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

Correct — A, statement 1 only. The Civil Disobedience Movement drew its strongest response from two groups. The rich peasantry came in heavily, because the movement's no-tax and no-revenue campaigns spoke directly to communities hit by the collapse of agricultural prices in the Depression — the Patidars of Gujarat and the Jats of Uttar Pradesh are the standard examples. Indian business also backed it: merchants and industrialists had already organised themselves through the Indian Industrial and Commercial Congress in 1920 and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry in 1927, and figures such as Purshottamdas Thakurdas and G. D. Birla supported the movement when it was launched, seeing in swaraj the end of colonial restrictions on Indian enterprise. Statements 2 and 3 both fail.

• (b)1 and 2 only — Adds the claim of a large-scale labour upsurge, which the key rejects. The industrial working class did not join the Civil Disobedience Movement in large numbers — the Nagpur region is the exception usually named — and the great Bombay textile upsurge had peaked before the movement rather than during it.
• (c)2 and 3 only — Keeps both of the false statements and drops the only true one. It is the option for a candidate who has confused the Civil Disobedience Movement with the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920-22, where the picture really was one of lawyers and students walking out.
• (d)1, 2 and 3 — The catch-all. Only the first statement survives scrutiny; the other two attach features of the earlier movement, and of a labour phase that had already passed, to the wrong decade.

The Civil Disobedience Movement ran from 1930, and the Congress had authorised it at the Lahore session of December 1929, the same session that adopted the Purna Swaraj resolution. Gandhi opened it with the Salt March from Sabarmati to Dandi between 12 March and 6 April 1930, choosing the salt monopoly because it touched every household. The movement then widened into the boycott of foreign cloth and liquor shops, refusal of land revenue and forest laws, and resignations from government service. Unlike the Non-Cooperation Movement, this one broke the law rather than merely withdrawing cooperation from it.

The way to keep these two movements apart is to remember who carried each of them. Non-Cooperation from 1920 to 1922 was defined by the professional boycott — students leaving colleges, lawyers giving up practice, and titles being surrendered. Civil Disobedience was carried much more by the countryside, by traders and by women, who came out in numbers for the first time; the walkout of lawyers and students was on a far smaller scale, which is what sinks statement 3. On statement 2 there is a checkable reason as well as a general one: the communist-led trade union leadership was in the dock throughout these years. S. A. Dange and thirty-two others were arrested on or about 20 March 1929 in the Meerut Conspiracy Case, and the trial ran for four and a half years, with the accused released only in 1933 — so organised labour entered the Civil Disobedience years without the leadership that had driven the industrial unrest of the late 1920s.

• The Lahore session of December 1929 adopted Purna Swaraj and authorised the Working Committee to launch civil disobedience.
• The movement began with the Salt March from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, 12 March to 6 April 1930.
• Rich peasant communities such as the Patidars of Gujarat and the Jats of Uttar Pradesh were among the most active participants.
• Indian business had organised through the Indian Industrial and Commercial Congress in 1920 and FICCI in 1927, and supported the movement at its launch.
• Thirty-three trade unionists including S. A. Dange were arrested around 20 March 1929 in the Meerut Conspiracy Case and were on trial for four and a half years, being released in 1933.

• Transplanting the lawyer-and-student boycott from Non-Cooperation onto Civil Disobedience; it is the classic mix-up in this topic.
• Assuming that because business had grievances against colonial policy it must have backed every movement — its support was strongest in 1930 and much cooler later.
• Marking the all-correct option in a three-statement history item; these are almost always built with at least one displaced fact.

The freedom struggle is examined in NDA mostly through the social base of each movement and through chronology, so for every campaign fix who joined, who stayed out and how it differed from the one before.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The resolution authorising the Congress Working Committee to launch a programme of civil disobedience was adopted at which session?

  • (a)Nagpur, 1920
  • (b)Lahore, 1929
  • (c)Karachi, 1931
  • (d)Haripura, 1938

  Answer(b) Lahore, 1929 — the same session that adopted the Purna Swaraj resolution under Jawaharlal Nehru's presidency.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The mass resignation of lawyers from practice and of students from government colleges was a leading feature of

  • (a)the Swadeshi Movement
  • (b)the Non-Cooperation Movement
  • (c)the Civil Disobedience Movement
  • (d)the Quit India Movement

  Answer(b) the Non-Cooperation Movement — the professional boycott of 1920-22 was on a much larger scale than anything comparable in 1930.