Test: Modern Indian History- 2 - Class 8 MCQ

• Bismil Azimabadi was an Urdu poet from Patna, Bihar. In 1921 he wrote the patriotic poem 'Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna'.
• The poem was immortalised by Ram Prasad Bismil, an Indian freedom fighter, as a war cry during the British Raj period in India.
• The poem was written as an ode to young freedom fighters of the Indian independence movement. It has also been associated with the younger generation of inter-war freedom fighters such as Ashfaqullah Khan, Shaheed Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad.

The topics of Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech “Tryst with Destiny” are freedom and responsibility in the context of Indian independence.
This speech, known as the ‘Tryst of Destiny’, was delivered on the eve of 15 August 1947, the date India gained independence from Britain.
Throughout his speech, he drew much reference to the power of the Indian people, and the responsibilities in which he and the elected legislature of India will have in representing the people of India.

Bahadur Shah was the last Mughal emperor in India. He ruled over a Mughal Empire that barely extended beyond Delhi's Red Fort and had no real power in India.
After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British Administration exiled him from Delhi. He was sent to a prison in Rangoon, Burma and eventually died there.

Before New Delhi became the capital of India, Kolkata had the privilege of being the country’s capital till 1911. 
One of the main reasons that were cited for the capital shift was the location of Delhi. Calcutta was situated in the eastern coastal part of the country, while Delhi was located in the northern part. 
The British government of India felt that ruling India from Delhi was easier and more convenient. Finally, the proposal was heartily accepted by the British Raj.

• The Doctrine of Lapse was implemented by Lord Dalhousie, who was the Governor General for the East India Company in India between 1848 and 1856.
• As per the ‘Doctrine of Lapse’, if any ruler of a princely state died without a natural heir, the states’ authority will pass to the British East India Company.
• Under the terms of the doctrine of lapse, the Company annexed many princely states viz. Satara (1848), Jaipur and Sambalpur (Odisha) (1849), Nagpur and Jhansi (1854), Tanjore and Arcot (1855), Udaipur (Chhattisgarh) and Oudh (1856).

All India Trade Union Congress was India’s second largest trade union federation after the Indian National Trade Union Congress. The AITUC was formed by the Narayan Malhar Joshi and Lala Lajpat Rai in 1920 to represent India at the International Labour Organisation of the League of Nations. The first session of the All India Trade Union Congress was held at Bombay under Lala Lajpat Rai.

The male deity during the Indus Valley Civilization is represented on a seal. This god has three-horned heads and is represented in the sitting posture of a yogi, with one leg placed above the other. It is identified as Pashupati seal. The people of the Indus region also worshipped trees. The depiction of a deity is represented on a seal amidst branches of the Pipal.

India was called ‘the industrial workshop of the world’ during the 17th and 18th centuries. Demand for Indian cotton goods in England during this time was unprecedented. Indian cotton cloth was considered by Englishmen as the badge of ‘style and fashion’ of the time. The economic policies followed by the British led to the rapid transformation of India's economy into a colonial economy whose nature and structure were determined by the needs of the British economy. They always remained foreigners in the land, exploiting Indian resources and carrying away India's wealth as tribute.
The first manufacturing industry was set up in India during the British rule. In 1854, the first cotton-textile mill was established in Bombay, immediately after the first railway line was constructed between Bombay and Thane.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place on 13 April 1919 when troops of the British Indian Army under the command of General Dyer fired rifles into a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians who had gathered in Jallianwala Bagh. The massacre marked a turning point in the history of the struggle for freedom.
Impacts of the massacre:

• About 21 years later, on 13 March 1940, Udham Singh, an Indian revolutionary, shot Michael O’Dwyer dead who was the Lt. Governor of Punjab at the time of the Jalliawala Bagh massacre
• People in Punjab were made to crawl on the streets. They were put in open cages and flogged
• Newspapers were banned and their editors put behind the bars or deported
• Rabindranath Tagore, who had been knighted by the British, renounced his knighthood

It was clear that the brutalities had only added fuel to the fire and made the people’s determination stronger to fight for their freedom and against oppression.

The Harappans had commercial links with Afghanistan and Iran. They set up a trading colony in northern Afghanistan which evidently facilitated trade with Central Asia. The Harappans carried on long-distance trade in lapis lazuli, lapis objects may have contributed to the social prestige of the ruling class.