Consider the following statements about the early phase of the National Movement in India : 1. Ferozeshah Mehta, Badruddin Tyabji and others formed the Bombay Presidency Association. 2. Surendranath Banerjee and his group planned an Indian National Conference at Calcutta. 3. Allan Octavian Hume decided to create an all-India body as a rival to the above organisations to give vent to the grievances of the poor and marginalised Indians. How many of the above statements is/are correct?
- (a)1
- (b)2
- (c)All
- (d)None
Correct — B, 2. Two of the three statements hold. Statement 1 is correct: the Bombay Presidency Association was founded in 1885 by the group around Pherozeshah Mehta, Badruddin Tyabji and K. T. Telang, with Mehta, Telang and Dinshaw Wacha as its honorary secretaries. Statement 2 is correct too: Surendranath Banerjee and his circle in the Indian Association convened the Indian National Conference at Calcutta, first in December 1883 and again in December 1885, and it merged into the Congress in 1886. Statement 3 is the false one — A. O. Hume worked with these leaders, not against them, and the body he helped found was built out of their networks rather than set up as a rival to them.
- (a)1 — Counts only one correct statement. Both the Bombay Presidency Association and the Indian National Conference are securely dated to this same 1883-to-1885 window, so the count is at least two.
- (c)All — Would require statement 3 as well. Hume's all-India body absorbed the existing associations rather than rivalling them — the Indian National Conference merged into the Congress in 1886, and Mehta, Tyabji and Telang all became Congress leaders.
- (d)None — Rejects two well-attested facts about the founding phase of Indian political associations. Both bodies named in statements 1 and 2 existed and were formed by the men named.
Indian political organisation before 1885 ran through regional associations — the British Indian Association and later the Indian Association in Calcutta, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, the Madras Mahajana Sabha and the Bombay Presidency Association. These bodies shared members and methods, and by the mid-1880s their leaders were already meeting at a national level: Surendranath Banerjee's Indian National Conference sat at Calcutta in December 1883 and again in December 1885. The Indian National Congress held its first session at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, Bombay, from 28 to 31 December 1885, with A. O. Hume, a retired Indian Civil Service officer, as its organising secretary; the Conference merged into it the following year.
The false statement is identifiable by its verb, not by its facts. It says Hume created the all-India body as a rival to the existing associations, and the record runs the other way — Hume corresponded with and worked through exactly those leaders, the Congress's first session drew its delegates from those associations, and the Indian National Conference dissolved into the Congress in 1886. The 'give vent to the grievances of the poor and marginalised' clause is a second flag: whatever the arguments about Hume's motives, the early Congress spoke for the educated professional classes, not for the poor. That leaves statements 1 and 2, both of which are straightforward, and the count is two.
- The Bombay Presidency Association was established in 1885; Pherozeshah Mehta, K. T. Telang and Dinshaw Wacha were its honorary secretaries.
- Surendranath Banerjee and Anandamohan Bose organised the Indian National Conference at Calcutta in December 1883 and again in December 1885.
- The Indian National Conference merged with the Indian National Congress in December 1886.
- The first session of the Indian National Congress met at Bombay from 28 to 31 December 1885, organised by A. O. Hume.
- Accepting statement 3 because the safety-valve story is familiar; even that theory does not make the Congress a rival to the regional associations.
- Confusing the Indian National Conference (Banerjee, Calcutta, 1883 and 1885) with the Indian National Congress (Bombay, December 1885).
- Assuming the early Congress spoke for the poor and marginalised; its founding leadership was drawn from the professional classes.
Asked as a how-many-statements count on the founding phase of the national movement, with one statement made false by a single word about motive.
Where was the First Session of the Indian National Congress held in December 1885?
- (a) Ahmadabad
- (b) Bombay
- (c) Calcutta
- (d) Delhi
Answer(b) Bombay — at Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, 28 to 31 December 1885.
Fixes the other half of the December 1885 calendar. The Congress met at Bombay in the same week that Banerjee's Indian National Conference was sitting at Calcutta, which is why the two bodies merged a year later.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Indian National Conference, which merged into the Indian National Congress in 1886, was organised mainly by
- (a)Pherozeshah Mehta
- (b)Surendranath Banerjee
- (c)Dadabhai Naoroji
- (d)Badruddin Tyabji
Answer(b) Surendranath Banerjee — with Anandamohan Bose, through the Indian Association at Calcutta.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Which of the following was NOT among the pre-Congress regional political associations of the 1870s and 1880s?
- (a)Poona Sarvajanik Sabha
- (b)Madras Mahajana Sabha
- (c)Bombay Presidency Association
- (d)All India Muslim League
Answer(d) All India Muslim League — founded at Dhaka in 1906, two decades after the others.