Indian independence quiz: 8 questions

There was an administrative case for dividing Bengal. Officials also recorded a political advantage: the split could divide the Bengali intelligentsia and cultivate East Bengal’s Muslim majority as a counterweight. Bengalis responded with Swadeshi. In 1911 the Raj reversed the partition, its first reversal under Indian pressure.

Non-violence was central to Gandhi’s strategy. It made repression costly and kept a moral audience watching; without discipline, he feared the movement would instead license mob violence and lose its moral ground. The decision to halt remains disputed: did it sacrifice a winnable moment, or save the movement from a war it could lose?

The League’s poor showing in 1937 was a humiliation, followed by Congress’s refusal of a coalition in the UP. Jinnah entered the political wilderness in which the Pakistan demand was forged. By 1946 the League had 87% of the Muslim vote, the century’s fastest transformation of an electorate.

Abdul Ghaffar Khan’s Khudai Khidmatgars, the “Servants of God,” built a non-violent Pathan mass movement allied with Congress. Its presence shows that Muslim politics did not lead inevitably to the League. In 1947 the Frontier voted for Pakistan in a referendum Congress boycotted. Ghaffar Khan spent much of his later life in Pakistani jails.

Linlithgow could declare war for India with one signature: the act was constitutionally valid. Politically, it showed how little the elected Indian governments counted. Their resignations left room for the League; Jinnah declared a “Day of Deliverance,” and the League had a free run during the war years.

For one week in June, Congress and the League both accepted the plan. This was the closest they came to a single state, but each suspected the other’s intentions over whether grouping would bind. The plan failed. Direct Action Day followed within weeks, and violence took over the argument.

Cyril Radcliffe used maps and the 1941 census to draw the awards. He finished in five weeks, burned his papers, and refused his fee. The two states celebrated independence before they knew their own boundaries. When published, the award ran between Lahore and Amritsar, fifty kilometres apart.

Language. Nehru feared that states organized by language would pull the union apart, but Potti Sriramulu’s fatal fast in 1952 forced the question. The 1956 Act created 14 states and 6 union territories. The federation accommodated identity and held together.