UPPSC 2024 Prelims Q133: Consider the following events and arrange them in

Q: What is the answer to UPPSC 2024 Prelims Q133?

B. Correct — B, 4, 3, 1, 2. All four events belong to the first thirty months of the Second World War, and they run in an unbroken causal line. (4) The resignation letters of the Congress ministers come first. Viceroy Linlithgow declared India a belligerent on 3 September 1939 without consulting a single Indian representative; when the government refused to state its war aims or promise independence, the Congress Working Committee on 22 October 1939 called on all Congress ministries to tender their resignations, and the Congress provincial ministries formed under the Government of India Act, 1935 went out over the following weeks (sources differ on whether eight or seven are counted) in late October and November 1939. (3) The Ramgarh Congress session follows — the 53rd annual session of the Indian National Congress, held in March 1940 at Ramgarh (then in Bihar, today in Jharkhand) with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in the chair, and shadowed by Subhas Chandra Bose's rival Anti-Compromise Conference at the same place and time. (1) The August Offer comes third: on 8 August 1940, with the Battle of Britain under way, Linlithgow announced at Simla an expansion of the Viceroy's Executive Council to include more Indians, a War Advisory Council, an assurance that no future constitution would be adopted without the agreement of minorities, and recognition of Indians' right to frame their own constitution after the war. (2) The arrival of the Cripps Mission is last, and by a long interval — Sir Stafford Cripps flew into Delhi on 22 March 1942 (a few accounts say 23 March), nineteen months after the August Offer. Hence 4 → 3 → 1 → 2, which is option (b).

UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 133 of 150

Verified against the official question paper. Answer as per the official UPPSC answer key.

Consider the following events and arrange them in chronological order : 1. Linlithgow August Offer 2. Cripps Mission arrival in India 3. Ramgarh Congress Session 4. Resignation letters of Congress Ministers Select the correct answer from the codes given below :

(a)3, 1, 4, 2
(b)4, 3, 1, 2
(c)1, 3, 4, 2
(d)4, 2, 3, 1

Answer

Why

Correct — B, 4, 3, 1, 2. All four events belong to the first thirty months of the Second World War, and they run in an unbroken causal line. (4) The resignation letters of the Congress ministers come first. Viceroy Linlithgow declared India a belligerent on 3 September 1939 without consulting a single Indian representative; when the government refused to state its war aims or promise independence, the Congress Working Committee on 22 October 1939 called on all Congress ministries to tender their resignations, and the Congress provincial ministries formed under the Government of India Act, 1935 went out over the following weeks (sources differ on whether eight or seven are counted) in late October and November 1939. (3) The Ramgarh Congress session follows — the 53rd annual session of the Indian National Congress, held in March 1940 at Ramgarh (then in Bihar, today in Jharkhand) with Maulana Abul Kalam Azad in the chair, and shadowed by Subhas Chandra Bose's rival Anti-Compromise Conference at the same place and time. (1) The August Offer comes third: on 8 August 1940, with the Battle of Britain under way, Linlithgow announced at Simla an expansion of the Viceroy's Executive Council to include more Indians, a War Advisory Council, an assurance that no future constitution would be adopted without the agreement of minorities, and recognition of Indians' right to frame their own constitution after the war. (2) The arrival of the Cripps Mission is last, and by a long interval — Sir Stafford Cripps flew into Delhi on 22 March 1942 (a few accounts say 23 March), nineteen months after the August Offer. Hence 4 → 3 → 1 → 2, which is option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)3, 1, 4, 2 — It gets Ramgarh before the August Offer and Cripps last, which is right, but it drops the ministers' resignations into third place — after August 1940. The resignations were tendered from late October 1939 onward, in direct protest at the 3 September 1939 war declaration, and it was precisely because the provinces were already under Governor's rule under Section 93 that the Viceroy needed to make an offer at all.
(c)1, 3, 4, 2 — This opens with the August Offer of 8 August 1940, which is in fact the third event, and then puts the Ramgarh session (March 1940) and the resignations (1939) after it — reversing the whole 1939-40 sequence. Only the placing of Cripps at the end is correct.
(d)4, 2, 3, 1 — It correctly begins with the resignations, then moves straight to the Cripps Mission — but Cripps did not reach India until March 1942, by which time Ramgarh (March 1940) and the August Offer (August 1940) were two years past. This is the option for a candidate who remembers that the resignations came first and then guesses.

