Consider the following social movements: 1. Chipko Movement 2. Bardoli Satyagraha 3. Satyashodhak Samaj Which one of the following is the correct chronological order (starting with the earliest) of the launch of the above social movements ?

Correct — C, 3, 2, 1. The three movements are a century apart at the ends and the order runs exactly opposite to the paper's numbering. Satyashodhak Samaj is the earliest: Jyotirao Phule founded it at Pune in 1873 as a society of truth-seekers, open to members of any caste, campaigning against Brahmanical ritual authority, for the education of Shudras and women, and for marriages conducted without a priest. The Bardoli Satyagraha came fifty-five years later, in February 1928, when the peasants of Bardoli taluka in Surat district refused to pay a land revenue enhancement of about twenty-two per cent; Vallabhbhai Patel organised the refusal, the government eventually appointed an inquiry that cut the increase sharply, and the women of Bardoli gave Patel the title Sardar. The Chipko Movement is the most recent, beginning in 1973 in the Chamoli district of the Garhwal Himalaya, when villagers stopped commercial felling by placing themselves against the trees — Chandi Prasad Bhatt organised the first actions at Mandal, and Sunderlal Bahuguna carried the campaign across the hills. The useful check is that all three sit in different centuries of Indian public life: a nineteenth-century social-reform society, a late-colonial peasant campaign, and a post-independence environmental movement.

• (a)2, 1, 3 — Starts with Bardoli in 1928 and ends with the Satyashodhak Samaj of 1873, reversing the oldest and putting it last.
• (b)3, 1, 2 — Right that the Satyashodhak Samaj comes first, but then puts Chipko in 1973 ahead of Bardoli in 1928.
• (d)1, 2, 3 — The tempting pick, because it simply repeats the order the question prints. That order is exactly reversed — Chipko is the latest of the three, not the earliest.

The three movements represent three different kinds of collective action. The Satyashodhak Samaj of 1873 belongs to the nineteenth-century social-reform movement, and specifically to its non-Brahmin, anti-caste strand in western India. The Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 belongs to the peasant movements of the national struggle, a no-tax campaign fought on a revenue assessment. Chipko, from 1973, belongs to the environmental movements of independent India and is the one usually named as the beginning of forest-rights activism in the Himalaya.

Chronology items that mix eras are best solved by classifying rather than by recalling dates. Ask what kind of movement each is: a social-reform society of the reform era, a satyagraha of the Gandhian mass-movement decades, and an environmental campaign of the 1970s. That alone produces 3, 2, 1 without a single date. The trap is option (d), which mirrors the order the paper prints, and papers print the items in a deliberately misleading order often enough that a candidate who is short of time and picks the printed sequence is being counted on. It is also worth being exact about Chipko's start. The movement is dated to 1973 at Mandal in Chamoli; the better-known Reni action, where Gaura Devi led the village women, followed in March 1974, and it is the Reni date that sometimes gets quoted as the movement's beginning.

• Jyotirao Phule founded the Satyashodhak Samaj at Pune on 24 September 1873.
• The Bardoli Satyagraha began in February 1928 in Bardoli taluka of Surat district, against a large enhancement of land revenue, and was led by Vallabhbhai Patel.
• The inquiry that followed Bardoli reduced the enhancement sharply, and it was there that Patel acquired the title Sardar.
• The Chipko Movement began in 1973 in the Chamoli district of the Garhwal Himalaya; Chandi Prasad Bhatt organised the earliest actions and Sunderlal Bahuguna carried it across the region.
• Gaura Devi led the women of Reni village in the best-known Chipko action, in March 1974.

• Choosing the order in which the question lists the items; here that order is exactly backwards.
• Dating Chipko to 1974 because the Reni action is the famous one; the movement began in 1973 at Mandal.
• Attributing Bardoli to Gandhi. He supported it, but Vallabhbhai Patel led it.

As a chronological-order item mixing social reform, national movement and post-independence campaigns, or as a who-led-it question on any one of the three.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Satyashodhak Samaj was founded in 1873 by which one of the following?

  • (a)Jyotirao Phule
  • (b)Gopal Hari Deshmukh
  • (c)B. R. Ambedkar
  • (d)Narayana Guru

  Answer(a) Jyotirao Phule — founded at Pune, open to all castes, and directed against priestly authority and for the education of Shudras and women.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Bardoli Satyagraha of 1928 was a protest against which one of the following?

  • (a)The salt tax
  • (b)An enhancement of land revenue
  • (c)Indigo cultivation on tinkathia terms
  • (d)The Rowlatt Act

  Answer(b) An enhancement of land revenue — the Bombay government's large increase in the assessment on Bardoli taluka, which the peasants refused to pay under Vallabhbhai Patel's leadership.