MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 98 of 100

Correct — option (4), only (d), Delhi. The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association was formed at a meeting held at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi on 8 and 9 September 1928. What happened there was a renaming and a re-founding rather than the creation of something out of nothing, and the distinction is the whole content of this question. The older body was the Hindustan Republican Association, founded by Sachindra Nath Sanyal; its constitution had been drafted at Allahabad in 1923 by Ram Prasad Bismil with the help of Sanyal and the Bengal revolutionary Jadugopal Mukherjee, and a constitutional committee met at Cawnpore, now Kanpur, on 3 October 1924. That organisation carried out the Kakori train robbery of 1925, and the trial that followed cost it its leadership — Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan and others were hanged in 1927. In the years after Kakori new revolutionary groups had grown up in Bengal, Bihar and Punjab, and it was these groups together with the survivors of the Hindustan Republican Association who met at Feroz Shah Kotla in September 1928. From that meeting emerged the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, the added word reflecting the influence of Bhagat Singh and of the Russian Revolution on the thinking of the younger members, who now spoke not merely of expelling the British but of the kind of society that should replace their rule. Chandrashekhar Azad — the paper prints the name as 'Chandrashekher' — became the organisation's commander in chief, and Bhagat Singh its most articulate voice. What followed is the best-known sequence in the history of Indian revolutionary politics: the killing of the police officer J. P. Saunders at Lahore in December 1928 in retaliation for the lathi charge in which Lala Lajpat Rai was injured before his death on 17 November 1928; the throwing of bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi on 8 April 1929 by Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt, a deliberate act of propaganda timed against the Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill; the attempt on the Viceroy's train in December 1929; the death of Azad in a gun battle at Allahabad in February 1931; and the hanging of Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev on 23 March 1931. The answer to be marked is option (4).

• (1)Only (a) and (b) — Neither Mumbai nor Nagpur has any part in the founding of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association. The revolutionary movement of this stream was based on the Gangetic north — Bengal, the United Provinces and the Punjab — and the specific places attached to it are Allahabad, where the constitution of the older body was drafted in 1923; Kanpur, where the constitutional committee met on 3 October 1924; Kakori near Lucknow, where the train was stopped in 1925; Delhi, where the September 1928 meeting was held and where the Assembly bomb was thrown in April 1929; and Lahore, where Saunders was shot and where the conspiracy trial was held. Bombay in this period is the city of the Congress sessions, the mill workers' movement and the naval mutiny of 1946; Nagpur is the city of the Congress session of 1920 that adopted non-cooperation and of the flag satyagraha of 1923. Neither belongs to this organisation's map.
• (2)Only (c) and (d) — This option is half right, which is what makes it dangerous: it contains Delhi, the correct answer, but adds Kolkata, and the question is asking for the place where the organisation was established, which was Delhi alone. The pull towards Calcutta is understandable, because Bengal was the older heartland of revolutionary politics — the Anushilan Samiti and the Jugantar group belong there, Sachindra Nath Sanyal who founded the Hindustan Republican Association had come out of that tradition, and Jadugopal Mukherjee, who helped draft the constitution at Allahabad in 1923, was a Bengal revolutionary. The 1928 meeting was nevertheless held at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi, and the groups that came to it from Bengal, Bihar and the Punjab travelled there. In a list question where one item is right, adding a second plausible item is the commonest way of losing the mark, and this option is built precisely for that error.
• (3)Only (a) — This option offers Mumbai alone, and there is nothing to be said for it beyond the fact that a Maharashtra candidate may reach for a Maharashtra city in a question that names Bhagat Singh, whose association with the Marathi-speaking world is limited. Bombay's revolutionary history belongs to a different current — the Chapekar brothers at Pune in 1897, the Abhinav Bharat of Vinayak Damodar Savarkar founded at Nashik in 1904 and the Nashik conspiracy of 1909-10, and later the trade union and Congress politics of the city. The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association had no base in the Bombay Presidency. It is worth noticing the structure of the options here: three of the four contain a city that plays no part in the story, and only one names Delhi by itself, so a candidate who is certain of Delhi and certain that no second city is involved can answer immediately.

Revolutionary nationalism in the 1920s ran in a line that began in Bengal and moved west. The Hindustan Republican Association was founded by Sachindra Nath Sanyal, its constitution drafted at Allahabad in 1923 with Ram Prasad Bismil and Jadugopal Mukherjee, and a constitutional committee met at Cawnpore on 3 October 1924. Its object was an armed overthrow of British rule and the establishment of a federal republic. The Kakori train robbery of August 1925, intended to fund the organisation, brought a mass trial in which Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan, Roshan Singh and Rajendra Lahiri were sentenced to death and hanged in 1927, and Sanyal was transported. The younger men who survived — Chandrashekhar Azad, Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, Bhagwati Charan Vohra — rebuilt the organisation with a new ideological direction. Meeting with revolutionaries from several provinces at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi on 8 and 9 September 1928, they added the word socialist to the name, and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association was born, with Azad as its commander in chief. The Simon Commission's boycott, the injuries to Lala Lajpat Rai and his death in November 1928 gave the new body its first action, the killing of Saunders at Lahore. The bombs thrown in the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929 were designed to be heard rather than to kill — the phrase used was that it takes a loud voice to make the deaf hear — and the trial that followed made Bhagat Singh's writings public property. The organisation did not survive the executions of 1931.

