Indian History and the Freedom Movement for CUET General Aptitude

AnswerD · Gujarat

1. Dholavira stands on the island of Khadir, in the Rann of Kutch.

2. Kalibangan is the Harappan site in Rajasthan and Rakhigarhi is the one in Haryana.

3. All three are genuinely Harappan, so the question is asking you to place the site rather than recognise the name.

AnswerC · Mohenjo-daro

1. The Great Bath stands in the citadel of Mohenjo-daro, in Sindh, now in Pakistan.

2. Its bricks were sealed with bitumen to hold water, and it is usually read as a place for ritual bathing.

AnswerA · The 3rd to the mid-2nd millennium BCE

1. The settlement belongs to the third and second millennia BCE, with the earliest evidence around 3000 BCE.

2. That is the span usually given for the Harappan civilisation as a whole, so the date doubles as the date of the civilisation.

3. Anything in the first millennium BCE is already the Vedic and post-Vedic world, which is a later chapter of the same story.

AnswerC · More than 1,000

1. More than a thousand Harappan sites are known.

2. The famous names — Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, Dholavira, Lothal, Kalibangan, Rakhigarhi — are a handful out of that number.

3. The point of the question is scale: this was a settlement network across a large region, not a few cities.

AnswerC · 40th World Heritage property

1. Dholavira was inscribed on 27 July 2021 as India's 40th property.

2. The Ramappa Temple in Telangana had become the 39th a few days earlier, in the same session.

3. India's total has risen since, so this is a fact about 2021 and not about today's count.

AnswerC · It was not sited near a river, and stored water in large stone-cut reservoirs

1. Harappan towns were normally placed on rivers or other perennial water.

2. Dholavira sits on an arid island, so water was diverted from seasonal streams and held in rock-cut reservoirs along the fortifications.

3. That water system, not the brickwork, is why the site is the standard example of Harappan water management.

AnswerA · Lothal

1. Lothal, near the Gulf of Khambhat, has a brick basin connected by a channel to an old course of the Sabarmati, read as a dock for boats.

2. Beads and seals found there point to trade by sea, including with Mesopotamia.

3. Dholavira, Surkotada and Rangpur are also Harappan sites in Gujarat, which is what makes the options hard.

AnswerD · Rigveda

1. The Rigveda is the earliest of the four and the oldest text in the tradition.

2. The Samaveda sets Rigvedic verses to melody, the Yajurveda supplies sacrificial formulae, and the Atharvaveda is the latest of the four.

3. The usual order to remember is Rig, Sama, Yajur, Atharva.

AnswerB · Bihar

1. Bodh Gaya, where the enlightenment took place, is in Bihar.

2. Lumbini, the birthplace, is in Nepal; Sarnath, where he first taught, and Kushinagar, where he died, are both in Uttar Pradesh.

3. Four places, three of them in the options — the question is asking you to separate them.

AnswerD · Mahavira

1. Mahavira is the twenty-fourth and last Tirthankara.

2. Rishabhanatha is counted as the first and Parshvanatha as the twenty-third.

3. Gautama is the Buddha's name, and belongs to the other tradition entirely.

AnswerB · Buddhism

1. The Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths, and the fourth is the Eightfold Path that ends suffering.

2. Jainism's equivalent teaching is the three jewels (triratna): right faith, right knowledge and right conduct.

AnswerB · Sarnath

1. The first sermon was given at Sarnath, near Varanasi.

2. It is remembered as the turning of the wheel of law, and it is the reason Sarnath carries the Lion Capital.

3. Bodh Gaya is the enlightenment, Lumbini the birth, Kushinagar the death.

AnswerB · Buddhism

1. Tripitaka means 'three baskets' and is the Buddhist canon in Pali.

2. The three are the Vinaya Pitaka on monastic discipline, the Sutta Pitaka of discourses, and the Abhidhamma Pitaka of doctrine.

3. The Jain canon is the Agamas, which is the option this question is really distinguishing it from.

AnswerB · the Mundaka Upanishad

1. 'Satyameva Jayate', truth alone triumphs, is a line from the Mundaka Upanishad.

