In 1918, at which place did Badridutt Pandey meet Mahatma Gandhi and inform him about the Coolie-Begar System ?
- (a)Delhi
- (b)Calcutta
- (c)Lucknow
- (d)Bombay
Correct — B, Calcutta.
In 1918 Badri Datt Pandey — a Kumaon Parishad leader and the journalist behind the newspaper Shakti, launched that same year — travelled to Calcutta to place the Kumaun coolie-begar grievance before Gandhi and to press him to come to the hills.
Coolie-begar was a corvée. Villagers had to carry the baggage of touring officials and supply them provisions without payment, and village headmen kept registers naming the households liable for the duty.
The idea to carry away is that the Kumaun grievance reached Gandhi long before Gandhi reached Kumaun: the approach at Calcutta in 1918, the Bageshwar rising of January 1921, and Gandhi's own Kumaun stay in 1929, in that order.
- (a)Delhi — Delhi belongs to a different 1918 errand. It is where the War Conference convened by Viceroy Lord Chelmsford in April 1918 met, and Gandhi attended it and backed the resolution on recruiting Indians for the war.
A deputation about unpaid porterage in the Kumaun hills is a separate matter from that conference. Sharing a year with a famous Delhi gathering says nothing about where Pandey found Gandhi.
- (c)Lucknow — Lucknow is the right answer to Raj Kumar Shukla's approach to Gandhi at the 1916 Congress session, the persuasion that drew Gandhi to Champaran and its indigo tenants.
The two episodes share a shape — a man from one district carrying a peasant grievance to Gandhi in person. But the Champaran approach is 1916 at Lucknow, and this stem fixes the year at 1918.
- (d)Bombay — Bombay is the right answer to Gandhi's landing on his return from South Africa in January 1915, and the city stayed a base of his public life thereafter.
Being the port one associates with Gandhi's arrivals is not evidence about this meeting. The 1918 approach on coolie-begar was made in Calcutta, and the option asked for is the place of that meeting.
Coolie-begar, with its allied demands of kuli utar for transport and kuli bardayash for provisions, was a form of forced unpaid service in Kumaun.
When an official toured, listed villagers had to carry his loads and hand over food and fodder without payment, the liability recorded in registers kept by village headmen.
It was a burden of labour rather than of tax. That is why the campaign against it struck at the registers themselves.
Kumaun's grievances under colonial rule — forced porterage, restrictions in the forests — were regional in origin, and the leaders who voiced them worked to attach them to the wider national movement.
The 1918 approach to Gandhi is that point of attachment: a hill grievance carried out of the hills and placed before national leadership.
What began as petitioning hardened during the non-cooperation years into open refusal, and Badri Datt Pandey's name is tied to that turn.
- Badri Datt Pandey, a journalist and Kumaon Parishad leader, launched the newspaper Shakti on 15 October 1918, the day of Vijayadashami.
- Coolie-begar obliged Kumaun villagers to carry touring officials' baggage and provide supplies without payment.
- The campaign against coolie-begar came to a head at Bageshwar, at the Saryu-Gomti confluence, during the Uttarayani fair of January 1921, where the coolie registers were thrown into the river.
- Badri Datt Pandey is remembered by the title 'Kumaon Kesari', earned through the Coolie-Begar movement.
- Gandhi attended the War Conference convened by Viceroy Lord Chelmsford at Delhi in April 1918.
- Gandhi came to Kumaun in 1929 and stayed at Kausani, where he wrote the introduction to his Gujarati Gita translation, published as Anasakti Yoga.
The top four rows are this question's four options; the last two are the later Kumaun landmarks that the stem's year is easily swapped for.
- The stem's year is 1918, but the Coolie-Begar movement's famous day is January 1921 at Bageshwar; answering with the site of the climax answers a question the stem did not ask.
- Gandhi's own Kumaun connection is Kausani in 1929, eleven years after this meeting; letting the better-known visit stand in for the 1918 approach reverses the direction of travel.
