After the sentence of B.G, Tilak, who among the following had pleaded for mercy and said : “My interest in Tilak is that of a Sanskrit scholar.” ?

The correct answer is B) Max Muller. After the 1908 Mandalay trial, when Tilak was sentenced to six years of transportation, the German Indologist Max Müller wrote in his support and pleaded for leniency. His stated reason was that his interest in Tilak was that of a Sanskrit scholar, because Tilak's Gita Rahasya was a serious work on the Gita, which Tilak wrote during his Mandalay imprisonment.

• Rabindranath Tagore was a major literary figure who later returned his knighthood after Jallianwala Bagh. He did not plead for Tilak in this manner.
• Bipinchandra Pal was a fellow Extremist leader and Tilak's associate. He was not the Sanskrit scholar figure the statement describes, and he was not the one who pleaded on these grounds.
• William Jones was an 18th-century Orientalist who founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 and died in 1794. He could not have reacted to a 1908 sentence.

The core concept here is the reaction of the liberal intelligentsia to colonial repression of Extremist nationalists. It connects to the Mains theme of the moderate-extremist divide and the response to press and sedition laws. Keep the Mandalay sentence, the Gita Rahasya link, and Max Müller's Indological credentials together in memory.

Trap: candidates pick Tagore because he is the most famous name on the list, or pick Bipin Chandra Pal because he was Tilak's contemporary. The question is testing the Sanskrit-scholar link, which points to Max Müller.