2. It is written in Devanagari below the State Emblem.

AnswerD · Kundagrama, near Vaishali

1. Jain tradition places Mahavira's birth at Kundagrama, near Vaishali in present-day Bihar.

2. He attained nirvana at Pavapuri, also in Bihar, which is why that is the tempting wrong answer.

3. Lumbini is the Buddha's birthplace, and Shravasti was a city where the Buddha often stayed.

AnswerB · Chandragupta Maurya

1. Chandragupta Maurya founded the empire in the late fourth century BCE.

2. Bindusara was his son and Ashoka his grandson, so both ruled an empire they inherited.

3. Chandragupta I is a different person altogether — a Gupta ruler, some six hundred years later.

AnswerC · The Kalinga war

1. The conquest of Kalinga, in what is now Odisha, was followed by Ashoka's turn to Buddhism and to his policy of dhamma.

2. Hydaspes was fought between Alexander and Porus, before the Mauryas.

3. Kurukshetra belongs to the Mahabharata, and Talikota to the sixteenth century and the fall of Vijayanagara.

AnswerD · Madhya Pradesh

1. Sanchi is in Madhya Pradesh, and its monuments were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1989.

2. Bihar holds Bodh Gaya and Nalanda; Maharashtra holds Ajanta and Ellora.

3. Odisha is offered because Kalinga was there, which makes it the most reasonable wrong answer on the list.

AnswerD · Kautilya

1. Kautilya, also called Chanakya, is traditionally named as its author and as Chandragupta Maurya's minister.

2. Kalidasa is a poet and dramatist of the Gupta era.

3. Panini wrote on grammar and Patanjali on yoga and on grammar — neither on statecraft.

AnswerA · The Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath

1. The emblem is adapted from the Lion Capital that once crowned an Ashokan pillar at Sarnath.

2. In the original, four lions stand back to back; the emblem shows three, with the fourth hidden behind.

3. The wheel below it is the Ashoka Chakra, the same wheel that sits at the centre of the national flag.

AnswerD · Seleucus Nicator

1. After his conflict with Chandragupta, Seleucus Nicator made peace and sent Megasthenes to the Mauryan capital, Pataliputra.

2. His Indica survives only in quotations by later Greek writers, but it is a major outside source on Mauryan India.

AnswerC · Brahmi

1. Most of the edicts are in Prakrit written in the Brahmi script.

2. In the north-west, some are in Kharosthi, and in Afghanistan there are versions in Greek and Aramaic.

3. James Prinsep deciphered Brahmi in 1837, which made the edicts readable again.

AnswerA · Pataliputra

1. The Third Council met at Pataliputra, the Mauryan capital, in the third century BCE, presided over by Moggaliputta Tissa.

2. The First Council met at Rajagriha soon after the Buddha's death, the Second at Vaishali, and the Fourth in Kashmir under Kanishka.

AnswerA · The Vijayanagara empire

1. Hampi was the capital of Vijayanagara, and the ruins carry the empire's name in the World Heritage listing.

2. The Bahmani sultanate was Vijayanagara's northern rival, not the same state.

3. The Hoysalas ruled earlier and from a different capital, and have their own inscription for the Sacred Ensembles of the Hoysalas.

AnswerC · Karnataka

1. Hampi is in Karnataka, and its monuments were inscribed in 1986.

2. The empire's territory covered much of the southern peninsula, which is why neighbouring states are plausible options.

3. The capital itself, on the Tungabhadra, is Karnataka's.

AnswerB · Bihar

1. Nalanda Mahavihara, in Bihar, grew under Gupta patronage from the fifth century CE and drew students from across Asia.

2. Its ruins were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2016.

AnswerB · The Pallavas

1. Mahabalipuram, on the Tamil Nadu coast, is Pallava work, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1984.

2. The Great Living Chola Temples are the Chola entry on the same list, and Pattadakal is the Chalukya one.

3. The Rashtrakutas are associated with Ellora, in Maharashtra.

AnswerD · Tamil Nadu

1. The Chola temples are in Tamil Nadu, inscribed in 1987 and extended in 2004.

2. 'Living' in the name means they are still in worship, which is what separates them from a ruin.

3. The Chola heartland was the Kaveri delta, in what is now Tamil Nadu.

AnswerC · Aryabhata

1. The Aryabhatiya is named for its author, Aryabhata, who wrote it in the fifth century CE.

2. Varahamihira and Brahmagupta came after him, and Bhaskara II several centuries later still.

3. India's first satellite was named Aryabhata after him, which is the link a general-knowledge paper often uses.

AnswerA · Chandragupta II (Vikramaditya)

1. Tradition counts Kalidasa among the 'nine gems' at the court of Vikramaditya, usually identified with the Gupta king Chandragupta II.

