With reference to the women achievers in modern India, consider the following statements: 1. Pandita Ramabai published a book "A Comparison Between Women and Men" where she protested against the colonial view that men enjoyed all the rights, opportunities and benefits of change. 2. Tarabai Shinde worked in the field of medicine to reduce child mortality in rural India. 3. Sarojini Naidu led a delegation to London to demand for female franchise. How many of the statements given above is/are correct?

Correct — A, 1. Exactly one of the three statements survives checking, and it is the third. Statement 1 attaches the right book to the wrong woman. A Comparison Between Women and Men is the English title of Stri Purush Tulana, a Marathi pamphlet published in 1882 by Tarabai Shinde of Buldhana, a member of Jotirao Phule's Satyashodhak Samaj; it attacked the double standard applied to women and the scriptural authority behind it, and is commonly described as the first modern Indian feminist text. Pandita Ramabai, a Sanskrit scholar honoured with the titles Pandita and Saraswati, wrote Stri Dharma Niti in 1882 and The High-Caste Hindu Woman in 1887, and founded the Sharada Sadan for widows. Statement 2 then compounds the swap by giving Tarabai Shinde a medical career; she was a writer who lived at Buldhana in Berar and did no work in medicine or child health. Statement 3 is the one that stands. Sarojini Naidu spoke for the deputation of women that met Edwin Montagu and Lord Chelmsford in 1917, moved a resolution for women's franchise at the Bombay Provincial Conference in 1918, and in 1919 went to London for the Women's Indian Association to argue the case before the Joint Select Committee of Parliament on the Government of India Bill, presenting a memorandum with evidence that Indian women were ready for the vote. The Act that followed did not enfranchise them, which is part of why the episode is remembered.

• (b)2 — Requires a second statement to be true. The only candidate is the first, and it fails on authorship — Stri Purush Tulana is Tarabai Shinde's book, not Pandita Ramabai's. Reading it as a description of Ramabai's The High-Caste Hindu Woman does not rescue it, because the printed title is the other book's.
• (c)3 — Would need the medical claim about Tarabai Shinde to be true as well. Nothing in her life supports it; the reformers associated with medicine and child mortality in this period are figures such as Anandibai Joshi and Rukhmabai Raut.
• (d)None — Too severe. Sarojini Naidu's advocacy of female franchise in London in 1919 is documented, and CDS's own official key for its 2020 paper treats her evidence before the Joint Select Committee as fact.

Three distinct strands of women's activity in colonial India get confused with one another in items like this. The first is the critique of patriarchy from within Marathi social reform — Tarabai Shinde and the Satyashodhak Samaj. The second is institution-building for widows and for women's education — Pandita Ramabai's Sharada Sadan, the Bethune school in Calcutta, the work of Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. The third is the constitutional campaign for the vote, run from about 1917 by the Women's Indian Association and carried to London in 1919.

The item is built as a name-swap, which is the commonest device in a how-many-are-correct question. Two women who both belong to nineteenth-century Maharashtra are put next to each other and their work is exchanged, so that a candidate who half-remembers 'a Marathi book comparing women and men' is invited to attach it to the more famous of the two names. The defence is to fix one anchor for each woman rather than a general impression: Tarabai Shinde goes with Stri Purush Tulana of 1882, Pandita Ramabai with The High-Caste Hindu Woman and the Sharada Sadan, and Sarojini Naidu with the franchise campaign and, later, with the presidency of the Congress in 1925. One printed oddity worth noting is the wording of statement 1, which speaks of protesting 'against the colonial view that men enjoyed all the rights'; Stri Purush Tulana attacks an indigenous double standard rather than a colonial one, so the sentence is loose about its target as well as wrong about its author.

• Tarabai Shinde, 1850-1910, of Buldhana in Berar, published Stri Purush Tulana in Marathi in 1882; she was a member of the Satyashodhak Samaj.
• Pandita Ramabai wrote Stri Dharma Niti in 1882 and The High-Caste Hindu Woman in 1887, and founded the Sharada Sadan for widows.
• The Women's Indian Association was founded in 1917, and Sarojini Naidu spoke for the women's deputation that met Montagu and Chelmsford that year.
• In 1919 Naidu went to London for the Association and put the case for female franchise to the Joint Select Committee of Parliament; the Government of India Act 1919 did not enfranchise women.
• Sarojini Naidu was the first Indian woman to preside over the Indian National Congress, at Kanpur in 1925; the first woman president was Annie Besant in 1917.

• Attaching Stri Purush Tulana to Pandita Ramabai because hers is the better-known name.
• Thinking the first woman president of the Indian National Congress was Sarojini Naidu; that was Annie Besant in 1917, and Naidu was the first Indian woman, in 1925.
• Assuming a how-many-are-correct item must have at least two correct statements.

As a count-the-correct-statements item that swaps the achievements of two contemporaries, or as a straight who-wrote-what match.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Marathi work Stri Purush Tulana, published in 1882, was written by

  • (a)Pandita Ramabai
  • (b)Tarabai Shinde
  • (c)Savitribai Phule
  • (d)Anandibai Joshi

  Answer(b) Tarabai Shinde — her pamphlet, whose English title is A Comparison Between Women and Men, is often called the first modern Indian feminist text.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who among the following was the first Indian woman to preside over a session of the Indian National Congress?

  • (a)Annie Besant
  • (b)Sarojini Naidu
  • (c)Nellie Sengupta
  • (d)Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay

  Answer(b) Sarojini Naidu — she presided at Kanpur in 1925; Annie Besant, who presided in 1917, was the first woman but not an Indian.