Which of the following were the main aspects of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1931 ? 1. Suspension of the Civil Disobedience Movement 2. To take part in the then forthcoming Simla Conference 3. Pay taxes for the period of the Civil Disobedience Movement 4. Release of Political Prisoners Select the correct answer using the codes given below :
- (a)1 and 3 only
- (b)2 and 3 only
- (c)1 and 4 only
- (d)2 and 4 only
Answer
Why
Correct — C, (c) 1 and 4 only.
Statements 1 and 4 describe the Gandhi-Irwin Pact accurately; statements 2 and 3 do not.
STATEMENT 1 — "Suspension of the Civil Disobedience Movement." TRUE, and it was the Congress's principal undertaking under the Pact. The Civil Disobedience Movement had begun with the Salt Satyagraha and the march to Dandi in 1930 and had spread far beyond salt into the boycott of foreign cloth, the picketing of liquor shops and no-tax campaigns. Under the Pact, signed in Delhi in March 1931 between Mahatma Gandhi and Lord Irwin, the Congress agreed to discontinue the movement.
STATEMENT 4 — "Release of Political Prisoners." TRUE, and it was the most substantial of the Government's undertakings. Prisoners undergoing sentences for offences connected with the movement were to be released, prosecutions were to be withdrawn, and the ordinances promulgated to suppress the Congress were to be withdrawn as well. The relief did not extend to those convicted of offences involving VIOLENCE, which is the qualification most worth remembering about this clause and the reason the Pact drew fire from the revolutionaries and their sympathisers.
STATEMENT 2 — "To take part in the then forthcoming Simla Conference." FALSE, and it is the sharpest of the two errors. What the Congress agreed to attend was the SECOND ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE, held in London later in 1931, which Mahatma Gandhi attended as the sole representative of the Congress. The Congress had boycotted the First Round Table Conference, and it was precisely to bring the Congress to the table that the Pact was negotiated. The Simla Conference is a different event from a different decade: it was convened by Lord Wavell in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, to consider proposals for an interim government, and it broke down over the composition of the Executive Council. Fourteen years and a world war separate the two.
STATEMENT 3 — "Pay taxes for the period of the Civil Disobedience Movement." FALSE, and it points in the opposite direction from the Pact's actual terms. The Pact RELIEVED penalties rather than imposing obligations. Fines that had not yet been realised were to be remitted; confiscated lands that had not yet been sold to third parties were to be returned; government servants who had resigned were to be treated leniently; and villagers on the coast were to be allowed to make salt for their own consumption free of duty. Nothing in the Pact required anyone to make good the taxes withheld during the movement. A settlement in which the Congress calls off its agitation and the Government both releases prisoners and remits penalties is intelligible; one in which the people are additionally billed for the period of the agitation is not the bargain that was struck.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE OPTIONS, which is worth reading before answering. Every option pairs exactly one of statements 1 and 2 with exactly one of statements 3 and 4 — 1 with 3, 2 with 3, 1 with 4, and 2 with 4. So the item asks for two independent binary decisions rather than four separate judgements: is it suspension or Simla, and is it paying taxes or releasing prisoners ? Answer those two and the option follows.
A NOTE ON THE PRINTING. The four statements are not grammatically parallel as set — two are noun phrases, one is an infinitive and one is an imperative — and none ends in a full stop. That is how the booklet prints them, and it should not be read as a clue of any kind; grammatical form and factual truth have nothing to do with each other, and a candidate who starts choosing statements by their shape will be wrong as often as right.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)1 and 3 only — This keeps the true statement 1 and pairs it with statement 3, which reverses the Pact's actual effect. Under the settlement the Government undertook to remit fines that had not yet been collected, to restore confiscated lands not yet sold to third parties, to withdraw prosecutions other than those for violent offences and to permit coastal villagers to make salt free of duty for their own use. Those are concessions, not demands. Nothing in the Pact obliged anyone to pay over the taxes withheld during the agitation; had it done so, the Congress's own no-tax campaigns would have been converted into a debt, which would have made the settlement impossible to sell to the very peasants who had carried the movement. A candidate reaching for this option has generally remembered that taxes featured somewhere in the negotiations — they did, in the shape of the salt duty and of the remission of penalties — and has attached the memory to the wrong side of the bargain.
- (b)2 and 3 only — This is the weakest option, since neither of the statements it names is correct. Statement 2 substitutes the Simla Conference for the Second Round Table Conference: the Congress's undertaking was to attend the London conference later in 1931, which Mahatma Gandhi did as its sole representative, whereas the Simla Conference belongs to 1945 and to Lord Wavell's attempt to form an interim government at the close of the Second World War. Statement 3 inverts the Pact's financial terms, which remitted uncollected fines and restored unsold confiscated land rather than demanding arrears. Choosing this option also means discarding the two clauses that everyone associates with the Pact — the suspension of the movement and the release of prisoners — which is a useful signal in itself. If an option omits the two things a settlement is famous for, it is worth a second look before it is accepted.
