With reference to the Revolt of 1857, consider the following statements: 1. Shah Mal mobilised the people of Baraut region of Uttar Pradesh and captured the bungalow of an Englishman and converted it into a "hall of justice". 2. Gonoo was a Kol leader of the Singhbhum region of Chotanagpur. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Correct — C, Both 1 and 2. The two statements are the two rebel profiles that NCERT sets side by side, and each is reproduced accurately. Shah Mal belonged to a clan of Jat cultivators in pargana Barout in western Uttar Pradesh whose kinship ties ran across the chaurasee des, the eighty-four villages. Moving from village to village at night he brought the headmen and cultivators out against the British; his men attacked government buildings, destroyed the bridge over the river, dug up the metalled roads, sent supplies to the mutinous sepoys in Delhi and cut official communication between the British headquarters and Meerut. Locally acknowledged as Raja, he took over an English officer's bungalow and turned it into a hall of justice, settling disputes and giving judgments, and he ran an effective intelligence network. He was killed in battle in July 1857. Gonoo is the second profile: a tribal cultivator of Singhbhum in Chotanagpur who became a rebel leader of the Kol tribals of that region. Statement 2 says exactly that, so both hold and the answer is Both 1 and 2.

• (a)1 only — Drops the Gonoo statement, which is the textbook's own sentence: a tribal cultivator of Singhbhum in Chotanagpur who became a rebel leader of the Kol tribals of the region. Nothing in the printed claim departs from that.
• (b)2 only — Drops the Shah Mal statement, which is equally accurate — the Baraut mobilisation and the English officer's bungalow turned into a hall of justice are the two details the textbook itself highlights.
• (d)Neither 1 nor 2 — Would require both profiles to be wrong. They are the standard account of two of the revolt's local leaders and are printed here with their places and their followings correctly attached.

The revolt of 1857 was led in most places by men who already had standing where they lived — deposed rulers, taluqdars, village headmen, maulvis, and in the tribal tracts the leaders of a clan or a community. That is why the historical writing on 1857 keeps returning to local biographies. Shah Mal is the type of the village leader whose authority rested on kinship across a bloc of villages; Gonoo is the type of the tribal leader whose following was a whole community; Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah of Faizabad, who fought at Chinhat, is the type of the preacher-leader.

This is a memory item with a single trap in it, and the trap is a name. Shah Mal appears in every account of 1857 in western Uttar Pradesh, so most candidates will pass statement 1 quickly. Gonoo is far less familiar, and an unfamiliar name in a two-statement item invites the guess that it must be the planted error — which is precisely how the stored answer for this paper reads it. The correction is to remember that the same textbook page carries both men, and that Gonoo's line there names his people, the Kols, and his country, Singhbhum in Chotanagpur, exactly as the paper does. Two spellings are worth noticing and then setting aside: NCERT prints pargana Barout where the paper prints Baraut, which is the modern town in Baghpat district; and Chotanagpur is written in one word here and often as Chota Nagpur elsewhere.

• Shah Mal belonged to a clan of Jat cultivators of pargana Barout whose kinship ties covered the chaurasee des, the eighty-four villages.
• His men destroyed the bridge over the river and dug up metalled roads, cutting communication between the British headquarters and Meerut, and sent supplies to the sepoys in Delhi.
• Acknowledged locally as Raja, Shah Mal turned an English officer's bungalow into a hall of justice and was killed in battle in July 1857.
• Gonoo was a tribal cultivator of Singhbhum in Chotanagpur who became a rebel leader of the Kol tribals of the region.
• The Kols of Chotanagpur had risen once before, in the Kol uprising of 1831-32, well before 1857.

• Assuming the unfamiliar name in a two-statement item must be the false one.
• Confusing the Kol rebel leader of 1857 with the earlier Kol uprising of 1831-32, which was a separate rising in the same country.
• Placing Singhbhum in Bengal or Odisha; in the textbook's usage it is part of Chotanagpur, in present-day Jharkhand.

As a two-statement item pairing a rebel with his region, as a match-the-leader-to-the-centre item, or as a question on which town was not a centre of the revolt.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Shah Mal, a leader of the Revolt of 1857, mobilised the cultivators of which region?

  • (a)Pargana Barout in western Uttar Pradesh
  • (b)Singhbhum in Chotanagpur
  • (c)Jagdishpur in Bihar
  • (d)Bundelkhand

  Answer(a) Pargana Barout in western Uttar Pradesh — his kinship ties ran across the chaurasee des, the eighty-four villages, and he was killed in battle in July 1857.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  During the Revolt of 1857, Gonoo led the rebels of which community?

  • (a)Santhal
  • (b)Kol
  • (c)Bhil
  • (d)Munda

  Answer(b) Kol — Gonoo was a tribal cultivator of Singhbhum in Chotanagpur who became a rebel leader of the Kol tribals of the region.