Who was the President of the Indian National Congress at Patna Session held in 1912 ?

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Correct — C, R. N. Madhulkar. The twenty-seventh session of the Indian National Congress met at Bankipore in Patna in December 1912, and it was presided over by Rao Bahadur Raghunath Narasinha Mudholkar — the booklet's 'R. N. Madhulkar' is a transliteration of Mudholkar, and no other name in the list is close to it. Mudholkar, born at Dhule on 16 May 1857 and long associated with Amravati in Berar, was a moderate in the Gokhale mould who held that the national movement should work constitutionally and with British cooperation; he held the presidency from December 1912 to December 1913 and died on 13 January 1921. The session's timing gives it a particular Bihar significance, because 1912 is the year Bihar was carved out of the Bengal Presidency into the new province of Bihar and Orissa, so the Congress met at Bankipore in the first year of Bihar's separate provincial existence. What makes this a good question rather than a rote one is that every wrong option is a genuine Congress president from within a few years of 1912, and two of the three are Bihar-connected figures. Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur presided at Karachi in 1913, the very next session. Satyendra Prasanna Sinha presided at Bombay in 1915; he had already become the first Indian member of the Viceroy's Executive Council in 1909, and he later served as Governor of Bihar and Orissa. Syed Hasan Imam, a Patna man, presided over the special session of the Congress at Bombay in August 1918. Getting this right therefore requires the year attached to the name, not merely a list of presidents who sound plausible for Bihar.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Satyendra Prasanna Sinha did preside over the Congress, but at the Bombay session of 1915, three years later. He is the strongest decoy because of his Bihar connection — he later served as Governor of Bihar and Orissa — and because he was the first Indian appointed to the Viceroy's Executive Council, which makes him the most eminent name on the list.  (b) Nawab Syed Muhammad Bahadur presided over the very next session, at Karachi in 1913. Being one year out is the hardest kind of error to catch, because nothing about the name signals the wrong period — only the year attached to it does.  (d) Syed Hasan Imam was from Patna, which makes him look like the obvious choice for a session held at Patna, and he did preside over a Congress gathering — but the special session at Bombay in August 1918, six years later. Place of origin and place of session are separate facts, and this option exists to conflate them.

Concept: The Indian National Congress held an annual session in a different city each year, and the president changed with it, holding office for a single year until 1933. The presidency was largely honorific and often used to signal a political direction — a moderate, an extremist, a Muslim leader, a Briton, a woman — so the sequence of names and cities is a compressed history of the movement. The Bankipore session of December 1912 falls in the long trough after the Surat split of 1907, when the extremists had left and the Congress was a small, constitutionalist body dominated by moderates like Gokhale and Mudholkar; the reunion with the extremists came only at Lucknow in 1916, at the same session that produced the Lucknow Pact with the Muslim League. For a Bihar paper the local anchors matter especially: 1912 is the year the province of Bihar and Orissa was separated from the Bengal Presidency, and the Congress met at Bankipore in Patna in the same year. Later Bihar-linked presidents include Syed Hasan Imam at the special session of 1918 and Rajendra Prasad, who presided in 1934 and again in 1939 and 1947.

State PCS 2024 Q59 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q59 — History PYQ with Answer