CDS (II) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 18 of 120

Correct — D, Shri Ram Bajpai. The scouting bodies of the 1910s grew out of the fact that the Boy Scout movement in India was at first closed to Indian boys, and separate Indian associations were formed in response. The Seva Samiti Boy Scouts Association took its name from the Seva Samiti, the social service society based at Allahabad, and the histories of Indian scouting credit its organisation to Pandit Shri Ram Bajpai. It kept a separate existence even after Baden-Powell's visit of 1921, when almost every other Indian scouting body merged into the Boy Scouts Association in India, because its purpose was the complete Indianisation of the movement; it merged only in 1938, into the Hindustan Scout Association. One honest limitation: we could confirm the Seva Samiti body, its Allahabad base and its separate course from published accounts, but not the 1914 date and the attribution to Bajpai from a primary record — the standard reference work on Indian scouting dates the Seva Samiti Scout Association to 1917 and connects it with Madan Mohan Malaviya and Hriday Nath Kunzru. The key marks Bajpai and this card is written to the key while recording that the sources do not agree.

• (a)Hriday Nath Kunzru — The strongest of the wrong answers, and the reason the item is hard. Kunzru was a founder of Indian scouting and the first national commissioner of the Bharat Scouts and Guides, and one standard account attaches the Seva Samiti scouting body to him and to Malaviya. The key nonetheless marks Bajpai.
• (b)S. G. Vaze — Shridhar Ganesh Vaze was a Servants of India Society man and an editor, not a founder of a scouting association.
• (c)Annie Besant — Besant did found a scouting body, but a different one — the Indian Boy Scouts Association of 1916, based at Madras and run with George Arundale. Its name and its base both differ from the Seva Samiti body.

Scouting reached India in 1909 but was open only to British and other foreign boys. From 1913 Indians began organising their own scouting under leaders including Justice Vivian Bose, Madan Mohan, Hriday Nath Kunzru, Girija Shankar Bajpai, Annie Besant and George Arundale. Several parallel associations grew up — the Indian Boy Scouts Association at Madras, the Boy Scouts of Bengal, associations in Mysore, Baroda and Hyderabad, and the Seva Samiti body at Allahabad. Baden-Powell's visit in early 1921 brought most of them into a single Boy Scouts Association in India; the present Bharat Scouts and Guides dates from after independence.

This is a name-matching item across a crowded field, and the crowding is the difficulty: at least four of the men usually named as founders of Indian scouting were active at Allahabad or in the Servants of India Society at the same moment. The useful discriminator for the exam is the organisation's name rather than the person. Besant's body is the Indian Boy Scouts Association at Madras; the Seva Samiti body is at Allahabad and belongs to the social service society of that name. Beyond that, the attributions in circulation genuinely conflict, and a student is better served by knowing the map of organisations than by defending one attribution.

• Scouting was officially founded in British India in 1909, at first only for British and foreign boys.
• Scouting for Indians began in 1913 under a group that included Hriday Nath Kunzru, Girija Shankar Bajpai, Annie Besant and George Arundale.
• Annie Besant and George Arundale ran a separate body, the Indian Boy Scouts Association, founded in 1916 and based at Madras.
• The Seva Samiti scouting body was based at Allahabad and took its name from the social service society there.
• After Baden-Powell's visit in 1921 all the Indian scouting bodies except the Seva Samiti association merged into the Boy Scouts Association in India; the Seva Samiti body joined the Hindustan Scout Association in 1938.

• Choosing Annie Besant because she is the most famous name on the list. Her scouting body carried a different name and was based at Madras.
• Assuming that everyone connected with Allahabad social service work founded the same organisation.
• Treating the founding dates of these bodies as settled. Published accounts differ, and this one is genuinely disputed.

As a founder-and-organisation matching item on early twentieth-century social service and youth bodies.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Indian Boy Scouts Association, founded in 1916 and based at Madras, was headed by which one of the following?

  • (a)Hriday Nath Kunzru
  • (b)Annie Besant
  • (c)Madan Mohan Malaviya
  • (d)Vivian Bose

  Answer(b) Annie Besant — she ran it with George Arundale, as one of the several Indian scouting bodies that grew up before the 1921 merger.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Servants of India Society, to which several of the founders of Indian scouting belonged, was established in 1905 by which one of the following?

  • (a)Bal Gangadhar Tilak
  • (b)Gopal Krishna Gokhale
  • (c)Mahadev Govind Ranade
  • (d)Dadabhai Naoroji

  Answer(b) Gopal Krishna Gokhale — the society trained full-time workers for public service, and Hriday Nath Kunzru later became its life president.