NDA (I & II) 2020 General Ability Test · Question 114 of 148

Correct — D, V D Savarkar. Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (with his elder brother Ganesh 'Babarao' Savarkar) organised the secret revolutionary society Abhinav Bharat ('Young India') at Nasik in 1904, growing it out of the earlier youth group Mitra Mela. Modelled on Mazzini's 'Young Italy', it aimed to overthrow British rule through armed revolution and later spread to several towns in the Bombay Presidency.

• (a)Khudiram Bose — Khudiram Bose was a Bengal revolutionary of the Anushilan tradition, remembered for the 1908 Muzaffarpur bombing (with Prafulla Chaki); he neither founded nor led Abhinav Bharat.
• (b)Shyamji Krishna Verma — Shyamji Krishna Verma founded India House and the Indian Home Rule Society in London (1905) and the journal 'The Indian Sociologist' — he mentored Savarkar abroad, but Abhinav Bharat was Savarkar's own creation in India.
• (c)Har Dayal — Lala Har Dayal was the guiding ideologue of the Ghadar Party, founded in 1913 among Indian emigrants on the west coast of the United States — a different organisation, nearly a decade later.

Abhinav Bharat was one of the early twentieth-century secret societies that pursued armed revolution rather than constitutional petitioning. Founded by V D Savarkar in 1904 at Nasik out of the Mitra Mela, it drew on European nationalist models and recruited young men across the Bombay Presidency and later in London.

The four names are all associated with the revolutionary stream, so the trap is to pick any famous revolutionary. Tie the society to its founder: Abhinav Bharat is Savarkar's, the Ghadar Party is Har Dayal's, and Khudiram Bose belongs to the Bengal Anushilan line.

• Abhinav Bharat was founded by V D Savarkar (and his brother Ganesh) at Nasik in 1904, evolving from the Mitra Mela.
• It was inspired by Giuseppe Mazzini's 'Young Italy' and sought the armed overthrow of British rule.
• The society was linked to episodes such as the 1909 assassination of Nasik collector A M T Jackson.
• Savarkar later authored 'The First War of Indian Independence, 1857', reframing the 1857 revolt as a national uprising.

• Picking any well-known revolutionary rather than the specific founder of Abhinav Bharat.
• Confusing Abhinav Bharat (Savarkar, 1904) with the Ghadar Party (Har Dayal, 1913).

Usually a direct 'who founded organisation X' recall, or a match-the-organisation-to-its-leader item.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Ghadar Party, founded in 1913, was principally organised among Indian emigrants in which country?

  • (a)United Kingdom
  • (b)United States
  • (c)Germany
  • (d)Japan

  Answer(b) United States — the Ghadar movement began on the west coast of the USA under leaders like Har Dayal and Sohan Singh Bhakna.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Abhinav Bharat, founded by V D Savarkar, was modelled on which European revolutionary organisation?

  • (a)The Carbonari of Naples
  • (b)Mazzini's Young Italy
  • (c)The Fenian Brotherhood
  • (d)The Jacobin Club

  Answer(b) Mazzini's Young Italy — Savarkar admired Mazzini and consciously borrowed the 'Young' nationalist template.