UPSC Prelims 2025, Question 20

The answer: Both I and II

The Non-Cooperation Movement was adopted at the Congress's Special Session in Calcutta in September 1920 and confirmed at Nagpur in December 1920. That session redefined the Congress's objective from self-government within the empire to the attainment of Swaraj by the people of India through all legitimate and peaceful means, which settles the first statement. The sanctioned programme was itself deliberately graduated: the opening phase covered surrender of titles, boycott of legislative councils, courts, schools and foreign cloth. Gandhi promised Swaraj within a year, and only if that promise failed and the Government answered with repression would the movement escalate to the harsher second stage of mass civil disobedience and non-payment of taxes. This staged, conditional design is exactly what the second statement describes, so both statements hold and the correct choice is that both are correct.

The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.