UPSC 2017 GS-I · 10 marks · 150 words

Why did the ‘Moderates’ fail to carry conviction with the nation about their proclaimed ideology and political goals by the end of the nineteenth century?

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Method: prayer, petition and protest — the 'political mendicancy' Tilak and the Extremists derided
Narrow social base: English-educated professionals, no peasant or worker mobilisation; Congress sessions as annual three-day affairs
Meagre returns: the Indian Councils Act 1892 fell far short, and the 1905 Partition of Bengal showed constitutional methods failing
Faith in British justice undercut by the famines of 1896-97 and 1899-1900, and by Curzon's measures
Their real achievement, which a balanced answer concedes: the economic critique — Dadabhai Naoroji's drain theory, R.C. Dutt's economic history — which the next generation used

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Why did the ‘Moderates’ fail to carry conviction with the nation about their proclaimed ideology and political goals by the end of the nineteenth century?

What a top answer must contain

Now write it, and find out what you actually scored

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