2. His other works include Meghaduta and Raghuvamsha.

AnswerD · Fa-Hien (Faxian)

1. Fa-Hien came to India at the start of the fifth century CE, in Chandragupta II's time, to collect Buddhist texts.

2. Hiuen Tsang came about two centuries later, in the reign of Harshavardhana, and studied at Nalanda.

AnswerD · Delhi

1. The Qutb complex is in Delhi and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1993.

2. Agra holds the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri nearby.

3. Jaipur has the Jantar Mantar and the walled city, both separately inscribed.

AnswerB · Qutb-ud-din Aibak

1. Qutb-ud-din Aibak, founder of the Mamluk dynasty, began the minar at the end of the twelfth century.

2. His successor Iltutmish added the upper storeys, and Firoz Shah Tughlaq later repaired it.

AnswerA · The Mamluk or Slave dynasty

1. The Mamluk or Slave dynasty came first, founded by Qutb-ud-din Aibak at the start of the thirteenth century.

2. The order that follows is Khalji, Tughlaq, Sayyid, Lodi.

3. The Lodis were the last, and their defeat at Panipat in 1526 ended the Sultanate.

AnswerA · Razia

1. Razia, daughter of Iltutmish, sat on the throne of Delhi in the thirteenth century.

2. Chand Bibi ruled in the Deccan and Rani Durgavati in Gondwana — neither at Delhi.

3. Nur Jahan was a Mughal empress with great influence, but she was not a sultan.

AnswerC · Muhammad bin Tughlaq

1. Muhammad bin Tughlaq shifted the capital to Daulatabad in the Deccan, and later reversed the decision.

2. The move, and the token currency he also tried, are the two experiments his reign is remembered for.

3. Firoz Shah Tughlaq, his successor, is remembered instead for canals and for founding towns.

AnswerC · Alauddin Khalji

1. Alauddin Khalji controlled market prices so that he could pay and keep a large standing army against Mongol raids.

2. Market officers enforced the fixed prices, and traders who cheated were punished.

AnswerC · 1993

1. The Qutb complex was inscribed in 1993, in the same year as Humayun's Tomb.

2. 1983 is the Taj Mahal, Agra Fort, Ajanta and Ellora; 1986 is Khajuraho, Hampi and Fatehpur Sikri.

3. 2007 is the Red Fort Complex, the third of Delhi's three.

AnswerA · Akbar

1. Akbar built Fatehpur Sikri and made it his capital, then abandoned it within about fifteen years.

2. Babur, his grandfather, founded the empire but built no such city.

3. Shah Jahan is the emperor of the great building projects that followed — the Taj Mahal and the Red Fort.

AnswerC · Uttar Pradesh

1. Fatehpur Sikri is in Uttar Pradesh, near Agra, and was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1986.

2. Rajasthan is plausible because the site is close to the state boundary and to Mughal Rajput alliances.

3. Uttar Pradesh also holds the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, both inscribed in 1983.

AnswerD · Shah Jahan

1. Shah Jahan built the Red Fort when he moved the Mughal capital from Agra to his new city of Shahjahanabad.

2. It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2007.

3. Sher Shah Suri built the Purana Qila in Delhi, which is a different fort and a different century.

AnswerA · Akbar

1. Akbar started the Din-i-Ilahi in 1582, after years of debates between scholars of many faiths at his Ibadat Khana in Fatehpur Sikri.

2. It had very few followers and ended with Akbar, but it reflects his policy of sulh-i-kul, peace with all.

AnswerB · Babur

1. Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi at Panipat in 1526, which ended the Delhi Sultanate and began Mughal rule.

2. The Second Battle of Panipat, in 1556, was won for Akbar.

3. The Third, in 1761, was fought between the Marathas and Ahmad Shah Abdali.

AnswerD · Maharana Pratap of Mewar

1. At Haldighati in Rajasthan, a Mughal army led by Raja Man Singh fought Maharana Pratap of Mewar.

2. Hemu was defeated at the Second Battle of Panipat in 1556; Rani Durgavati fought the Mughals in Gondwana in 1564, and Chand Bibi defended Ahmednagar.

AnswerA · Abul Fazl

1. Abul Fazl wrote the Akbarnama, of which the Ain-i-Akbari is the third and final volume.

2. Faizi was his brother and the court poet; Badauni was a contemporary historian who wrote a far more critical account.

3. Birbal belongs to the court but not to its literature.

AnswerC · Chagatai Turkish

1. Babur wrote the Baburnama in Chagatai, the Turkish language of his homeland in Central Asia.

2. It was translated into Persian in Akbar's reign, which is why Persian is the tempting wrong answer.

AnswerA · 1757

1. Plassey was fought in 1757, between the East India Company under Clive and Siraj-ud-Daulah of Bengal.

2. It is treated as the beginning of Company political power in India.

3. 1764 is Buxar, which is the battle that consolidated what Plassey began.

