MPPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 100 of 100

Correct — D, Mooka Lohar. The commission's key credits Mooka Lohar with leading the jungle satyagraha at Turiya, in Seoni district. The jungle satyagrahas were the Central Provinces' own form of the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930: where the coast broke the salt law, forest villages broke the forest law — cutting grass, felling wood and grazing cattle inside reserved forests from which colonial forest rules had shut them out — and the protests were met with police force.

• (a)Thakur Mohkam Singh — Not the name recorded for Turiya. Madhya Pradesh's freedom-struggle chapter carries many Thakur-title leaders, and the paper uses one here as a decoy.
• (b)Ramu Gond — A plausible-sounding tribal name for a forest satyagraha, but it is not the leader the commission's key attaches to the Turiya episode.
• (c)Ganjan Singh Korku — Ganjan Singh Korku is remembered in accounts of the jungle satyagraha in the Betul district area (the Ghora Dongri agitation) during the same 1930 wave — a different site from Turiya, which is the trap this option sets.

Colonial forest law — the Indian Forest Act of 1878 and then of 1927 — divided forests into reserved, protected and village categories and turned customary use (grazing, firewood, minor forest produce, shifting cultivation) into a punishable offence. When the Congress called for civil disobedience in 1930, forest-dependent communities in the Central Provinces and central India expressed it in the terms that mattered to them: mass entry into reserved forests to cut grass and wood in open defiance of the forest department. These are the jungle satyagrahas, and Turiya in Seoni district is one of their sites.

The commission does not ask 'what was a jungle satyagraha' — it asks who led which one, so the names have to be stored against places: Turiya in Seoni, and the Betul-district agitation in the same year. Reason about the option set too: this is a forest-law protest by forest communities, so the answer was always going to be a local, non-elite name rather than a titled landholder. Beyond the name, remember the larger arc — the rights extinguished by the 1927 Act are the same rights the Forest Rights Act of 2006 set out to restore.

• Jungle satyagraha — defiance of colonial forest law (grass-cutting, wood-cutting, grazing in reserved forests) as the local form of the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930
• Turiya lies in Seoni district of Madhya Pradesh, in the teak-forest belt of the Satpura plateau around the Pench river
• The colonial framework was the Indian Forest Act, 1927 (following the 1878 Act), which classified forests as reserved, protected and village forests
• Betul district saw a jungle satyagraha in the same 1930 wave, associated with Ganjan Singh Korku
• The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 is the post-independence answer to exactly the grievance these satyagrahas raised

• Attaching the wrong leader to the wrong site — Turiya (Seoni) and the Betul-district satyagraha belong to the same year but different names
• Treating jungle satyagraha as a purely tribal movement unconnected to the Congress programme — it was the local expression of Civil Disobedience in 1930
• Confusing the Indian Forest Act, 1927 (colonial control) with the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (restoration of rights)

MPPSC asks who led a named satyagraha, or where and when it happened; UPSC asks the conceptual version — what tribal movements were resisting, or which law recognises forest dwellers' rights today.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 'jungle satyagrahas' of 1930 in the Central Provinces were directed mainly against:

  • (a)the salt tax
  • (b)colonial forest laws that restricted customary use of forests
  • (c)the Permanent Settlement
  • (d)the Rowlatt Act

  Answer(b) Colonial forest laws — satyagrahis entered reserved forests to cut grass and wood in deliberate breach of the forest rules.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, the authority that begins the process of determining forest rights is the:

  • (a)State Forest Department
  • (b)District Collector
  • (c)Gram Sabha
  • (d)Ministry of Tribal Affairs

  Answer(c) The Gram Sabha — it initiates the process of determining the nature and extent of forest rights.