- (d)2 and 4 only — This keeps the true statement 4 and pairs it with statement 2, so it fails on the conference alone. The distinction matters and is often tested. The ROUND TABLE CONFERENCES were three, held in London between 1930 and 1932 to discuss constitutional reform; the Congress stayed away from the first, attended the second because of this very Pact, and stayed away from the third. The SIMLA CONFERENCE was held in India in 1945, called by the Viceroy Lord Wavell, and concerned the reconstruction of his Executive Council with Indian members; it failed over the question of who should nominate the Muslim members. The two events belong to different phases of the freedom struggle and to different Viceroys — Irwin negotiated the Pact, Willingdon presided over the repression that followed the Second Round Table Conference, and Wavell called Simla. Fixing each conference to its Viceroy and its year is the cheapest guard against this kind of substitution.
Concept
THE GANDHI-IRWIN PACT WAS A NEGOTIATED TRUCE, and its terms are best learnt as a bargain with two sides rather than as a list.
WHAT LED TO IT. The Lahore session of the Congress at the end of 1929 adopted the goal of Purna Swaraj and authorised civil disobedience. The movement opened with the march to Dandi and the breach of the salt law in 1930 and broadened into the boycott of foreign cloth, the picketing of liquor shops, the refusal of land revenue in some districts and the defiance of forest laws. The Government replied with ordinances, mass arrests and the declaration of the Congress as unlawful. Meanwhile the First Round Table Conference met in London without the Congress, and it was plain that constitutional talks without the largest political organisation in the country could settle nothing. Moderate mediators worked to bring the two sides together, Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Working Committee were released, and the negotiations with the Viceroy followed.
WHAT THE CONGRESS GAVE. Discontinuance of the Civil Disobedience Movement; participation in the next Round Table Conference; and an undertaking that the boycott of British goods would not be pursued in a punitive spirit.
WHAT THE GOVERNMENT GAVE. Withdrawal of the ordinances directed against the Congress; withdrawal of prosecutions except those for offences involving violence; release of prisoners held for non-violent offences connected with the movement; remission of fines not yet realised; return of confiscated lands not yet sold to third parties; lenient treatment of government servants who had resigned; and the right of villagers in coastal areas to make salt for their own consumption.
WHAT THE CONGRESS DID NOT GET. An inquiry into police excesses was pressed and refused, and the death sentences on Bhagat Singh and his companions were not commuted; they were carried out shortly before the Congress met at Karachi. That session, presided over by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, nevertheless endorsed the Pact, and it is remembered for two further resolutions of lasting importance, on Fundamental Rights and on National Economic Policy.
WHAT FOLLOWED. Mahatma Gandhi went to London for the Second Round Table Conference as the sole Congress representative. The conference deadlocked over the question of separate electorates for the minorities, and he returned empty-handed to a new Viceroy, Lord Willingdon, and to a fresh wave of repression. Civil disobedience was resumed at the beginning of 1932 and was met with ordinances harsher than those of 1930. The Pact is therefore best understood not as a settlement that held but as the hinge between the two phases of the Civil Disobedience Movement.
Modern Indian history and the national movement account for around eight questions on this paper, and within that strand the years between 1929 and 1935 are the densest — Purna Swaraj, the Salt Satyagraha, the Round Table Conferences, this Pact, the Communal Award, the Poona Pact and the Government of India Act. Almost every EPFO sitting reaches into that stretch.
The item is built on a substitution rather than on an obscurity. Nobody is being asked for a date or a signatory; they are being asked whether the conference the Congress agreed to attend was the one at Simla or the one in London, and whether the financial clauses relieved penalties or imposed them. Both errors are the sort that a candidate makes when he has learnt the period as a sequence of names rather than as a story with causes.
The option structure rewards a particular reading habit. Because each option pairs one of the first two statements with one of the last two, the item reduces to two independent decisions, and a candidate who is certain of even one of them halves the list at once. Looking at how the options PARTITION the statements, before recalling any history, is a cheap and repeatable technique on statement-list questions and it converts a four-way judgement into a two-way one.
The paper prints the pact as "Gandhi-Irwin" with a hyphen and names the 1945 event as the "Simla Conference" in the older spelling, both as set. The four statements are not grammatically parallel — noun phrases, an infinitive and an imperative side by side — and no statement ends in a full stop, which is again the booklet's own setting and carries no meaning.
Key facts
- The Gandhi-Irwin Pact was signed at Delhi in March 1931 between Mahatma Gandhi and the Viceroy Lord Irwin, and is sometimes called the Delhi Pact.
- The Congress undertook to discontinue the Civil Disobedience Movement and to attend the Second Round Table Conference in London — not any conference at Simla.
- The Simla Conference belongs to 1945 and to Lord Wavell, who called it to discuss the reconstruction of his Executive Council; it broke down over the nomination of the Muslim members.
- The Government undertook to withdraw the ordinances against the Congress, to withdraw prosecutions other than those for violent offences, and to release prisoners held for non-violent offences connected with the movement.
