MPSC 2025 Prelims Q14: In 1877, 'The Great Delhi Darbar' was held, who described

Q: What is the answer to MPSC 2025 Prelims Q14?

(4). Correct — option (4), G. V. Joshi. Ganesh Vasudeo Joshi was a founding member of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, the political body launched at Pune in 1870. When the Government of India staged the Delhi Durbar of January 1877 to proclaim Queen Victoria 'Empress of India,' the Sabha sent Joshi to Delhi as its representative — deliberately dressed in hand-spun khadi rather than court dress — to read out a memorial on the Sabha's behalf. That memorial made a pointed, politely worded demand: that Indians be granted 'the same political and social status as is enjoyed by her British subjects.' It was Joshi who described this assembly of Indian princes and notables gathered before the Viceroy as 'An Indian Parliament' — a description that was itself an argument, since the Durbar was a display of imperial pageantry with no representative or legislative character at all, and Joshi's phrase held that gap up for comparison. The gesture is remembered as an early rehearsal of the kind of organised political demand-making that the Indian National Congress would formalise seven years later, in 1885.

MPSC 2025 Prelims Paper-I · Question 14 of 100

Maharashtra Civil Services Gazetted Combined Preliminary Examination 2025, held 9 November 2025. Transcribed from the commission's own booklet (संच A); answer as per the official MPSC final answer key.

In 1877, 'The Great Delhi Darbar' was held, who described it as, 'An Indian Parliament' ?

(1)M. G. Ranade
(2)K. T. Telang
(3)S. H. Chiplunkar
(4)G. V. Joshi

Answer

(4)

Why

Correct — option (4), G. V. Joshi. Ganesh Vasudeo Joshi was a founding member of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, the political body launched at Pune in 1870. When the Government of India staged the Delhi Durbar of January 1877 to proclaim Queen Victoria 'Empress of India,' the Sabha sent Joshi to Delhi as its representative — deliberately dressed in hand-spun khadi rather than court dress — to read out a memorial on the Sabha's behalf. That memorial made a pointed, politely worded demand: that Indians be granted 'the same political and social status as is enjoyed by her British subjects.' It was Joshi who described this assembly of Indian princes and notables gathered before the Viceroy as 'An Indian Parliament' — a description that was itself an argument, since the Durbar was a display of imperial pageantry with no representative or legislative character at all, and Joshi's phrase held that gap up for comparison. The gesture is remembered as an early rehearsal of the kind of organised political demand-making that the Indian National Congress would formalise seven years later, in 1885.

Why the others are wrong

(1)M. G. Ranade — Mahadev Govind Ranade was closely associated with the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha and became one of the guiding intellectual figures behind its memorials and petitions to government in this period, which is exactly why his name sits naturally next to this quote. But the 1877 Delhi deputation and the 'Indian Parliament' description belong specifically to Joshi, who travelled to Delhi and read the memorial in person — not to Ranade.
(2)K. T. Telang — Kashinath Trimbak Telang was a contemporary Bombay-based jurist and reformer of the same broad generation of moderate political activity, which makes him a plausible-sounding distractor here. No source ties him to the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha's 1877 Delhi deputation or to this quote; his own public career centred on Bombay rather than this specific episode.
(3)S. H. Chiplunkar — S. H. Chiplunkar is recorded among the founding members of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha in 1870, alongside Joshi — which is precisely why the option is a convincing trap: he shares the same institutional home as the correct answer. But the deputation to the 1877 Durbar and the phrase describing it as an 'Indian Parliament' are attributed to Joshi, not to Chiplunkar.

Concept

The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, founded in Pune in 1870, was one of the earliest organised bodies to petition the colonial government on behalf of Indian political opinion, well before the Indian National Congress existed. Its 1877 Delhi deputation shows the Sabha using an imperial spectacle — staged precisely to display loyalty and hierarchy — as an occasion to voice a demand for equal status instead.

MPSC uses this kind of question to test whether a candidate can attach a specific act or quote to the specific individual who performed it, rather than to the organisation or generation he belonged to. The options here are all plausible because they are all Poona Sarvajanik Sabha-adjacent names from the same decade; only one of them actually made the trip and said the words.

Key facts

The Delhi Durbar of January 1877 proclaimed Queen Victoria 'Empress of India' and assembled Indian princes and notables before the Viceroy.
The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, founded at Pune in 1870, sent G. V. Joshi to Delhi as its representative, dressed in hand-spun khadi.
Joshi read a memorial demanding for Indians 'the same political and social status as is enjoyed by her British subjects' and described the gathering as 'An Indian Parliament.'
M. G. Ranade and S. H. Chiplunkar were both associated with the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha in this era, but the 1877 deputation and quote are Joshi's.

Same Sabha, four names — who actually went to Delhi in 1877?

(4) G. V. Joshi→TRUE — travelled to Delhi, read the memorial, coined the phrase

(1) M. G. Ranade→Guiding intellectual figure of the Sabha — did not make this trip

(2) K. T. Telang→Bombay jurist — no recorded tie to this 1877 deputation

(3) S. H. Chiplunkar→Founding member, same Sabha — but not this act

Shared organisation is not proof of authorship — only Joshi made the trip and said the words.

Study next

The founding and early petitioning activity of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha (1870)M. G. Ranade's later role in the Sabha and in the Indian National Social ConferenceThe 1877 and 1903 Delhi Durbars as imperial spectacle versus Indian political responseThe formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 as the next stage of organised political demand-making

Common traps

Assigning a specific quote or act to the most famous name from an organisation, rather than to the individual actually recorded as having done it
Treating 'founding member of the same Sabha' as proof of authorship of a specific later act

MPSC likes to isolate one named individual's specific act or statement from a group of contemporaries who shared the same organisation, and builds the wrong options from that same organisation's other well-known names. The safeguard is keeping a short list of who-did-what-specifically, not just who-belonged-where.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, whose representative attended the 1877 Delhi Durbar in hand-spun khadi and called it 'An Indian Parliament,' was founded in which year?
- (a)1870
- (b)1875
- (c)1880
- (d)1885
Answer(a) 1870 — the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha was launched at Pune in 1870; the Indian National Congress, a separate and later body, was founded in 1885.
practice — not a real PYQ
The memorial that G. V. Joshi read at the 1877 Delhi Durbar, on behalf of the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, made which demand?
- (a)Complete independence from British rule
- (b)The same political and social status as British subjects
- (c)A separate legislature for the Bombay Presidency
- (d)Abolition of the Delhi Durbar ceremony
Answer(b) The same political and social status as British subjects — a moderate, equality-based demand typical of this early phase of organised political petitioning, well short of a demand for independence.