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TNPSC Indian National Movement practice questions

By the PrepMatic team · Updated 9 Oct 2026 · 3 min read

The Indian National Movement is the last and most heavily tested part of Unit III, which carries about 10 of the 75 General Studies questions in the Group 4 and Group 2 prelims papers. Questions concentrate on the Gandhian movements, their causes and endings, and the Congress sessions and leaders. The five questions below take one example from each of those. The wider syllabus view is in TNPSC History and Indian National Movement.

What this topic covers

• Early nationalism: the founding of the Indian National Congress, the Moderates and the Extremists.
• The Swadeshi movement: the Partition of Bengal and its aftermath.
• The Gandhian era: Champaran, the Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience and Quit India Movements.
• Towards independence: the Cripps Mission, the Cabinet Mission and the Partition.
• Revolutionaries and other streams: the Ghadar Party, the INA and others.

Sample questions

Question 1

The first president of the Indian National Congress (1885) was:

• A. Dadabhai Naoroji
• B. A. O. Hume
• C. W. C. Bonnerjee
• D. Surendranath Banerjee

Question 2

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place in:

• A. 1915
• B. 1919
• C. 1920
• D. 1922

Question 3

Gandhi withdrew the Non-Cooperation Movement after the incident at:

• A. Chauri Chaura
• B. Dandi
• C. Champaran
• D. Kheda

Question 4

Gandhi began the Salt March in 1930 from:

• A. Sevagram
• B. Champaran
• C. Dandi
• D. Sabarmati Ashram

Question 5

"Do or Die" was the slogan of the:

• A. Non-Cooperation Movement
• B. Civil Disobedience Movement
• C. Quit India Movement
• D. Swadeshi Movement

Answers and explanations

1. C. W. C. Bonnerjee presided over the first session at Bombay in December 1885. A. O. Hume, a retired British official, helped to found the Congress but was its General Secretary, not its president.
2. B. On 13 April 1919 at Amritsar, troops under General Dyer fired on an unarmed crowd gathered in the Jallianwala Bagh. The event followed the Rowlatt Act protests.
3. A. In February 1922 a mob set fire to a police station at Chauri Chaura in Uttar Pradesh, killing policemen, and Gandhi called off the Non-Cooperation Movement because it had turned violent.
4. D. Gandhi started the Salt March on 12 March 1930 from Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad and reached Dandi on the Gujarat coast on 6 April, where he broke the salt law.
5. C. Gandhi gave the call "Do or Die" at the Quit India Movement's launch in Bombay in August 1942.

How to prepare the national movement

Learn the table above as a timeline and add a "cause, leader, result" line for each movement. TNPSC asks "which event led to X" and "which movement ended with Y", and the three-part line answers both. Revise the sessions of the Congress by city and president for the key years: 1885 Bombay, 1906 Calcutta (Swaraj resolution), 1907 Surat (split), 1929 Lahore (Purna Swaraj).

Pair the Gandhian movements with their Tamil Nadu forms, since TNPSC often asks both: the Salt Satyagraha at Vedaranyam, the Home Rule agitation, and the role of Tamil leaders such as Subramania Bharati, V. O. Chidambaram Pillai and C. Rajagopalachari. These are in TNPSC Tamil Nadu freedom struggle practice.

Do not memorise minute details of the Round Table Conferences or constitutional schemes. For the exam, the Acts you need are the Government of India Acts of 1909, 1919 and 1935 with one feature each, and the Independence Act of 1947. If you need a refresher on the British side of the story, read TNPSC modern India practice first.

Take the full topic test on PrepMatic

The national movement rewards repeated, dated recall, which short timed tests deliver. A PrepMatic topic test (about 15 questions, 30 minutes) gives a quick measure of where you stand, and the full mocks that follow the Group 4 paper of 200 questions in 180 minutes show whether the history questions hold up at the end of a long paper.

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