AnswerB · Lord William Bentinck

1. Bentinck's regulation of 1829 made sati a crime in the Bengal Presidency.

2. Raja Ram Mohan Roy had campaigned against the practice for years before the law was passed.

AnswerA · Buxar, 1764

1. Buxar was fought in 1764, and the Company’s victory led to the grant of the Diwani — the right to collect revenue.

2. That grant is what turned a trading company into a government, which is why Buxar matters more constitutionally than Plassey.

3. Plassey in 1757 won influence over Bengal; Panipat in 1761 was fought between the Marathas and Ahmad Shah Abdali, with no Company involvement.

AnswerD · Lord Cornwallis

1. Cornwallis introduced the Permanent Settlement, fixing the land revenue demand on zamindars in perpetuity.

2. Wellesley is remembered for the Subsidiary Alliance and Dalhousie for the Doctrine of Lapse.

3. Warren Hastings preceded Cornwallis and is associated with the earliest revenue experiments, not the settlement itself.

AnswerC · The Government of India Act, 1858

1. The Government of India Act, 1858 abolished the Company's rule and vested the government in the Crown.

2. It created the office of Secretary of State for India, answerable to Parliament.

3. The Regulating Act and the Charter Acts came earlier and reformed the Company rather than replacing it.

AnswerC · Lord Wellesley

1. Lord Wellesley, Governor-General from 1798, used the Subsidiary Alliance to bring Indian states under Company control without war.

2. A ruler who signed kept a British force, paid for it, and could not make treaties with others without the Company's consent. Hyderabad was the first to accept, in 1798.

3. Dalhousie's instrument was the Doctrine of Lapse, a different policy fifty years later.

AnswerB · 1911

1. The move was announced at the Delhi Durbar in 1911.

2. The new capital took two decades to build, and New Delhi was formally inaugurated in 1931.

3. 1905 is the Partition of Bengal, which was annulled in the same announcement that moved the capital.

AnswerD · Lord Lytton

1. Lord Lytton's government passed the Act in 1878 to silence criticism in the Indian-language press; English newspapers were not covered.

2. Lord Ripon repealed it in 1882, which is why his name is the tempting wrong answer.

AnswerA · Meerut

1. The revolt broke out at Meerut in May 1857, and the soldiers marched from there to Delhi.

2. Barrackpore is where Mangal Pandey's individual act took place some weeks earlier, which is why it is the strongest wrong option.

3. Kanpur and Jhansi became major centres of the revolt, but it did not start there.

AnswerB · 1885

1. The Congress was founded in 1885 and held its first session in Bombay.

2. 1905 is the Partition of Bengal and 1916 the Lucknow Pact — both later milestones of the same movement.

3. The founding date anchors the whole chronology of organised nationalism.

AnswerB · Bahadur Shah Zafar

1. The soldiers who reached Delhi proclaimed the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, as their leader.

2. Nana Saheb led at Kanpur, Rani Lakshmibai at Jhansi and Tatya Tope in the field.

3. Those three were commanders of the revolt; the emperor was its symbol.

AnswerA · Lord Curzon

1. Curzon partitioned Bengal in 1905, and the decision was annulled in 1911.

2. Ripon is remembered for local self-government, Minto for the reforms of 1909 that carry his name with Morley's.

3. Hardinge was the Viceroy at the 1911 Durbar that reversed the partition and moved the capital.

AnswerB · The Partition of Bengal

1. Swadeshi grew out of the protest against the 1905 Partition of Bengal, and turned on boycotting British goods.

2. The Rowlatt Act and Jallianwala Bagh belong to 1919, more than a decade later.

3. The Simon Commission protests came in 1927 and 1928.

AnswerA · Dadabhai Naoroji

1. Dadabhai Naoroji argued that Britain was draining India's wealth, most fully in 'Poverty and Un-British Rule in India' (1901).

2. He was three times President of the Congress and the first Indian elected to the British House of Commons, in 1892.

AnswerD · W. C. Bonnerjee

1. Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee presided over the first session, attended by 72 delegates.