- The Pact remitted fines not yet realised and restored confiscated lands not yet sold to third parties, so it relieved financial penalties rather than demanding arrears of tax.
- Coastal villagers were allowed under the Pact to make salt for their own consumption free of duty, which was the concession on the issue the movement had begun with.
- Mahatma Gandhi's demand for an inquiry into police excesses was refused, and the death sentences on Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were carried out shortly before the Karachi session.
- The Karachi session of the Congress in 1931, presided over by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, endorsed the Pact and also passed the resolutions on Fundamental Rights and National Economic Policy.
- Mahatma Gandhi attended the Second Round Table Conference as the sole Congress representative; it deadlocked over separate electorates, and civil disobedience resumed in 1932 under Lord Willingdon.
Study next
Common traps
- Substituting the Simla Conference of 1945 for the Second Round Table Conference of 1931. Different decade, different Viceroy, different subject.
- Reading the Pact's financial clauses backwards. It remitted uncollected fines and restored unsold confiscated land; it demanded no arrears of tax.
- Forgetting the qualification on the release of prisoners, which excluded those convicted of offences involving violence.
- Treating the Pact as a settlement that held. Civil disobedience was resumed in 1932 after the Second Round Table Conference failed.
- Choosing statements by their grammatical shape. The four statements here are printed in different forms, and the form is meaningless.
The national movement is asked on EPFO papers through events, agreements and sessions rather than through interpretation. Expect items on what a particular pact or resolution contained, on who presided over a session, on the sequence of two or three developments, and on which movement a named episode belongs to.
The standard device is SUBSTITUTION: a real event of the right kind but the wrong year is offered in place of the correct one — Simla for the Round Table, Lucknow for Lahore, one Viceroy for another. It works because candidates learn the period as a list of names without dates attached. The defence is to anchor every event to two things, its year and the Viceroy or president under whom it occurred; a substituted event then fails one of the two anchors immediately.
The second device is the plausible-sounding clause, as with the tax statement here. A settlement between a government and a mass movement contains give and take, and a statement that sounds administrative can be slipped in on the wrong side of the bargain. The defence is to learn a pact as two columns — what each side conceded — rather than as a single list of terms.
Statement-list questions in this strand also reward reading the option structure first. When each option pairs one statement from one group with one from another, the item is really two smaller questions, and being sure of either half narrows the field at once.
Related PYQs
EPFO_APFC_2016_Q17The Khilafat Committee accepted Mahatma Gandhi's suggestion for a non-violent non-cooperation protest against the Government in its meeting at
- (a) Bombay
- (b) Nagpur
- (c) Allahabad
- (d) Kanpur
Answer(c) Allahabad
The Khilafat Committee's acceptance of Mahatma Gandhi's proposal for non-violent non-cooperation, on this same paper — the earlier mass movement whose methods the Civil Disobedience Movement inherited.
EPFO_EOAO_2020_Q73Gandhiji's Salt March to Dandi was started from which one of the following places ?
- (a) Kochrab Ashram
- (b) Sabarmati Ashram
- (c) Ahmedabad Textile Mill
- (d) Ahmedabad Jail
Answer(b) Sabarmati Ashram
The starting point of the Salt March to Dandi, asked on another EPFO paper — the episode that opened the movement this Pact suspended.
EPFO_APFC_2016_Q22What is the chronological sequence of the following developments ? 1. Decline in the export of Indian cotton 2. Cotton boom in India 3. Civil War in America Select the correct answer using the codes given below :
- (a) 1, 3 and 2
- (b) 2, 3 and 1
- (c) 1, 2 and 3
- (d) 2, 1 and 3
Answer(b) 2, 3 and 1
A chronological-sequence item on this paper covering the American Civil War and the Indian cotton boom, the same demand that a candidate hold dates in order rather than events in isolation.
Practice
- practice — not a real PYQ
Under the Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1931, the Indian National Congress agreed to take part in which one of the following ?
- (a)The First Round Table Conference
- (b)The Second Round Table Conference
- (c)The Third Round Table Conference
- (d)The Simla Conference
Answer(b) The Second Round Table Conference — the Congress had boycotted the first, and bringing it to the second was the purpose of the Pact. Mahatma Gandhi attended in London later in 1931 as the sole Congress representative. The Simla Conference belongs to 1945 and to Lord Wavell.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Karachi session of the Indian National Congress in 1931, which endorsed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact, is chiefly remembered for its resolutions on which one of the following subjects ?
- (a)Fundamental Rights and National Economic Policy
- (b)Purna Swaraj as the goal of the Congress
- (c)The Quit India demand
- (d)Non-cooperation and the boycott of councils
Answer(a) Fundamental Rights and National Economic Policy — the Karachi session, presided over by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, ratified the Pact and adopted those two resolutions. Purna Swaraj was adopted at Lahore in 1929, Quit India in 1942 and non-cooperation at Nagpur in 1920.