Which of the following organisations, divided into two branches, was established by Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Annie Besant?

Correct — B. The Home Rule League movement ran as two leagues, which is the point of the stem's phrase about branches.

Tilak launched his Indian Home Rule League in April 1916 at Belgaum and worked Maharashtra (Bombay city excepted), Karnataka, the Central Provinces and Berar.

Annie Besant launched hers in September 1916 at Madras and took the rest of India. They divided the country between them rather than compete → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Theosophical society — The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875 by Blavatsky and Olcott. Besant led it later, which is the pull — but Tilak had no part in it and it was not a political league.
• (c)
  East Indian Association — The paper's East Indian Association is the East India Association, founded in London in 1866 by Dadabhai Naoroji to put Indian questions before British opinion, half a century too early for this stem.
• (d)
  Indian Association — The Indian Association was founded at Calcutta in 1876 by Surendranath Banerjee and Anandamohan Bose. It is a pre-Congress body with no connection to the leagues of 1916.

The Home Rule agitation filled the gap left by a Congress split and by the lull in mass politics during the First World War. Its demand was self-government within the Empire, argued through public meetings, pamphlets and the press rather than through petitions alone.

Tilak, back from imprisonment in Mandalay, and Besant, running the newspaper New India, arrived at the same demand from different directions and kept separate organisations. The agitation drew in a generation of younger leaders and fed straight into the Congress of 1916.

Key facts

• Tilak founded the Indian Home Rule League at Belgaum in April 1916.
• Annie Besant founded her Home Rule League at Madras in September 1916.
• Tilak's league worked in Maharashtra excluding Bombay city, Karnataka, the Central Provinces and Berar, and Besant's covered the rest of the country.
• Besant was interned by the Madras government in June 1917 and was elected president of the Congress at its Calcutta session later that year.

Common traps

• Attaching the Home Rule Leagues to the Theosophical Society because Besant led both.
• Reading the stem as one organisation with one founder, when the two leagues were separate bodies with agreed territories.

No directly related past PYQ was found.