- A petitioner meeting Gandhi at a public gathering pulls the mind towards Lucknow 1916 and Champaran; the shape is similar, the episode is not.
- Coolie-begar was unpaid service owed inside Kumaun, not overseas indenture; treating the two as one system leads to the wrong leader, place and remedy.
This idea appears as a person-year-place recall: a named leader, a date, and four cities to choose between. The citable set shows the same place-recall device twice — UKPSC 2021 asking where in 1929 Gandhi translated Anasakti Yoga, and UPSC 1995 asking from where Civil Disobedience began in 1930.
The wider period also turns up as statement verification: UPSC 2019 tested unfree labour and wartime recruitment through indentured labour, Chelmsford's War Conference and the Salt Law. Reading the year in the stem before reaching for the famous episode is what separates such items.
UKPSC_2021_PRE_GSI_Q1452021The same Kumaun-Gandhi thread, asked with the same 'at which place' device. That question runs the other way round: Gandhi in Kumaun in 1929, writing Anasakti Yoga at Kausani, whereas this one has a Kumaun leader travelling out to Gandhi in 1918. Learning them as one timeline keeps the two places apart.
UPSC_2019_GS1_Q142019Shares the period and the theme of unfree labour, and one of its statements turns on Lord Chelmsford's War Conference of 1918 — the Delhi event this question's first option points at. The difference is scale and format: a national statement-verification item on indentured labour and the war, against a single-place recall about a Kumaun corvée.
UPSC_1995_GS1_Q981995The same question device — a Gandhi moment reduced to the place where it happened, answered from four options. That item asks about the start of Civil Disobedience in 1930 at national scale; this one asks about a regional leader's approach to Gandhi in 1918, so what transfers is the reasoning habit rather than the content.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The movement against coolie-begar in Kumaun came to a head at which place, during the Uttarayani fair of January 1921?
- (a)Almora
- (b)Bageshwar
- (c)Kausani
- (d)Ranikhet
Answerb — Bageshwar, where the Saryu and Gomti meet and the Uttarayani fair is held. The coolie-begar registers were given up and thrown into the river there in January 1921.Almora was the Kumaon Parishad's centre and a press town, not the venue of that January gathering; Kausani is where Gandhi stayed in 1929; Ranikhet is a hill cantonment, associated with the army's presence in Kumaun.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Under the coolie-begar system in Kumaun, the obligation placed on villagers was to
- (a)pay a cash cess for grazing cattle in the reserved forests
- (b)carry the baggage of touring officials and supply them provisions without payment
- (c)provide recruits to the army during wartime
- (d)work a fixed number of days each year on the district's tea plantations
Answerb — the system was unpaid personal service: porterage for officials on tour, together with the supply of food and fodder, with registers naming the liable households.Forest dues and grazing restrictions were a separate hill grievance; wartime recruitment was a demand of the First World War years; plantation work belongs to the labour question of the tea gardens, not to a corvée owed to a touring officer.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The newspaper started by Badri Datt Pandey in 1918 was
- (a)Kesari
- (b)Shakti
- (c)Young India
- (d)Amrita Bazar Patrika
Answerb — Shakti, launched on 15 October 1918, the day of Vijayadashami, and the platform from which Pandey pressed the Kumaun cause.Kesari was Bal Gangadhar Tilak's Marathi weekly from Poona; Young India was the English weekly Gandhi edited from 1919; Amrita Bazar Patrika was the Bengal paper of the Ghosh family, running from the nineteenth century.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Gandhi's stay in Kumaun in 1929, during which he wrote the Gita commentary published as Anasakti Yoga, was at
- (a)Kausani
- (b)Nainital
- (c)Bageshwar
- (d)Almora
Answera — Kausani, where Gandhi halted during his 1929 Kumaun tour and wrote the introduction to his Gujarati Gita translation, published as Anasakti Yoga.Nainital was the summer seat of the United Provinces government; Bageshwar carries the coolie-begar gathering of 1921; Almora was the centre of the Kumaon Parishad's work.