SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 24 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Awareness · Question 21 of 99

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 10 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

With reference to Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, consider the following statements. a) He protested child marriage and polygamy. b) Due to his efforts, the first Hindu Widow Remarriage Act, 1856, was introduced. c) He was primarily known for his scholarship in Persian language. Which of the above statements is/are correct?

(a)b, c
(b)a, c
(c)a, b, c
(d)a, b

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Statements a and b hold; statement c does not.

a) He campaigned against child marriage and polygamy. True, and both were central to his public life.

b) The Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, 1856 followed his petitioning and his scriptural argument that remarriage had sanction. True.

c) He was a Sanskrit scholar, not a Persian one. Sanskrit College in Calcutta gave him the very title Vidyasagar, ocean of learning.

a and b in, c out — option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
b, c — It carries statement c, the Persian claim. Vidyasagar's learning and his title both came from Sanskrit, so any combination containing c fails.
(b)
a, c — Statement c again. Persian scholarship is the false half of this pairing, however sound statement a is on its own.
(c)
a, b, c — It accepts all three, and so accepts the Persian claim too. In a consider-the-statements item, one false statement removes every option that includes it.

Concept

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (1820-1891) was a Sanskrit scholar who turned scholarship into a lever for reform.

His method was to argue from the shastras themselves, showing that widow remarriage had textual sanction, rather than to attack tradition from outside it. That argument, and his petitioning, produced the Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act, Act XV of 1856.

He pressed equally against child marriage and polygamy, worked for women's education, and reshaped Bengali prose — his primer Barnaparichay is still a first reading book.

Statement-based items are settled by hunting for the one false statement and striking out every option that carries it. Here that statement is c.

Key facts

The Hindu Widows' Remarriage Act of 1856 was Act XV of 1856.
Vidyasagar's title was conferred for his Sanskrit scholarship at Sanskrit College, Calcutta.
He campaigned against child marriage and polygamy.
His Bengali primer Barnaparichay taught generations of children to read.

Study next

Bengal Renaissance reformers and the cause each is remembered forNineteenth-century social legislation from the sati regulation of 1829 to the Age of Consent Act of 1891Vidyasagar's contribution to Bengali prose and to women's education

Common traps

Accepting all three statements because the first two are so clearly true.
Confusing Vidyasagar with Raja Rammohun Roy, who did write in Persian.

The Act is asked from the other end at 25 Sep 2024, 09:00, GA Q10 — who suggested the law the British passed in 1856 — with Vidyasagar as the answer and Rammohun Roy sitting among the options. The statement format here is the harder version of the same fact.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.