MPSC examines the revolutionary movement through places, dates and organisational names, and the pairs it uses are stable: Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar with Bengal, Abhinav Bharat with Nashik and Savarkar, the Ghadar Party with San Francisco and 1913, the Hindustan Republican Association with Kanpur and 1924, and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association with Delhi and 1928. A candidate who has those pairs can answer almost anything set on the subject. This question uses a shape common in this paper — a stem followed by four labelled items and then a set of options that permit combinations — and here the four items are all place names, so the combinations are a way of asking whether the candidate is sure that only one city is involved. That is a real test: the organisation's people came from Bengal, the United Provinces and the Punjab, so several cities have a claim to be in the story, and only one has a claim to the founding. Note also that the English column of this paper spells the name 'Chandrashekher', where the revolutionary is usually written Chandrashekhar Azad; and that the Marathi column adds the words 'in India' to the stem, which the English does not carry. Neither point affects the answer.

• The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association was formed at a meeting of revolutionary groups held at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi on 8 and 9 September 1928.
• It was a renaming and reorganisation of the Hindustan Republican Association, founded by Sachindra Nath Sanyal, whose constitution was drafted at Allahabad in 1923 and whose constitutional committee met at Cawnpore on 3 October 1924.
• The addition of the word socialist reflected the influence of Bhagat Singh and of the Russian Revolution; Chandrashekhar Azad became the organisation's commander in chief.
• The Kakori robbery of 1925 and the trial that followed destroyed the older body's leadership, Ram Prasad Bismil and Ashfaqulla Khan among others being hanged in 1927.
• The organisation's principal actions were the killing of J. P. Saunders at Lahore in December 1928 after the assault on Lala Lajpat Rai, who died on 17 November 1928, and the bombing of the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi on 8 April 1929 by Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt.

• Adding Kolkata to the answer because Bengal was the older home of revolutionary politics; the founding meeting of the HSRA was at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi
• Confusing the founding of the Hindustan Republican Association, associated with Kanpur and 1924, with the founding of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association at Delhi in 1928
• Reading the four labelled place names as statements to be judged true or false individually rather than as candidate answers to the opening question
• Assuming that a question mentioning Bhagat Singh must have a Maharashtra connection because the paper is a Maharashtra paper

The revolutionary movement is asked in MPSC papers through the pairing of an organisation with a place, a person with an action, or an event with a year. The questions are unambiguous and are usually decided by one fact, so the preparation is a table: organisation, founder, place, year, principal action, principal trial. Delhi and 1928 for the HSRA, Kanpur and 1924 for the HRA, Nashik and 1904 for Abhinav Bharat, San Francisco and 1913 for the Ghadar Party. The Commission also uses the combination format seen here, in which the options allow more than one item to be chosen; in such questions the safest procedure is to establish the one item that is certainly correct and then ask explicitly whether any second item can be justified, since the format's whole purpose is to tempt the candidate into adding a plausible extra.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Hindustan Republican Association was reorganised as the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association in 1928. What was the principal significance of the change of name ?

  • (a)It marked the merger of the organisation with the Indian National Congress
  • (b)It reflected the adoption of a socialist goal for the society that was to follow British rule
  • (c)It signified the abandonment of armed methods in favour of constitutional agitation
  • (d)It recorded the shift of the organisation's headquarters from Delhi to Lahore

  Answer(b) It reflected the adoption of a socialist goal for the society that was to follow British rule. The meeting at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi on 8 and 9 September 1928 brought together revolutionary groups from several provinces, and the addition of the word socialist is attributed largely to the influence of Bhagat Singh and of the Russian Revolution; the members now defined their object as the kind of society to be built and not only the expulsion of the British. Chandrashekhar Azad became the commander in chief of the reorganised body.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly on 8 April 1929 in protest against which measures ?

  • (a)The Rowlatt Act and the Press Act
  • (b)The Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill
  • (c)The Government of India Act and the Communal Award
  • (d)The Salt Act and the Arms Act

  Answer(b) The Public Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill. The act was designed as propaganda rather than as an attack: the bombs were thrown where they would injure no one, leaflets were scattered, and the two men allowed themselves to be arrested so that the trial would give their ideas a public hearing. The Rowlatt Act belongs to 1919, a decade earlier, and the Salt Act of 1882 was the target of a different kind of protest altogether in 1930.