MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 87 of 100

Correct — option (3), Sane Guruji. An odd-one-out question gives no axis, so the first task is to find the property that three of the four names share. Here it is the Goa liberation struggle, the Goa Mukti Sangram. Sudhatai Joshi and Hirve Guruji are both remembered for the campaign to end Portuguese rule in Goa, and the question places Dr. (Mrs.) Laura D'Souza with them — no independent account of her turns up in either language, so what can be said is that this paper groups her with the Goa names, not that the record does. Sane Guruji belongs to a different chapter of public life altogether, and that is what makes him the odd name. Sudhatai Joshi is the clearest of the three. The wife of the scholar Mahadevshastri Joshi, she left Pune for Goa on 1 March 1955 to take the satyagraha forward, organised the Goa Congress session at Mapusa on 6 April 1955 and was arrested there while she was speaking, and spent years in Portuguese prisons before her release. Hirve Guruji is remembered as a satyagrahi killed in the same phase of the struggle, in the wave of border-crossing satyagrahas of 1955 which the Portuguese police met with firing, and his name is associated in accounts of that year with the action at the Terekhol fort on the northern edge of Goa. Sane Guruji belongs to a different chapter of Indian public life altogether. Pandurang Sadashiv Sane, born at Palgad in Ratnagiri district on 24 December 1899, was a schoolmaster, a writer of about a hundred and thirty-five books, most of them for children, a participant in the national movement and a socialist. His Shyamchi Aai is among the best-loved books in Marathi and has been translated widely; he founded the weekly Sadhana on 15 August 1948; and his most famous public act was the fast he undertook at Pandharpur from 1 to 11 May 1947, at the end of which the doors of the Vitthal temple were opened to those the caste order had excluded. The decisive fact for this question is the date of his death: he died at Mumbai on 11 June 1950, five years before the mass satyagrahas into Goa of 1955 in which the other three names appear. He is therefore the odd person, and option (3) is the answer. Notice, incidentally, how such a question is best attacked. Do not look for what makes one name different in the abstract — every name differs from every other in some respect — but look for the property shared by the largest number, and then check which name lacks it.

• (1)Dr. (Mrs.) Laura D'Souza — This name is grouped in the question with Sudhatai Joshi and Hirve Guruji as a figure of the Goa liberation struggle, and it is that shared association which makes the fourth name the odd one rather than this one. It is worth having the outline of the struggle itself, since the Commission returns to it. Portuguese rule in Goa survived the departure of the British by fourteen years. The movement gathered force with the public meeting Ram Manohar Lohia held at Margao with Julião Menezes on 18 June 1946, after which both men were arrested and large-scale protests and arrests followed; satyagrahas continued through October and November 1946 until the leadership was in prison and the Goa Congress began to work from Bombay. The struggle then divided into two streams, the National Congress Goa which held to satyagraha and the Azad Gomantak Dal which took to revolutionary methods. A mass satyagraha was mounted on 15 August 1954, and through 1955 batches of satyagrahis from across India crossed the border carrying the tricolour and were fired upon and imprisoned. Goa was finally taken into India by military action in December 1961.
• (2)Sudhatai Joshi — Sudhatai Joshi is one of the three names that share the property the question is built on, so she cannot be the odd one. She was married to Pandit Mahadevshastri Joshi, and it was after her husband and Peter Alvares proclaimed satyagraha against Portuguese rule on 26 January 1955 that she went into the movement herself. She left Pune for Goa on 1 March 1955, organised the Goa Congress session at Mapusa on 6 April 1955 and was arrested there in the middle of her speech; her sister Ashatai was arrested later that month at Shirgaon. She was sentenced by the Portuguese authorities and spent four years in their prisons, and after her release she declined the offer of a seat in the Lok Sabha and returned to private life. Her career is a useful corrective to the assumption that the Goa struggle was fought only by Goans: a large part of the satyagraha of 1954 and 1955 was carried by volunteers from Maharashtra and Karnataka who crossed into Goa in batches.
• (4)Hirve Guruji — Hirve Guruji belongs with the Goa group and so is not the odd name. He is remembered as a satyagrahi killed during the border-crossing satyagrahas of the mid-1950s, in which unarmed volunteers entered Goa carrying the Indian flag and were met with police and military firing; accounts of that year associate his death with the action at the Terekhol fort, the small Portuguese fort at the northern boundary of Goa which a party of satyagrahis crossed the border to occupy. The honorific in his name — guruji, teacher — is the same one carried by Sane Guruji, and it is that verbal echo which makes this option a trap in an odd-one-out question: two names ending in the same honorific look like the natural pair, and a candidate who groups by the sound of the names rather than by what the people did will pick one of the other two. The property being tested is participation in the Goa liberation struggle, not the form of the name.

