UPSC Prelims 2021— Question 54

‘Songs from Prison’ is associated with Mahatma Gandhi. The work contains translations/renderings of devotional and religious material produced during his imprisonment and reflects his engagement with Indian spiritual literature. Tilak, Nehru and Sarojini Naidu were major nationalist figures, but they are not the person associated with this specific translation collection. The final answer-key position for Set C identifies option C as the correct option. Option A — Bal Gangadhar Tilak — is not correct because it does not satisfy the specific condition tested in the question; it represents an alternative that is contradicted, incomplete, or less precise than the accepted answer. Option B — Jawaharlal Nehru — is not correct because it does not satisfy the specific condition tested in the question; it represents an alternative that is contradicted, incomplete, or less precise than the accepted answer. Option C — Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi — is correct because it is the alternative that matches the constitutional, historical, geographical, scientific or economic principle established above. Option D — Sarojini Naidu — is not correct because it does not satisfy the specific condition tested in the question; it represents an alternative that is contradicted, incomplete, or less precise than the accepted answer. For PYQ interpretation, the distinction between the correct alternative and merely related facts is important. UPSC often places plausible distractors beside the precise statement that matches the underlying rule, chronology, definition or empirical relationship. The answer should therefore be read against the exact wording of the question rather than against a broadly related fact.