Concept

Between September 1939 and August 1942 the Congress and the Raj went through four rounds of demand and refusal, and prelims examiners mine that stretch for sequencing questions. The pattern is constant: Britain needs Indian manpower and money for the war; the Congress offers cooperation in exchange for a declaration of war aims and a national government; Britain offers something short of that; the Congress refuses. Provincial resignations (1939) → Ramgarh (1940) → August Offer (1940) → Cripps (1942) → Quit India (1942) is the spine of the period, and every later event in it is a response to the failure of the one before.

The safe way to order these four is to date the two you certainly know and reason outward. Cripps is unmistakably 1942, so it is last. The August Offer is fixed by its own name to August 1940. That leaves the resignations and Ramgarh, and the causal logic settles them: the ministries resigned because of the war declaration of September 1939, and the Ramgarh session met in the political vacuum those resignations created — it was there that the Congress declared it would launch civil disobedience if a constituent assembly were not conceded. So the resignations must precede Ramgarh. The trap in options (a) and (c) is that both look plausible to a student who has memorised '1940' for Ramgarh and the August Offer but has never fixed the resignations to 1939. One further hook worth carrying: the Muslim League's Lahore session, which passed the Pakistan Resolution on 23 March 1940, met only days after the Congress at Ramgarh — the two sessions of March 1940 are a matched pair.

Key facts

Lord Linlithgow declared India at war with Germany on 3 September 1939 without consulting Indian opinion; the Congress Working Committee called on all Congress ministries to resign on 22 October 1939, and they went out through late October and November 1939. Jinnah's Muslim League observed 22 December 1939 as a 'Day of Deliverance'.
The 53rd session of the Indian National Congress met at Ramgarh in March 1940 under the presidency of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad; Subhas Chandra Bose held a parallel Anti-Compromise Conference at Ramgarh at the same time. (Standard texts date the session 19-20 March 1940.)
The August Offer was made by Viceroy Linlithgow at Simla on 8 August 1940: expansion of the Viceroy's Executive Council to include more Indians, an advisory war council, full weight to minority opinion, and recognition of Indians' right to frame their own constitution after the war.
The British cabinet agreed to send the Cripps Mission by 9 March 1942, and Sir Stafford Cripps landed in Delhi on 22 March 1942 (some accounts say 23 March). His draft declaration offered Dominion status after the war, a constituent assembly, and the right of any province to stay out — which is why both the Congress and the League rejected it.
Note the coincidence of dates that examiners like: the August Offer was made on 8 August 1940, and the Quit India resolution was passed on 8 August 1942.

A black-and-white 1942 photograph of Sir Stafford Cripps in a light suit standing on a doorstep laughing beside Mahatma Gandhi, who is wrapped in a white khadi shawl, with a crowd of smiling Indian and British men around them — Event 2 in the question — the arrival of the Cripps Mission in March 1942 — is the last of the four and the only one that can be photographed as a single scene. The image dates the mission unmistakably to the war years and to the negotiations that failed just before Quit India.Image: No 9 Army Film & Photographic Unit · Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

Study next

The Government of India Act, 1935 — provincial autonomy, the 1937 elections and the Congress ministries of 1937-39The Lahore Resolution of 23 March 1940 and the two-nation demand, alongside the Ramgarh session of the same monthIndividual Satyagraha, October 1940 — Vinoba Bhave as the first satyagrahi, Jawaharlal Nehru the secondThe Cripps proposals in detail — Dominion status, the constituent assembly, the provincial opt-out, and why Gandhi called it a post-dated chequeThe Quit India Movement of August 1942, the Wavell Plan and Simla Conference of 1945, and the Cabinet Mission of 1946