The liberation of Goa is the last chapter of the anti-colonial story in India, and it belongs to the period after 1947 rather than before it. Portugal had held Goa, Daman and Diu since the sixteenth century and treated them not as colonies but as overseas provinces of Portugal, and the Salazar government refused to negotiate their transfer. The Goan movement began in earnest with the meeting Ram Manohar Lohia addressed at Margao on 18 June 1946, a date now observed in Goa as Kranti Din; the arrests that followed set off a wave of civil disobedience which the Portuguese suppressed by jailing the leadership. From 1954 the struggle took two forms. The National Congress Goa continued with satyagraha, and volunteers from Maharashtra, Karnataka and elsewhere entered Goa in organised batches, notably in the mass satyagraha of 15 August 1954 and repeatedly through 1955, when Portuguese police and troops fired on unarmed marchers, killed and wounded many, and imprisoned others in Goa and in Portugal. The Azad Gomantak Dal took the revolutionary path of armed action against Portuguese installations. India sealed and blockaded the territory, and after years of failed diplomacy the Indian armed forces entered Goa in December 1961; Goa, Daman and Diu were annexed and Goa became a Union Territory, attaining statehood in 1987. Maharashtra's involvement in this struggle was heavy, both in volunteers and in casualties, which is why the names of its satyagrahis appear in MPSC papers.

Odd-one-out questions are a small but regular category in MPSC papers, and they are the purest test of grouping that a paper can set: no axis is stated, and the candidate must infer it from the names. The efficient method is fixed. Read all four names, ask what any three of them have in common, and confirm that the fourth lacks it; if two different groupings of three are possible, choose the one that rests on a documented public association rather than on an accident of name, region or gender. In this question the shared property is participation in the Goa liberation struggle of the 1950s, and the trap is a verbal one — two of the four names end in the honorific 'Guruji', which invites a candidate to group by the form of the name rather than by the work of the person. Notice also that the question is set in the history block of a Maharashtra paper, which is a hint in itself: the Commission expects the Goa Mukti Sangram to be part of a Maharashtra candidate's preparation, because the satyagraha of 1954 and 1955 was fought largely by volunteers from this State. A student who prepares the struggle only as a footnote to the annexation of 1961 will miss the human names on which questions of this kind are built.

• Sane Guruji, whose full name was Pandurang Sadashiv Sane, was born at Palgad in Ratnagiri district on 24 December 1899 and died at Mumbai on 11 June 1950, five years before the mass satyagrahas into Goa of 1955.
• He wrote about a hundred and thirty-five books, most of them for children, of which Shyamchi Aai is the best known; he began the weekly Sadhana on 15 August 1948, and it has been published continuously since.
• His fast at Pandharpur, from 1 to 11 May 1947, ended with the opening of the Vitthal temple to those excluded by untouchability, and is the act for which he is remembered in the social reform movement.
• Sudhatai Joshi left Pune for Goa on 1 March 1955, organised the Goa Congress session at Mapusa on 6 April 1955 and was arrested there while speaking; she spent four years in Portuguese prisons and later declined a seat in the Lok Sabha.
• The Goa liberation struggle ran from Lohia's Margao meeting of 18 June 1946, through the mass satyagraha of 15 August 1954 and the border-crossing satyagrahas of 1955 that were met with firing, to the Indian military action of December 1961.

• Grouping the names by the honorific they carry rather than by what the people did; two of these four names end in 'Guruji' and that echo is the trap the question is built on
• Assuming the Goa struggle was fought only by Goans, when much of the satyagraha of 1954 and 1955 was carried by volunteers from Maharashtra and Karnataka
• Placing Sane Guruji in the Goa campaign because he is a Maharashtrian public figure of the same era; he died on 11 June 1950, before the satyagrahas of the mid-1950s
• Looking for what makes one name unique instead of what three names share, which is the only reliable method in an odd-one-out question

MPSC uses two related formats for grouping — the odd-one-out, as here, and the match-the-columns question that pairs people with movements, institutions or books. Both are built from the same underlying material, which is a stock of names attached to movements, so preparation should store names in clusters rather than singly: the Goa liberation struggle, the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, the Satyashodhak Samaj, the non-Brahmin movement, the trade union movement. The Goa struggle is a favourite cluster in Maharashtra papers because so many of its satyagrahis came from this State and because its dates are clean. When the format is odd-one-out, the Commission usually chooses three names from one cluster and one from a neighbouring cluster of the same period and region, so the discrimination is fine rather than obvious; a candidate who can attach one sentence to each name will do it quickly, while one who recognises the names without knowing what they did will not.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The public meeting that is generally taken to have opened the Goa liberation movement was addressed in 1946 at Margao by which leader ?

  • (a)Jayaprakash Narayan
  • (b)Ram Manohar Lohia
  • (c)S. M. Joshi
  • (d)Achutrao Patwardhan

  Answer(b) Ram Manohar Lohia. He addressed the gathering at Margao on 18 June 1946 along with the Goan activist Julião Menezes; both were arrested, Menezes was released the same day and Lohia was driven out of Goa, and the arrests set off large-scale protests and further satyagrahas through the rest of 1946. The date is observed in Goa as Kranti Din. The struggle went on for another fifteen years, ending only with the Indian military action of December 1961.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Sane Guruji's eleven-day fast in May 1947 was undertaken for which purpose ?

  • (a)The formation of a separate Maharashtra State with Bombay as its capital
  • (b)The opening of the Vitthal temple at Pandharpur to those excluded by untouchability
  • (c)The release of political prisoners held after the Quit India Movement
  • (d)The merger of the princely state of Kolhapur with the Indian Union

  Answer(b) The opening of the Vitthal temple at Pandharpur to those excluded by untouchability. The fast lasted from 1 to 11 May 1947 and ended with the temple doors being opened. Sane Guruji, born at Palgad in Ratnagiri district in 1899, was a schoolmaster and writer whose Shyamchi Aai is among the most widely read books in Marathi; he founded the weekly Sadhana on 15 August 1948 and died on 11 June 1950.