CDS (I) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 95 of 120

Correct — D, 1, 2, 3 and 4. The key counts all four names in. The body being asked about is the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, which came into being on 8-9 September 1928, when delegates of the surviving revolutionary groups met at the ruins of Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi and re-founded Sachindra Nath Sanyal's Hindustan Republican Association under a new name, with 'Socialist' written into it — a change usually credited to Bhagat Singh's influence. Bhagat Singh was the moving spirit of that meeting. Ajoy Ghosh is recorded as a member of the Association, was tried in the Lahore Conspiracy Case of 1929 and released for want of evidence, and went on to be General Secretary of the Communist Party of India from 1951 until his death in 1962. Phanindra Nath Ghosh was a key man of the same organisation who later turned approver in the Lahore case, evidence that helped send Bhagat Singh to the gallows and that cost Ghosh his own life at the hands of Baikuntha Shukla. Jatindranath — Jatin Das — built the bomb thrown in the Central Legislative Assembly and died on the sixty-fourth day of a hunger strike in Lahore jail on 13 September 1929.

• (a)1 only — Names Bhagat Singh alone. He was the most visible of the founders and the one who pressed the socialist label, but the September 1928 meeting was a convention of delegates from several provinces, not one man's act.
• (b)2 and 3 only — Drops Bhagat Singh, which cannot be right for a question about the founding of this particular body — his name is attached to the renaming itself.
• (c)1, 2 and 3 only — Leaves out Phanindra Nath Ghosh. He is the least remembered of the four precisely because he became a prosecution witness, but he was inside the organisation before he turned, and the key includes him.

The Hindustan Republican Association was founded at Kanpur in October 1924 by Sachindra Nath Sanyal, Ramprasad Bismil and Jogesh Chandra Chatterjee. The Kakori train robbery of 1925 and the executions and long sentences that followed gutted it. The younger survivors, led by Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad, rebuilt it at the Feroz Shah Kotla meeting of September 1928 as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, with a central committee and an armed wing, and committed it to a socialist republic rather than to independence alone. Its two famous acts followed at once — the killing of J. P. Saunders in December 1928 and the bombs and leaflets in the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929.

There are two things to watch in this stem. The first is the printed name: the paper says Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, where the organisation's own name was Association. The slip does not change what is being asked, and both the month and year in the stem are right. The second is the bare 'Jatindranath' at serial 2, which carries no surname. Read against the other three, all of them men of the 1928-29 Lahore circle, it points to Jatindra Nath Das, the Bengali bomb-maker who joined the reorganised body and died on hunger strike in 1929; a reader could also reach for Jatindra Nath Sanyal, and the paper leaves that open. The reason the item is worth sitting with is the fourth name. Phanindra Nath Ghosh is remembered only as the approver, so candidates instinctively strike him out of a founders list — and the key does not. Betrayal came later; membership came first.

• The Hindustan Republican Association was reorganised as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association at a meeting at Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi, on 8-9 September 1928.
• Chandrashekhar Azad, Sachindra Nath Sanyal and Bhagat Singh are the names most often attached to the reorganised body's leadership.
• Ajoy Ghosh was a member of the Association, was tried in the Lahore Conspiracy Case in 1929 and released for lack of evidence, and later served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of India from 1951 to 1962.
• Phanindra Nath Ghosh, until then a key member, became a government approver in the Lahore Conspiracy Case; Baikuntha Shukla was hanged for killing him.
• Jatindra Nath Das was arrested for making the bomb thrown by Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt, and died in Lahore jail on 13 September 1929 during a prison hunger strike.

• Reading the printed 'Army' as the organisation's real name — it was the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association.
• Striking Phanindra Nath Ghosh out of the list because he later turned approver. He was a member of the organisation before that.
• Confusing the founding of the Hindustan Republican Association in 1924 with its reorganisation as the HSRA in September 1928.

As a who-was-associated list, as a date question on the September 1928 reorganisation, or as a match between revolutionary and organisation.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Hindustan Republican Association was reorganised as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association at a meeting held in September 1928 at

  • (a)Kanpur
  • (b)Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi
  • (c)Lahore
  • (d)Allahabad

  Answer(b) Feroz Shah Kotla, Delhi — delegates of the surviving revolutionary groups met there on 8-9 September 1928. Kanpur was where the original Association had been founded in 1924.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Jatindra Nath Das, who died in Lahore jail in September 1929, is remembered for

  • (a)leading the Chittagong armoury raid
  • (b)a prison hunger strike demanding better treatment for political prisoners
  • (c)editing the newspaper Ghadar
  • (d)founding the Anushilan Samiti

  Answer(b) a prison hunger strike — Das, arrested for making the bomb thrown in the Central Legislative Assembly, died on 13 September 1929 after a fast of sixty-four days.