When did the Muslim League announce 'Direct Action'?

Question

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Correct — B, 16 August 1946. The All-India Muslim League, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, named 16 August 1946 as 'Direct Action Day' — the date it announced for direct action in support of its demand for Pakistan after it withdrew its earlier acceptance of the Cabinet Mission Plan. Every standard account of the freedom struggle attaches Direct Action to that date. The League's council had adopted the direct-action resolution at its Bombay session at the end of July 1946 and fixed 16 August as the day of action; the day itself set off the Great Calcutta Killings, several days of communal violence in the city.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) June 1946 was still the negotiating phase. The League had accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan earlier that month and was bargaining over the interim government — the direct-action call came only after it reversed that acceptance in late July.  (c) By late October the League had changed course in the opposite direction: it joined Wavell's Interim Government on 26 October 1946. No direct-action announcement belongs to this date.  (d) A plausible-looking August date, but the day the League named and observed was the 16th; by the 22nd the Calcutta violence that followed it was already the story.

Concept: 1946 is a chain, and Direct Action Day is one link in it. The Cabinet Mission arrived in March 1946 with a plan for a united India built on provincial grouping; both the League and the Congress accepted it in June, then fell out over whether grouping was compulsory. The League withdrew its acceptance and called for direct action, fixing 16 August 1946. Communal violence followed in Calcutta and then in Noakhali and Bihar, yet the League still entered the Interim Government in late October — and the constitutional talks it boycotted eventually gave way to the 3 June 1947 partition plan.

State PCS 2025 Q4 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q4 — History PYQ with Answer