2. A. O. Hume, a retired British official, helped found the Congress but did not preside.

3. Dadabhai Naoroji presided over the second session in 1886, and Badruddin Tyabji was the first Muslim president, in 1887.

AnswerC · 13 April 1919

1. The firing took place on Sunday, 13 April 1919, at Amritsar.

2. On the same day, most of Punjab was placed under martial law.

3. 9 April is the date of Gandhi's arrest, which is part of what brought crowds onto the streets of Amritsar in the first place.

AnswerB · 1915

1. Gandhi landed in Bombay on 9 January 1915, after about twenty years in South Africa.

2. The date is now observed as Pravasi Bharatiya Divas.

3. 1917 is Champaran, his first satyagraha in India, and 1920 the Non-Cooperation Movement.

AnswerD · Baisakhi

1. Villagers had come into Amritsar for Baisakhi, which falls in mid-April.

2. They had also gathered to protest peacefully at the arrest of Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew.

3. The ban on meetings had been issued that morning and had not reached most of the crowd.

AnswerB · Arrest any person without any reason whatsoever

1. The Act, known as the Black Act, allowed arrest without stated reason, and its purpose was to check the growing nationalist movement.

2. Gandhi's response was a call for satyagraha against it.

3. It was the protest against this Act, and the arrest of two of its leaders at Amritsar, that filled Jallianwala Bagh.

AnswerC · Sabarmati Ashram

1. Gandhi left Sabarmati Ashram, near Ahmedabad, at half past six in the morning with 79 followers.

2. They covered 241 miles to Dandi in 24 days.

3. Sevagram, near Wardha, became his base later; Porbandar is his birthplace, not the starting point.

AnswerC · 6 April 1930

1. The march reached Dandi in early April and Gandhi raised a fistful of salt on the morning of 6 April 1930.

2. 12 March is the date the march began, which is the answer to a different question about the same event.

3. 26 January 1930 is the date the Congress observed as Purna Swaraj day, earlier the same year.

AnswerA · Chauri Chaura

1. In February 1922 a crowd at Chauri Chaura, in the Gorakhpur district of Uttar Pradesh, set fire to a police station, and 22 policemen died.

2. Gandhi judged that the movement had turned violent and suspended it.

3. Bardoli was where he had planned mass civil disobedience; Kheda was a peasant satyagraha of 1918.

AnswerB · 8 August 1942

1. The call was given on 8 August 1942, at the All India Congress Committee session in Bombay.

2. Every senior leader was arrested within twenty-four hours, which is why 9 August is also remembered — as the day of the arrests.

3. The movement then ran without its recognised leadership, which is a large part of what makes it distinctive.

AnswerB · Do or Die

1. Gandhi gave the country a single mantra: 'Karo ya Maro' — Do or Die.

2. 'Dilli Chalo' was Subhas Chandra Bose's call to the Indian National Army.

3. 'Jai Jawan Jai Kisan' is much later still — Lal Bahadur Shastri, in 1965.

AnswerB · Dominion status in return for India's support in the war

1. Sir Stafford Cripps came with an offer of dominion status after the war, in return for India's support during it.

2. By 1942 the Congress demand was Purna Swaraj, complete independence, so the offer was refused.

3. The failure of the mission is the immediate background to the Quit India call a few months later.

AnswerD · Subhas Chandra Bose

1. 'Dilli Chalo' was Subhas Chandra Bose's call as he marched with the Indian National Army.

2. Tilak's line is 'Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it'.

3. Bhagat Singh is associated with 'Inquilab Zindabad', which he did not coin but made famous.

AnswerA · The Indian Independence Act, 1947

1. The Indian Independence Act, 1947 created the two independent dominions of India and Pakistan.

2. The Cabinet Mission was a plan and a set of proposals, not an Act of Parliament, which is what the question asks for.

3. The Government of India Act, 1935 remained the working constitutional document until 26 January 1950.

AnswerB · C. Rajagopalachari

1. Lord Mountbatten stayed on as Governor-General after independence, until June 1948.

2. C. Rajagopalachari succeeded him and held the office until 26 January 1950, when it was abolished and Rajendra Prasad became the first President.

AnswerC · B. R. Ambedkar

1. Ramsay MacDonald's Communal Award of 1932 gave the Depressed Classes separate electorates, and Gandhi began a fast against it in Yerawada jail.

2. Ambedkar and Gandhi agreed on joint electorates with more reserved seats instead, and the fast ended.

3. The pact with Lord Irwin was the Gandhi–Irwin Pact of 1931, a different agreement.