A history student is reading about a ceremony held in February 1916 to open a new university in a north Indian city. Among the guests were princes, noblemen and leading Congress figures such as Annie Besant. One speaker, still little known in India and invited for his work in South Africa, did not praise the occasion. He turned instead to the people of the country and to the privileged guests gathered before him. In December that year, at the annual Congress session in Lucknow, a man from Champaran in Bihar came to the same speaker with a complaint.
Historians see the speech, at one level, as merely a statement of fact. What fact did it state?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Indian nationalism was an elite phenomenon, a creation of lawyers, doctors and landlords.
Option (1) Indian nationalism had been split between the Moderates and the Extremists. — Incorrect. The split in the Congress was real, but it is not the fact Gandhiji's speech pointed to. His point was who nationalism left out.
Option (2) Indian nationalism was a mass movement already led by peasants and workers. — Incorrect. This is the reverse. Peasants and workers were missing from nationalism then, and Gandhiji wanted to bring them in.
Option (3) Indian nationalism was mainly a creation of the princes and their courts. — Incorrect. Princes were present as donors, but the speech did not call nationalism their creation. It pointed to the professional and landed upper class.
Option (4) Indian nationalism was an elite phenomenon, a creation of lawyers, doctors and landlords. — Correct. The speech stated a fact: Indian nationalism was then an <strong>elite phenomenon</strong>, made by <strong>lawyers, doctors and landlords</strong>. At another level it was a statement of intent, to make nationalism represent all Indians.
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