BPSC to test the phrase.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Lahore Resolution of the All-India Muslim League, moved in March 1940, is directly associated with

  • (a)the demand for separate electorates for Muslims
  • (b)the demand for independent states in the Muslim-majority regions of British India
  • (c)the acceptance of the Cabinet Mission's grouping scheme
  • (d)the formation of the interim government of 1946

  Answer(b) the demand for independent states in the Muslim-majority regions of British India — the resolution passed under Jinnah's leadership in 1940. Separate electorates date from the Indian Councils Act of 1909, the grouping scheme belongs to the Cabinet Mission plan of 16 May 1946, and the interim government took office on 2 September 1946.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who among the following was the President of the Indian National Congress in 1927 and a founder of Jamia Millia Islamia ?

  • (a)Hakim Ajmal Khan
  • (b)M. A. Ansari
  • (c)Maulana Hasrat Mohani
  • (d)Abdul Majeed Khwaja

  Answer(b) M. A. Ansari — Dr Mukhtar Ahmed Ansari presided over the Congress in 1927-28, had earlier been President of the Muslim League in 1920-21, and was Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia from 1928 until his death on 10 May 1936. Hakim Ajmal Khan was his predecessor as Chancellor.