NDA (I) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 128 of 150

Correct — A, British Indian Association. The British Indian Association was founded at Calcutta on 29 October 1851, and it is the body the stem's date points to. It came out of a merger — the Zamindari Association, better known as the Landholders' Society, joined with the Bengal British India Society, and the new association took over the field. Its membership was entirely Indian and its leadership was drawn from the great Bengal landed families, with Raja Radhakanta Deb as its first President and Debendranath Tagore as its first General Secretary. It pressed for Indian education, for an end to the East India Company's trading monopoly, for support to Indian manufacturers and for the admission of Indians to the civil service, and its petitions to Parliament fed directly into the demands the Indian National Congress later took up.

• (b)Landholder’s Society — This body is real and it is the earlier one — founded in March 1838 at Calcutta by Dwarkanath Tagore, Radhakanta Deb and other Bengal zamindars, and also known as the Zamindari Association. It declined from the 1840s and was absorbed into the British Indian Association, so it cannot be the association 'set up in Calcutta in 1851'. Note also the printed name: the booklet sets 'Landholder's Society' with a singular possessive, where the historical body is normally written Landholders' Society.
• (c)Madras Native Association — The Madras Native Association was founded by Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty and was a Madras Presidency body, not a Calcutta one. It grew out of the same wave of petitioning politics of the early 1850s, which is exactly why it is placed here as a distractor.
• (d)Bombay Association — The Bombay Association belongs to the Bombay Presidency, not to Calcutta. It is another of the pre-Congress regional associations, and it is offered here to catch a candidate who remembers the decade but not the city.

Organised Indian politics before the Congress ran through a handful of regional associations, each dominated by landed and professional elites and each working by petition rather than by agitation. Bengal produced the Landholders' Society in 1838 and the Bengal British India Society in 1843, and the two merged into the British Indian Association in 1851. Madras and Bombay produced their own bodies at almost the same moment, since all of them were manoeuvring ahead of the renewal of the Company's charter in 1853. These associations pioneered the method — memorials, petitions to Parliament, delegations to London — that the Congress inherited in 1885.

There is a genuine tension between the stem and the history, and it is worth naming rather than papering over. If the question is read as 'which was the first landlord association', the honest answer is the Landholders' Society of 1838, which was founded precisely to defend zamindari interests. The stem, however, pins the date to 1851 and to Calcutta, and only one body answers to that description. Treat the date as the discriminator, as the key does. What is defensible about calling the British Indian Association the first major one is its reach — it survived, it built a national profile through its petitions, and it became the model that the later associations copied, whereas the Landholders' Society had already faded by the 1840s. In a matching or pairs question, keep the two Calcutta bodies apart by their dates: 1838 for the Landholders' Society, 1851 for the British Indian Association.

• The British Indian Association was founded at Calcutta on 29 October 1851 and was composed exclusively of Indians.
• It was formed by the merger of the Zamindari Association (Landholders' Society, 1838) and the Bengal British India Society (1843).
• Raja Radhakanta Deb was its first President and Debendranath Tagore its first General Secretary.
• Its demands included Indian education, an end to the Company's monopoly, support for Indian manufacturers and Indian entry into the civil service.
• The Madras Native Association was founded by Gazulu Lakshminarasu Chetty; the Bombay Association belonged to the Bombay Presidency.

• Reading 'first' and picking the 1838 Landholders' Society while ignoring the 1851 date the stem supplies.
• Mixing up the Madras Native Association with the Madras Mahajana Sabha, which is a later and different body.
• Attaching a Bombay or Madras association to Calcutta because all of them cluster in the same few years.

NDA asks for the association by city and year, or matches four associations against four founders or presidents.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The first President of the British Indian Association was

  • (a)Dwarkanath Tagore
  • (b)Radhakanta Deb
  • (c)Debendranath Tagore
  • (d)Surendranath Banerjee

  Answer(b) Radhakanta Deb — Debendranath Tagore was its first General Secretary.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Landholders' Society, also called the Zamindari Association, was founded at Calcutta in

  • (a)1828
  • (b)1838
  • (c)1851
  • (d)1876

  Answer(b) 1838 — it declined in the 1840s and merged into the British Indian Association in 1851.