CDS (I) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 46 of 120

Correct — D, Satara. The Satara prati sarkar is the longest-lived of the parallel governments thrown up by the Quit India Movement, and it was led by Krantisinh Nana Patil, who spent forty-four months underground after 1942. Where the Ballia rising lasted weeks and the Tamluk Jatiya Sarkar in Midnapore lasted until Gandhi asked its leaders to disband in 1944, the Satara administration ran on into the mid-1940s, holding its own courts, settling disputes, organising grain supply and running a village-based armed volunteer network of the kind the question describes. Its recruits were largely young men from the district's peasant families, which is why the paper speaks of 'young leaders' rather than of the established Congress leadership.

• (a)Pune — Pune was the political and intellectual capital of the Deccan and saw plenty of nationalist activity, but the parallel government of 1942-43 belongs to Satara, to its south.
• (b)Nasik — Nasik has its own place in the revolutionary record — the Nasik Conspiracy Case of 1910 and the killing of Collector Jackson — but not a Quit India parallel government.
• (c)Nagpur — Nagpur was in the Central Provinces, not the Bombay Presidency, and is remembered for the flag satyagraha of 1923 and the Congress session of 1920 rather than for a prati sarkar.

The Quit India Movement of August 1942 lost its national leadership within hours of the Bombay resolution, and what followed was improvised locally. In three places the collapse of British authority went far enough for nationalists to set up governments of their own: Ballia in eastern Uttar Pradesh, where the district administration was overthrown and the jail opened; Tamluk in Midnapore, where the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar organised cyclone relief and ran its own arbitration; and Satara in the southern Maratha country, where the prati sarkar lasted longest. The emergence of parallel governments is the feature by which Quit India is distinguished from the earlier mass movements.

The way to lock this one down is to hold the three parallel governments as a set — Ballia, Tamluk, Satara — because whichever one a paper asks about, the other two will be among the distractors. Each carries its own marker: Ballia for the jail-break and the shortest life, Tamluk for the Jatiya Sarkar and the 1944 disbandment at Gandhi's request, Satara for Nana Patil and the longest run. The vocabulary in this stem, prati sarkar with its seva dals and tufan dals, is the standard textbook description of the Satara organisation; the underlying facts that can be checked independently are the district, the leader and the Quit India context, and it is those that decide the answer. Nana Patil went on to be elected to the Lok Sabha after independence, a reminder that these were rural political networks and not merely wartime bands.

• Krantisinh Nana Patil established the parallel government in Satara district and went underground for forty-four months during the Quit India Movement of 1942.
• Quit India was distinguished from earlier movements by the emergence of parallel governments in different parts of India.
• At Ballia the people overthrew the district administration, broke open the jail and released the arrested Congress leaders before British control was restored.
• The Tamluk National Government, the Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar of the Tamluk and Contai subdivisions, functioned until Gandhi asked its leaders to disband in 1944.
• The Satara prati sarkar outlasted both, running village-level administration in the southern Maratha country into the mid-1940s.

• Choosing Pune because it is the best-known district of the Deccan; the prati sarkar was in Satara.
• Mixing up the three parallel governments; Tamluk was in Bengal and Ballia in the United Provinces, not in Maharashtra.
• Dating the movement to 1943 alone; Quit India began in August 1942, and the Satara government grew out of that year's collapse of authority.

Asked as a place-to-event match, most often by naming the local institution — prati sarkar, tufan dal, Jatiya Sarkar — and asking for the district.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar, a parallel government of the Quit India period, functioned in which district?

  • (a)Midnapore
  • (b)Ballia
  • (c)Satara
  • (d)Balasore

  Answer(a) Midnapore — the Tamluk and Contai subdivisions of Midnapore in Bengal, where it ran until Gandhi asked its leaders to disband in 1944.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following was a distinguishing feature of the Quit India Movement of 1942?

  • (a)It was led throughout by the top Congress leadership
  • (b)It saw the emergence of parallel governments in several parts of India
  • (c)It was confined to the presidency towns
  • (d)It was accompanied by a formal boycott of the legislatures by Congress ministries

  Answer(b) It saw the emergence of parallel governments in several parts of India — at Ballia, at Tamluk and, longest of all, at Satara.