Which one of the following statements about Bipin Chandra Pal is correct?
- (a)He was a member of the moderate group of Congress.
- (b)He was a member of the extremist group of Congress.
- (c)He was the Minister of Defence in the first Government of independent India.
- (d)He was the Chief Minister of West Bengal.
Correct — B, he was a member of the extremist group of Congress. Bipin Chandra Pal, born in 1858 and dead in 1932, is the Pal of the Lal-Bal-Pal triumvirate, the other two being Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The three led the assertive wing of the Congress, the Garam Dal, which rejected the moderates' method of petition and prayer in favour of boycott, swadeshi, national education and passive resistance. Pal was one of the main architects of the Swadeshi movement that followed the partition of Bengal in 1905, and he worked chiefly through journalism, editing and writing for papers including New India. He is often called the father of revolutionary thought in India.
- (a)He was a member of the moderate group of Congress. — The exact reversal, and the only option that requires any knowledge to reject. The moderates were Dadabhai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Pherozeshah Mehta and Surendranath Banerjea; Pal stood on the opposite side of that division, which broke into the open at the Surat session in 1907.
- (c)He was the Minister of Defence in the first Government of independent India. — The first Defence Minister of independent India was Baldev Singh, who held the office from 15 August 1947 to May 1952. Pal had died in 1932, fifteen years before independence.
- (d)He was the Chief Minister of West Bengal. — Bidhan Chandra Roy became the first Chief Minister of West Bengal on 26 January 1950 — eighteen years after Pal's death, and in a state that did not exist in his lifetime.
The Congress split into moderates and extremists over both ends and means. The moderates wanted self-government within the empire, sought by constitutional agitation and appeals to British opinion; the extremists wanted swaraj, and were willing to use boycott, mass mobilisation and civil resistance to get it. The partition of Bengal in 1905 supplied the occasion that turned the disagreement into a rupture, and the Surat session of 1907 turned the rupture into a formal split. The two wings reunited at Lucknow in 1916.
Two of the four options can be dismissed on dates alone. Pal died in 1932, which puts anything belonging to independent India — a Union ministry or a state chief ministership — out of reach. That leaves the moderate and extremist options, and the Lal-Bal-Pal formula settles it, since Lajpat Rai and Tilak are unmistakably of the assertive wing and Pal is named alongside them. This is a useful general habit for statement-based biography questions: check the dates first, then argue only about what is left.
- Bipin Chandra Pal lived from 1858 to 1932 and belonged to the extremist wing of the Indian National Congress.
- He formed the Lal-Bal-Pal triumvirate with Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak.
- He was among the principal architects of the Swadeshi movement after the partition of Bengal in 1905.
- The first Defence Minister of independent India was Baldev Singh, from August 1947.
- Bidhan Chandra Roy became the first Chief Minister of West Bengal on 26 January 1950.
- Reading Bipin Chandra Pal as Bipan Chandra, the modern historian — two different people entirely.
- Assuming a Bengali nationalist of the period must have entered post-independence politics; Pal died in 1932.
- Placing Pal among the moderates because he worked through journalism rather than agitation; the method does not decide the wing.
Asked as a statement-verification biography item where two of the four options can be eliminated on dates alone.
He wrote biographies of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Shivaji and Shrikrishna; stayed in America for some time; and was also elected to the Central Assembly. He was
- (a) Aurobindo Ghosh
- (b) Bipin Chandra Pal
- (c) Lala Lajpat Rai
- (d) Motilal Nehru
Answer(c) Lala Lajpat Rai
Set in the same year as this paper, and it plants Pal as the wrong answer where Lajpat Rai is right. The two men belong to the same wing of the Congress, so this pair is a good drill in separating members of the Lal-Bal-Pal trio by their individual work rather than lumping them together.
During the Swadeshi movement, a National College was started in Calcutta under the principalship of
- (a) Rabindranath Tagore
- (b) Aurobindo Ghosh
- (c) Rajani Kant Sen
- (d) Syed Abu Mohammad
Answer(b) Aurobindo Ghosh
Comes at the extremist wing through its programme rather than its personnel. National education was one of the four planks of the Swadeshi campaign Pal helped design, and Aurobindo Ghosh, who ran the college, belonged to the same wing of the Congress.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Lal-Bal-Pal triumvirate consisted of Lala Lajpat Rai, Bipin Chandra Pal and
- (a)Gopal Krishna Gokhale
- (b)Bal Gangadhar Tilak
- (c)Surendranath Banerjea
- (d)Aurobindo Ghosh
Answer(b) Bal Gangadhar Tilak — the three leaders of the assertive wing of the Congress in the Swadeshi years.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Congress formally split into moderates and extremists at the session held at
- (a)Calcutta in 1906
- (b)Surat in 1907
- (c)Lucknow in 1916
- (d)Nagpur in 1920
Answer(b) Surat in 1907 — the two wings reunited at Lucknow nine years later.