CDS (I) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 98 of 120

Correct — D, Voice of India — Gopal Krishna Gokhale. This is the pair that does not match. The Voice of India was Dadabhai Naoroji's paper, started in Bombay in the 1880s to carry Indian opinion and the drain-of-wealth argument to a British readership; Wikipedia's account of Naoroji records that alongside the Gujarati fortnightly Rast Goftar, which he founded in 1854, he also published another newspaper called The Voice of India. Gokhale, a generation younger, is associated with the Servants of India Society, which he founded in 1905, and with the Sarvajanik Sabha's quarterly in Poona — not with this title. The other three pairs are exactly right, which is what makes the fourth stand out once you know Naoroji owned it.

• (a)Navjivan — Mahatma Gandhi — Correctly matched, so not the answer. Gandhi took over Navajivan in 1919 and used it as his Gujarati weekly alongside the English Young India, running both from Ahmedabad.
• (b)Mahratta — Bal Gangadhar Tilak — Also correct. Tilak launched the English weekly Mahratta and the Marathi Kesari from Poona in 1881, and it is through them that he built his political following.
• (c)Bengalee — Surendranath Banerjea — Correct as well. Surendranath Banerjea edited The Bengalee from Calcutta, and it was an article in it criticising a judge that led to his imprisonment for contempt in 1883.

The nationalist press of the late nineteenth century was the instrument through which political argument reached beyond the small circle of the educated elite. Papers ran in two registers — English titles aimed at the British public and at officialdom, and vernacular titles aimed at readers at home. Naoroji's Voice of India and Rast Goftar, Tilak's Mahratta and Kesari, Banerjea's Bengalee, Gandhi's Young India and Navajivan and Motilal Ghosh's Amrita Bazar Patrika all belong to this world, and matching editor to title is one of the most predictable question types in the modern-history section of every service examination.

Pair questions are answered by elimination, so it pays to be certain of three before worrying about the fourth. Gandhi and Navajivan, Tilak and Mahratta, Banerjea and Bengalee are all firm; that leaves the Voice of India, and the point to hold is that it belongs to Naoroji. The confusion with Gokhale is understandable, since both were moderates of the Bombay Presidency and Gokhale regarded Naoroji as a mentor, but their journalistic footprints are different — Gokhale's platform was the Servants of India Society and the Sarvajanik Sabha's quarterly, not a paper of this name. A second reason the trap works is the title itself, which sounds like something a moderate spokesman would have run; the way past that is to remember Naoroji's British audience and the drain-of-wealth campaign he was conducting in London.

• The Voice of India was published by Dadabhai Naoroji, who also founded the Gujarati fortnightly Rast Goftar in 1854.
• Bal Gangadhar Tilak started the English weekly Mahratta and the Marathi Kesari from Poona in 1881.
• Surendranath Banerjea edited The Bengalee, and was jailed for contempt of court over an article in it in 1883.
• Mahatma Gandhi took over the Gujarati weekly Navajivan in 1919 and ran it alongside Young India.
• Gopal Krishna Gokhale founded the Servants of India Society in 1905; his platform was that body and the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, not the Voice of India.

• Attaching The Voice of India to Gokhale because both he and Naoroji were moderates of the Bombay Presidency.
• Mixing up Tilak's two papers — Mahratta was the English weekly and Kesari the Marathi one.
• Confusing Navajivan, which Gandhi ran in Gujarati, with Young India, his English weekly of the same years.

Almost always as a not-correctly-matched pair between newspaper and editor, occasionally as a match-the-list item pairing papers with the languages they appeared in.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following pairs of newspaper and editor is correctly matched?

  • (a)Kesari — Gopal Krishna Gokhale
  • (b)Amrita Bazar Patrika — Sisir Kumar Ghosh
  • (c)Young India — Surendranath Banerjea
  • (d)Rast Goftar — Bal Gangadhar Tilak

  Answer(b) Amrita Bazar Patrika — Sisir Kumar Ghosh. Kesari was Tilak's, Young India was Gandhi's and Rast Goftar was founded by Dadabhai Naoroji.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Dadabhai Naoroji founded which one of the following Gujarati publications in 1854?

  • (a)Navajivan
  • (b)Rast Goftar
  • (c)Indian Opinion
  • (d)Sudharak

  Answer(b) Rast Goftar — a Gujarati fortnightly begun in 1854 to clarify Zoroastrian ideas and press Parsi social reform.