CDS (II) 2024 General Knowledge · Question 52 of 120

Correct — A, Congress Working Committee in 1919. That is the answer carried for this paper, and this card must record honestly that it does not survive checking, because the Congress Working Committee did not exist in 1919. The Working Committee was created by the new Congress constitution that Gandhi drafted and the Nagpur session adopted in December 1920 — before that the Congress had no standing executive of that name, only the All India Congress Committee and the annual session's Subjects Committee. The wide distribution of charkhas also belongs to the years after Nagpur, not before: spinning and khadi were made a mass programme once Non-Cooperation began, and in 1921 the Congress set itself the well-known triple target of enrolling a crore of members, raising a crore of rupees for the Tilak Swaraj Fund and putting lakhs of charkhas into Indian homes. On that reading the answer is option (b), the All India Congress Committee in 1921, and published solutions to this question give exactly that. Learn the substance — charkha as a Non-Cooperation programme of 1921 — and treat the letter as open until the key appears.

• (b)All India Congress Committee in 1921 — This is the reading that follows from the dates. The Working Committee came into being only in December 1920, and mass spinning was a Non-Cooperation programme, so a 1921 decision of the All India Congress Committee fits both facts. It is set out here as the honest alternative rather than as an error.
• (c)Mahatma Gandhi at the start of Dandi March — The Dandi March began on 12 March 1930 and its programme was the breach of the salt law, not the distribution of spinning wheels; by then khadi had already been Congress policy for a decade.
• (d)All India Congress Committee in 1947 — By 1947 the charkha was long established as a Congress symbol — it had been at the centre of the flag since 1921 and of the constructive programme throughout — so a decision to begin distributing it on a wide scale in that year makes no sense.

Gandhi's constructive programme rested on khadi. Hand-spinning was meant to do three things at once: give the underemployed peasant paid work in the idle months, cut the demand for imported mill cloth, and give every sympathiser a daily act by which to take part in the movement. Spinning was written into Congress membership requirements, the Congress constitution of 1920 reorganised the party down to the village level to carry such work, and the charkha was placed at the centre of the Congress flag adopted in the same period.

Date the institutions, not just the events — that is the discipline this item rewards. The Congress Working Committee, the Provincial Congress Committees on linguistic lines and the village-level organisation all date from the Nagpur constitution of December 1920, so any option that puts the Working Committee in 1919 is describing a body that had not yet been created. That single observation is worth more here than a memory of the charkha programme itself. Note also the paper's own typography: it prints charkhas in italics, marking it as a vernacular word, which is the booklet's convention and not part of the question.

• The Congress Working Committee was created by the new Congress constitution adopted at the Nagpur session in December 1920.
• The Nagpur constitution also reorganised the Congress on linguistic provinces and extended its organisation down to the village level.
• Hand-spinning and khadi were the core of Gandhi's constructive programme, intended to provide supplementary income and to displace imported cloth.
• In 1921 the Congress set targets of one crore members, one crore rupees for the Tilak Swaraj Fund and the spread of the charkha.
• The Non-Cooperation Movement was approved at the Calcutta special session in September 1920 and confirmed at Nagpur in December 1920.

• Treating the Congress Working Committee as an old body; it dates only from the Nagpur constitution of December 1920.
• Associating the charkha with the Dandi March; the salt march of 1930 had a different programme.
• Assuming khadi began with Non-Cooperation; Gandhi had been promoting hand-spinning since the late 1910s, but it became a mass Congress programme only after 1920.

As a who-decided-what item on the freedom struggle, where the trap is a body that did not yet exist in the year offered.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Congress Working Committee was created by the new Congress constitution adopted at which session?

  • (a)Lucknow, 1916
  • (b)Amritsar, 1919
  • (c)Nagpur, 1920
  • (d)Ahmedabad, 1921

  Answer(c) Nagpur, 1920 — the session that also reorganised the Congress on linguistic provinces and took it down to the village level.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Tilak Swaraj Fund, for which the Congress set a target of one crore rupees, was raised in which year?

  • (a)1919
  • (b)1921
  • (c)1930
  • (d)1942

  Answer(b) 1921 — alongside the drive for a crore of members and the spread of the charkha during Non-Cooperation.