Consider the following statements: 1) The first woman President of the Indian National Congress was Sarojini Naidu. 2) The first Muslim President of the Indian National Congress was Badruddin Tyabji.  Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

Statement 2 is correct and statement 1 is not, so the answer is B. Badruddin Tyabji presided over the third session of the Indian National Congress at Madras in 1887, making him the first Muslim president.

Statement 1 fails because Sarojini Naidu was not the first woman president. Annie Besant, an Englishwoman, presided over the Calcutta session in 1917. Naidu became the first Indian woman to hold the post at the Kanpur session in 1925. The statement blurs the words "first" and "Indian".

• Option A is wrong because statement 1 is false.
• Option C is wrong for the same reason.
• Option D is wrong because statement 2 is true.

The core concept is the Congress presidency as a marker of leadership in the national movement. The early sessions and their inclusive, pan-Indian character recur in Modern History. For Mains, Tyabji's presidency fits into the discussion of how the early Congress drew leaders from diverse communities.

Trap: candidates know Naidu was a woman president and assume she was the first, forgetting Annie Besant's 1917 presidency.