NDA (II) 2016 General Ability Test · Question 118 of 150

Correct — D, Dinabandhu Mitra. He wrote the Bengali play Neel Darpan, meaning the mirror of indigo, in the late 1850s and it was published in 1860. The play dramatises what the indigo planters of Bengal did to the peasants who were forced to grow the crop — the advances that became debts, the coercion, the ruin of a cultivator's family — and it appeared at the height of the Indigo Revolt of 1859-60. Its importance is that it carried the grievance out of the districts and into public argument, in Calcutta and then in England, at a moment when the planters' system was already under strain.

• (a)Reverend James Long — The best-designed distractor on the list, because Long is genuinely part of the story — but as the man who arranged and published the English translation, not as the author. He was prosecuted for libel over it in 1861, fined and briefly imprisoned, which is why his name is bound to the play in most accounts of it.
• (b)Michael Madhusudan Dutta — Also connected to the play, and also not its author. The English translation that Long published is generally attributed to Dutta, who did not put his name to it. He is otherwise remembered as a major Bengali poet and the author of Meghnad Badh Kavya.
• (c)Raja Ram Mohan Roy — Chronologically impossible, and that is the cleanest way to eliminate him. Ram Mohan Roy died in 1833 at Bristol, twenty-seven years before the play was published. He belongs to an earlier generation of reform — the campaign against sati and the founding of the Brahmo Sabha in 1828.

Under the indigo system in Bengal, European planters advanced money to peasants who then had to sow indigo on a fixed share of their best land at prices set by the planter. The advance was rarely cleared, so the obligation ran on from year to year and the peasant lost both the land's produce and his freedom of choice. Resistance broke into open refusal to sow in 1859-60 in Nadia and neighbouring districts, the episode known as the Indigo Revolt, and the government appointed an Indigo Commission in 1860.

The item is a good example of the GAT's habit of surrounding the right answer with people who are genuinely part of the same episode. Three of the four names belong to the Neel Darpan story — the author, the translator and the publisher — and only careful reading separates them. The most reliable elimination is the dating one: fix Ram Mohan Roy's death in 1833 and one option disappears immediately. It is worth carrying the sequel too, because the trial is often asked about separately. Long's prosecution ended in a fine of a thousand rupees, which Kaliprasanna Sinha paid on his behalf, and a short term in prison.

• Neel Darpan was written by Dinabandhu Mitra and published in 1860, in Bengali.
• Reverend James Long published the English translation and was prosecuted for libel in 1861, fined and imprisoned.
• The English translation is generally attributed to Michael Madhusudan Dutt, who did not sign it.
• The Indigo Revolt of 1859-60 in Bengal led the government to appoint an Indigo Commission in 1860.

• Confusing the author, the translator and the publisher of the same work — all three appear as options here.
• Placing Raja Ram Mohan Roy in mid-nineteenth-century episodes; he died in 1833.
• Assuming the play caused the Indigo Revolt; it was published alongside it and gave it a wider audience.

Author-and-work items are almost guaranteed in the GAT's history section, and the distractors are usually contemporaries of the real author rather than random names, so learn the surrounding cast as well.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Indigo Revolt of 1859-60 broke out mainly in

  • (a)the Bombay Deccan
  • (b)the districts of Bengal, notably Nadia
  • (c)the Malabar coast
  • (d)the Punjab doabs

  Answer(b) the districts of Bengal, notably Nadia — where cultivators refused to sow indigo under the planters' advances.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Reverend James Long is remembered in Indian history chiefly for

  • (a)founding the Brahmo Samaj
  • (b)publishing the English translation of Neel Darpan and standing trial for it
  • (c)translating the Bhagavad Gita into English
  • (d)leading the Indigo Commission of 1860

  Answer(b) publishing the English translation of Neel Darpan and standing trial for it — he was fined and briefly imprisoned in 1861.