CDS (I) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 59 of 120

Correct — A, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. The stem is taken almost word for word from the school history chapter on Gandhi and the nationalist movement, which says of the Salt March that 'it was the first nationalist activity in which women participated in large numbers. The socialist activist Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay had persuaded Gandhiji not to restrict the protests to men alone. Kamaladevi was herself one of numerous women who courted arrest by breaking the salt or liquor laws.' Even the phrase 'socialist activist' in the question comes from that sentence, and it is the surest signal in the item — of the four women named, she is the one the text identifies by a political affiliation rather than by a role in the Congress. She went on to be named to the seven-member team Gandhi announced for making salt at the Bombay beachfront, and afterwards became the moving force behind the revival of Indian handicrafts and handloom.

• (b)Sarojini Naidu — The most prominent woman in the movement, and central to the salt satyagraha — she led the raid on the Dharasana salt works in May 1930 after Gandhi's arrest — but the persuasion recorded in the textbook is Kamaladevi's.
• (c)Matangini Hazra — Belongs to a different movement and a different decade. She was shot while leading a procession at Tamluk in Midnapore in September 1942, during Quit India, still holding the national flag.
• (d)Mithuben Petit — One of the small number of women who walked with Gandhi on the Dandi march itself, and she appears alongside him in the best-known photographs of it — a participant in the march rather than the person who argued for women's inclusion in it.

The Salt March of March and April 1930 opened the Civil Disobedience Movement, and it is remembered for three things: it brought Gandhi to world attention and was covered heavily by the European and American press; it was the first nationalist activity in which women took part in large numbers; and it forced on the British the realisation that they would eventually have to devolve power, a realisation that produced the Round Table Conferences from November 1930. Parallel marches followed the Dandi model elsewhere, most notably C. Rajagopalachari's march from Trichinopoly to Vedaranyam on the Tanjore coast.

The question is really about a distinction between kinds of participation, and the four names conveniently illustrate four of them: arguing for inclusion, leading a mass action, walking the march, and dying in a later movement altogether. Holding one identifying act against each name is the way to prepare for this whole family of questions, since papers rotate the same four or five women through different stems. The larger point the textbook is making is worth keeping: women's entry into the movement in 1930 was not automatic. Gandhi's initial plan was for men, on the reasoning that women should be spared the violence of arrest, and it took argument from within the movement to change it — after which women picketed liquor shops, made and sold contraband salt, and courted arrest in numbers that no earlier campaign had seen.

• The school text records that 'the socialist activist Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay had persuaded Gandhiji not to restrict the protests to men alone.'
• Kamaladevi herself courted arrest by breaking the salt or liquor laws, and was named to the seven-member team Gandhi announced for making salt at the Bombay beachfront.
• The Salt March was the first nationalist activity in which women participated in large numbers.
• Sarojini Naidu led the satyagrahis at the Dharasana salt works in May 1930, after Gandhi's arrest.
• Matangini Hazra was shot at Tamluk in Midnapore in September 1942, during the Quit India Movement, not during the salt satyagraha.

• Answering Sarojini Naidu because she is the best-known woman of the movement; her salt-satyagraha role was at Dharasana.
• Placing Matangini Hazra in 1930; she belongs to Quit India in 1942.
• Treating the four names as interchangeable participants; the question turns on one specific act of persuasion before the march began.

Asked by matching a named woman to a specific act, so it pays to attach one identifying event to each of the recurring names.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who led the satyagrahis in the raid on the Dharasana salt works in May 1930, after Gandhi's arrest?

  • (a)Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
  • (b)Sarojini Naidu
  • (c)Aruna Asaf Ali
  • (d)Kasturba Gandhi

  Answer(b) Sarojini Naidu — the action that produced Webb Miller's despatches and much of the international coverage of the movement.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Inspired by the Dandi march, the salt satyagraha in the Madras Presidency was led from Trichinopoly to Vedaranyam by

  • (a)K. Kamaraj
  • (b)C. Rajagopalachari
  • (c)V.O. Chidambaram Pillai
  • (d)S. Satyamurti

  Answer(b) C. Rajagopalachari — his march reached the Tanjore coast in April 1930.