RabindraNath Tagore gave up his ‘knighthood’ in protest to which one of the following?

Tagore returned his knighthood, conferred in 1915, through a letter dated 31 May 1919 addressed to Viceroy Lord Chelmsford. His stated reason was the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919, which he called a national humiliation and an 'insult' to Indians. So the answer is B.

• A) Rowlatt Act (1919): Passed in March 1919 to extend wartime emergency powers against sedition. It was the immediate backdrop to Gandhi's satyagraha, but Tagore's letter named the massacre, not the Act, as the trigger.
• C) Simon Commission (1927): Its all-white membership led to boycott protests. This came eight years after Tagore's renunciation, so it cannot be the reason.
• D) Cripps Mission (1942): A wartime proposal for dominion status after the war. It came a year after Tagore's death in 1941.

Core concept: Tagore's protest was moral and political, a nationalist response to state violence. It marks the shift of many intellectuals from loyalism to non-cooperation after 1919. For Mains, this links to GS-1 modern Indian history and the rise of mass politics under Gandhi.

Trap: Candidates pick the Rowlatt Act because it came first and caused the agitation. Read the question: the knighthood was given up specifically in protest against the massacre.