MPSC 2021 Prelims Paper-I · Question 15 of 100

Correct — option (3), which takes statements (c), (b) and (a) together and leaves out statement (d). The writer is Dinshaw Edulji Wacha, whose name the paper prints as Dinshaw Wancha; he lived from 1844 to 1936, was one of the founding members of the Indian National Congress, served for years as its secretary, presided over it in 1901, and belonged with Pherozeshah Mehta and Dadabhai Naoroji to the Bombay group that ran the Moderate Congress. The man he is writing to, Dadabhai Naoroji, was the grand old man of the movement and by 1899 was in London running the British end of it. What passes between them is private, candid and deeply pessimistic, and the three complaints the paper reproduces are the standard content of Moderate self-criticism in that decade. Statement (a), that the work of the Congress was consistently laid off, points at the organisational hollowness of the body: it met for three days in December and effectively ceased to exist for the other three hundred and sixty-two, having no permanent machinery, no paid workers and no continuous programme between sessions. Statement (b), the attitude of leaders towards politics as a leisure activity, is the charge Wacha is recorded as making in his correspondence — that the movement lacked leaders willing to give themselves to it wholly, and that men of the stature of Pherozeshah Mehta held back from full commitment for fear of damage to their private careers. Statement (c), the bitter phrase that the Congress only barks and does not bite, is the summary of the other two: resolutions passed unanimously each December, forwarded to a government that ignored them, and nothing whatever done to compel attention. Statement (d), that the only way to follow is the revolutionary way, is the one that does not belong. Wacha was a constitutionalist to the end of a very long life. He sat in the Bombay Legislative Council, in the Imperial Legislative Council and in the Council of State, was knighted in 1917, presided over the Indian Merchants' Chamber in 1915, and headed the Western India Liberal Association from 1919 to 1927 — that is, when the Congress moved to mass non-cooperation he left it for the Liberals rather than move in the opposite direction. The whole point of his complaint was that constitutional agitation was being conducted feebly, not that it should be abandoned.

• (1)(a) and (c) correct — This choice takes two of the three genuine complaints and drops statement (b), the charge that the leaders treated politics as a leisure pursuit. That is the one a candidate is most likely to hesitate over, because it reads as an accusation against Wacha's own colleagues and friends, and it feels too harsh for a letter from one founder-member to another. It was in fact exactly the sort of thing the Bombay Moderates said to each other in private, and Wacha is on record lamenting the absence of leaders prepared to devote themselves to the movement and observing that men held back to protect their professional careers. Statement (b) is also the load-bearing complaint of the three, since the laying-off of work and the barking without biting are both consequences of it.
• (2)(b) and (d) correct — This choice pairs one true complaint with the one false one. Statement (d) puts a call for revolution in the mouth of the most thoroughly constitutionalist figure the early Congress produced — a man who sat in three successive official councils, was knighted in 1917, led the Indian Merchants' Chamber and ended his political life at the head of the Western India Liberal Association. The revolutionary current in Indian politics did exist by 1899 and grew considerably after 1905, but it grew among a different generation and in a different tradition, and its appearance here is a deliberate anachronism of temperament. Reading the writer's politics before reading the statements is the fastest way to see it.
• (4)(d) only correct — This is the inverse of the truth: it keeps the single statement that does not belong and discards the three that do. It is aimed at a candidate who has never heard of Wacha and assumes that a letter conveying the failure of the Congress must be a letter recommending something more drastic. The assumption is natural and wrong. Criticism from within the Moderate camp in the 1890s was almost always a demand for better constitutional work — more permanent organisation, more full-time workers, more pressure applied in London — rather than a demand to abandon constitutional methods. That distinction, between disappointment with the method's execution and rejection of the method, is what the question is really testing.

The 1890s were the flat years of the early Congress, and its own leaders knew it. The body had been founded in 1885 on the assumption that reasoned representation would win concessions from a government that shared British constitutional values; by the end of the decade, after the disappointment of the Indian Councils Act of 1892, the assumption looked thin. The structural problem was that the Congress was an annual event rather than an organisation. It assembled in December, passed resolutions, elected a president for the occasion and dispersed; there were no branches worth the name, no permanent staff and no programme of continuous work, and much of the money that was raised went to the British Committee in London and its journal India. Its leaders were successful barristers, editors and businessmen who gave the movement their spare hours. The critique voiced privately by men like Wacha in the 1890s is therefore the direct ancestor of two later developments: the Extremist demand after 1905 for methods that could apply real pressure, and the Gandhian transformation after 1919 of the Congress into a mass organisation with a permanent structure and full-time workers.

