NDA (II) 2017 General Ability Test · Question 56 of 150

Correct — B, The East India Association. Dadabhai Naoroji founded the East India Association in London in 1866, a year after he had helped set up the London Indian Society. Its purpose was to put the Indian case before the British public and Parliament, which is where Indian policy was actually settled, and it drew in retired officials and sympathetic Englishmen as well as Indians — its first president was Lord Lyveden. Branches followed in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. The Association gave Naoroji the platform from which he read the papers that grew into his drain-of-wealth argument, and it is one of the direct ancestors of the Indian National Congress of 1885.

• (a)The Bengal British India Society — This was founded in Calcutta in 1843, more than twenty years earlier and in India rather than London. It later merged with the Landholders' Society, and Naoroji had nothing to do with it.
• (c)The British Indian Association — The similar name is the trap. This body was formed in Calcutta in 1851 out of that merger of the Landholders' Society and the Bengal British India Society, and it spoke largely for the Bengal landed gentry.
• (d)The Madras Native Association — Founded at Madras in 1852, it was the southern counterpart of the Calcutta bodies and was concerned with local grievances of the presidency. It was neither London-based nor Naoroji's.

Before the Congress there was a generation of city-based associations that petitioned rather than agitated — the Landholders' Society and Bengal British India Society in Calcutta, the Bombay Association, the Madras Native Association, and from 1851 the British Indian Association. Naoroji's contribution was to move the argument to London. Because the Secretary of State for India and Parliament made the decisions, an organisation working in Britain could reach the people who mattered, and the East India Association was built for that.

Sort these bodies by city and decade and the confusion clears. Calcutta 1843 for the Bengal British India Society, Calcutta 1851 for the British Indian Association, Madras 1852 for the Madras Native Association, and London 1866 for the East India Association. Two facts in the stem — London and 1866 — pick out only one of the four. Naoroji went on to become the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons, for Central Finsbury in 1892, and president of the Congress three times.

• The East India Association was founded by Dadabhai Naoroji in London in 1866, with Lord Lyveden as its first president.
• Naoroji had helped found the London Indian Society in 1865; the two later merged.
• The British Indian Association was formed at Calcutta in 1851 from the Landholders' Society and the Bengal British India Society.
• The Bengal British India Society dates from 1843 and the Madras Native Association from 1852.
• Naoroji was elected to the British House of Commons in 1892 and wrote Poverty and Un-British Rule in India.

• Confusing the East India Association with the British Indian Association; the names are close and the cities are not.
• Assuming every early association was founded in India — this one was deliberately based in London.
• Attaching the Bombay Association, which Naoroji did help found, to the London date of 1866.

NDA gives a founder, a city and a year and offers four similar-sounding associations, so it is the city-and-date pairing that has to be memorised.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Dadabhai Naoroji is best known for which economic argument about British rule in India?

  • (a)The drain of wealth
  • (b)The theory of comparative advantage
  • (c)The wage-fund theory
  • (d)The law of diminishing returns

  Answer(a) The drain of wealth — his estimate that a large part of India's income was transferred to Britain every year without any return, set out in Poverty and Un-British Rule in India.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The British Indian Association was formed in 1851 in

  • (a)Calcutta
  • (b)London
  • (c)Madras
  • (d)Bombay

  Answer(a) Calcutta — created by merging the Landholders' Society with the Bengal British India Society.