Common traps

Dating the Congress ministries' resignations to 1940 because the events around them are 1940 events. They belong to October-November 1939 and were caused by the war declaration of 3 September 1939.
Confusing the Cripps Mission (March 1942, Stafford Cripps alone) with the Cabinet Mission (announced February 1946, arrived 24 March 1946, three members including Cripps). Cripps is in both, which is exactly why the confusion happens.
Mixing up the two 8 Augusts — the August Offer (8 August 1940) and the Quit India resolution (8 August 1942).

UPPSC asks this stretch of the freedom struggle as a four-item chronological code almost every year; UPSC prefers to probe the content of a single event — what the Cripps proposals actually contained, or why the ministries resigned. Prepare both ways: one date and one substantive point per event.

Related PYQs

UPSC_2012_GS1_Q252012Open & attempt →

The Congress ministries resigned in the seven provinces in 1939, because

(a) the Congress could not form ministries in the other four provinces
(b) emergence of a 'left wing' in the Congress made the working of the ministries impossible
(c) there were widespread communal disturbances in their provinces
(d) None of the statements (a), (b) and (c) given above is correct

Answer(d) None of the statements (a), (b) and (c) given above is correct

Goes straight at event 4 of this question and asks why the ministries resigned — the answer being the Viceroy's unilateral war declaration, none of the three reasons offered. Knowing the cause fixes the date at 1939 and settles the whole sequence.

UPSC_1998_GS1_Q821998Open & attempt →

What is the correct sequence of the following events? I. The August Offer II. The I.N.A. trial III. The Quit India Movement IV. The Royal Indian Naval Ratings’ Revolt Select the correct answer using the codes given below:

(a) I, III, II, IV
(b) III, I, II, IV
(c) I, III, IV, II
(d) II, IV, I, III

Answer(a) I, III, II, IV

The same sequencing skill over the same period, with the August Offer as its first item. It carries the chronology forward from 1940 to the INA trials and the RIN revolt of 1946, so the two questions together cover the war years end to end.

UPSC_2016_GS1_Q932016Open & attempt →

The plan of Sir Stafford Cripps envisaged that after the Second World War

(a) India should be granted complete independence
(b) India should be partitioned into two before granting independence
(c) India should be made a republic with the condition that she will join the Commonwealth
(d) India should be given Dominion status

Answer(d) India should be given Dominion status

Supplies the substance of event 2 — what Cripps actually offered was Dominion status after the war, not immediate independence. UPSC tests the content of the mission; UPPSC tests where it sits in time.

UPPSC_2019_PRE_PaperI_Q592019Open & attempt →

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 :

(a) IV, II, III, I
(b) II, IV, I, III
(c) IV, II, I, III
(d) III, I, IV, II

Answer(c) IV, II, I, III

The identical question type from the same paper series, and the Cripps Mission appears in it too — there it is the last item, arriving in March 1942 after the Civil Disobedience Movement, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact and the Poona Pact. Treat the two as one chronology to memorise.

Practice

practice — not a real PYQ
The August Offer of 1940 was made by which Viceroy of India?
- (a)Lord Irwin
- (b)Lord Linlithgow
- (c)Lord Wavell
- (d)Lord Mountbatten
Answer(b) Lord Linlithgow — he announced it at Simla on 8 August 1940. Irwin belongs to 1929-31, Wavell to the 1945 Simla Conference, and Mountbatten to 1947.
practice — not a real PYQ
The 53rd session of the Indian National Congress, held at Ramgarh in 1940, was presided over by
- (a)Subhas Chandra Bose
- (b)Rajendra Prasad
- (c)Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
- (d)Jawaharlal Nehru
Answer(c) Maulana Abul Kalam Azad — he took the chair at Ramgarh and remained Congress president through the war years; Bose held a rival Anti-Compromise Conference at Ramgarh at the same time.