MPSC's freedom-struggle questions do not stop at what the Moderates asked for; they extend to what the Moderates thought of themselves, which is where a question of this kind comes from. The commission likes such items because they cannot be answered by memorising a list of demands — a candidate has to know the temperament of the person named. Here that temperament decides the question by itself: once you know that Wacha was a Bombay Moderate who went on to lead a Liberal association after the Congress turned to non-cooperation, the revolutionary statement is impossible and the three complaints about organisational feebleness are exactly what you would expect. Note also the shape of the item. Four statements are printed, and the answer choices combine them in different numbers rather than offering them singly, so a candidate must decide on each statement independently before reading the choices. The paper prints its statements with lower-case letters and its answer choices with numerals, so the labels inside a choice always refer to the statement list.

• Dinshaw Edulji Wacha, 1844 to 1936, was a founding member of the Indian National Congress, served long as its secretary, and presided over the Congress in 1901; the paper prints his surname as Wancha.
• He belonged with Pherozeshah Mehta and Dadabhai Naoroji to the Bombay group that led the Moderate Congress; he is recorded as lamenting the lack of leaders willing to devote themselves to the movement and the tendency of men to hold back for fear of damage to their private careers.
• Wacha sat in the Bombay Legislative Council, the Imperial Legislative Council and the Council of State, was knighted in 1917, presided over the Indian Merchants' Chamber in 1915, and headed the Western India Liberal Association from 1919 to 1927.
• The Congress of the 1890s met for a few days each December and had no permanent organisation, paid workers or continuous programme between sessions, which is the organisational failing the letter's complaints describe.
• Wacha and G. K. Gokhale gave evidence before the Welby Commission on Indian expenditure in 1897, of which Dadabhai Naoroji was a member — an illustration of the constitutional methods Wacha believed in and wanted pursued more vigorously.

• Assuming that criticism of the Congress from inside it must be a call for revolutionary methods; Moderate self-criticism was almost always a demand for better constitutional work
• Rejecting statement (b) because it seems too harsh an accusation for one founder-member to make about another in the same movement
• Confusing Dinshaw Wacha with the revolutionaries of the following decade, when his political life ran through legislative councils, a knighthood and the Liberal Federation
• Reading the labels inside an answer choice as though they referred to the choices themselves; the letters always point back to the statement list printed with the stem

MPSC and other commissions test the Moderate phase in three ways. The plainest is factual: who founded the Congress, who presided in which year, what the Councils Act of 1892 provided. The second is thematic, asking what the Moderates believed and what they achieved, where the drain theory, the demand for Indianisation of the services and the work of the British Committee all belong. The third, which this question belongs to, uses a quotation or a letter and asks what a named leader said or meant, which requires knowing the person rather than the period. Prepare the third by attaching one line of temperament to each major figure — constitutionalist, extremist, revolutionary, liberal — because that single line answers most attribution questions before any detail is needed.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Dinshaw Edulji Wacha, a founding member of the Indian National Congress and long its secretary, presided over the Congress in which year ?

  • (a)1896
  • (b)1901
  • (c)1905
  • (d)1909

  Answer(b) 1901 — Wacha presided over the Congress that year, in the middle of the Moderate phase and a few years before the partition of Bengal changed the movement's methods. He remained a constitutionalist to the end, sitting in three successive official councils, being knighted in 1917 and leading the Western India Liberal Association from 1919 to 1927 after the Congress turned to non-cooperation.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which of the following best describes the substance of Moderate self-criticism of the Congress in the 1890s ?

  • (a)That constitutional methods should be abandoned for revolutionary ones
  • (b)That the Congress lacked permanent organisation and full-time workers and its resolutions were ignored
  • (c)That the Congress had become too closely identified with the peasantry
  • (d)That the Congress should merge with the Muslim League

  Answer(b) That the Congress lacked permanent organisation and full-time workers and its resolutions were ignored — the body met for a few days each December, had no continuous machinery between sessions, and depended on the spare hours of professional men. The complaint was about the feebleness with which constitutional agitation was being conducted, not about constitutionalism itself, which is the distinction most often tested.