Modern History · Communal Award & Poona Pact (1932)
The concept being tested: Poona Pact (1932) and Gandhi's Harijan upliftment program.
Subsequent to which one of the following events, Gandhiji, who consistently opposed untouchability and appealed for its eradication from all spheres, decided to include the upliftment of 'Harijans' in his political and social programme?
The Poona Pact was signed on 24 September 1932 between Gandhiji and B.R. Ambedkar after Gandhiji undertook a fast unto death in Yerwada jail against the Communal Award's grant of separate electorates to the depressed classes. The pact replaced separate electorates with reserved seats in the general electorate, filled by joint franchise. In the immediate aftermath of this settlement, Gandhiji institutionalised his commitment to ending untouchability: he founded the All India Anti-Untouchability League in 1932, soon renamed the Harijan Sevak Sangh, and started the weekly journal Harijan in 1933. From this point, the social and economic upliftment of Harijans became a formal, organised limb of his political and social programme rather than a personal moral stance voiced occasionally, which is exactly the shift the question is pointing to.
What UPSC was testing
UPSC is testing the precise causal chain: Communal Award's separate electorates for depressed classes led to Gandhiji's fast, which produced the Poona Pact, which in turn led him to organise Harijan welfare work formally. The Gandhi-Irwin Pact of 1931 is the deliberate trap here, since aspirants often blur the two Gandhi pacts of the early 1930s despite their addressing entirely different issues.
How often this comes up
This concept has appeared 11 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2025.
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.
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