Arrange the following events in a chronological order and select correct answer from the codes given below :
I. Poona Pact
II. Gandhi-Irvin Agreement
III. Cripps Mission
IV. Civil Disobedience Movemen

Question

Arrange the following events in a chronological order and select correct answer from the codes given below :
I. Poona Pact
II. Gandhi-Irvin Agreement
III. Cripps Mission
IV. Civil Disobedience Movement
Codes :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, IV, II, I, III. The four events fall in a single unbroken sequence. IV. The Civil Disobedience Movement opened with Gandhi's Dandi March, which began on 12 March 1930 and reached the sea at Dandi on 6 April 1930, when the salt law was broken. II. The Gandhi-Irwin Agreement, signed at Delhi on 5 March 1931, suspended that movement and brought the Congress to the Second Round Table Conference. I. The Poona Pact was signed at Yerwada jail, Poona, on 24 September 1932, ending Gandhi's fast against the separate electorates for the Depressed Classes that the Communal Award had granted. III. The Cripps Mission came last: Sir Stafford Cripps reached India in March 1942 and his proposals were rejected by the Congress, after which the Quit India Movement followed in August 1942. So 1930 → 1931 → 1932 → 1942, that is IV, II, I, III.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) The first two are right, but this puts the Cripps Mission (1942) before the Poona Pact (1932) — a gap of a decade in the wrong direction. Cripps is the last of the four events, not the third.  (b) It places the Gandhi-Irwin Agreement before the Civil Disobedience Movement. That reverses cause and effect: the pact of 5 March 1931 was signed precisely in order to suspend the movement that had been running since March 1930.  (d) It begins with the Cripps Mission, which is the latest event of the four (1942), and ends with the Gandhi-Irwin Agreement (1931). The whole sequence is close to being inverted.

Concept: These four items belong to the last phase of the national movement and are causally linked, not merely consecutive. The Civil Disobedience Movement (1930) forced the government to negotiate, producing the Gandhi-Irwin Pact (1931) — the truce under which political prisoners not guilty of violence were released, coastal villagers were allowed to make salt for their own use, and Gandhi went to London for the Second Round Table Conference. The failure of that conference and Ramsay MacDonald's Communal Award of August 1932, which gave separate electorates to the Depressed Classes, provoked Gandhi's fast unto death and the Poona Pact of September 1932, by which separate electorates were replaced with seats reserved for the Depressed Classes inside joint electorates. A decade later, with Japan at India's eastern frontier, the British War Cabinet sent Cripps in March 1942 with an offer of Dominion status after the war and a constitution-making body — an offer the Congress rejected, opening the road to Quit India.

State PCS 2019 Q59 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q59 — History PYQ with Answer