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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 15 Apr 2017, 15:36
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RMD007
As no expert has highlighted this, I would like to know, is the use of "which" in option D correct?

I believe we use "which" for things. That was the main reason I chose E with "who". Please clear this.
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In option D, "Britain" is a country - hence use of "which" is alright. D is wrong because of redundant use of "ruled" - a colony is always ruled by the colonizer.

In option E "British" refers to the people of Britain - hence "who" is alright.
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 21 Apr 2017, 21:44
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Hello expert, i got the answer but i have one query

In gmat questions, i have never seen usage of "had been", am i wrong in generalizing the concept that options with had been will be wrong.
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 22 Apr 2017, 04:19
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Hello expert, i got the answer but i have one query

In gmat questions, i have never seen usage of "had been", am i wrong in generalizing the concept that options with had been will be wrong.
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Yes, this generalization is wrong - "had been" is the past perfect of the verb "to be".
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 15 Sep 2017, 07:35
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OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:



The original sentence begins with a modifier ("Before its independence") that clearly describes India, though the subject of the main clause is Britain. Moreover, "ruled India as a colony" is wordy and the verb "ruled" is in the simple past when it would be better in the past perfect (two past actions, one of which was earlier). Finally, "they" has no grammatical antecedent and "would" is not a proper tense here (the simple past is required).

(A) This choice is incorrect as it repeats the original sentence.

(B) Britain should not be the recipient of the modifier "Before its independence."

(C) The pronoun "they" has no logical antecedent. Logically it probably refers to the British, but the British do not appear in the sentence. Also, the past perfect tense would have been preferable here (had been ruled) since the ruling occurred before the relinquishing of the power.

(D) The phrase "ruled as a colony by Britain" is awkward and unclear. The placement of the modifier "by Britain" makes it unclear that the ruling is being done by Britain.

(E) CORRECT. This correctly places India as the recipient of the opening modifier. The past perfect is utilized to indicate that different times in the past. Notice that the word "ruled" has been removed from this answer choice, however, this did not result in a change of meaning. To be a colony of the British is to be ruled by the British. The exclusion of the pronoun its in the beginning of the sentence (see answer choices A and C) is incidental. The sentence would have been correct with the pronoun its as well.
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 27 Aug 2019, 18:21
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KyleWiddison
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i too narrowed down to D and E, why is WHO > WHICH ?

E is favored for the main part of the sentence.... but this doubt of Who v/s which is creating a niggling doubt.... Is it a trick or am i missing something... ?

See the posts above for the issues with D - they are related to meaning and don't have anything to do with 'which'. On this question both who and which are used correctly therefore one is not greater than another.

KW
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Hi Kyle,

I understand that you explained that D is wrong because of the meaning. However, choice A used “ruled India as a colony” so shouldn’t we stick with the meaning of A? We have to leave out any outside information - for all we know Britain might really have ruled India as a colony and India wasn’t an actual colony. (Try replacing Britain with “country X” and India with country Y”).

Thanks!
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 27 Aug 2019, 20:43
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shabuzen102
Hi Kyle,

I understand that you explained that D is wrong because of the meaning. However, choice A used “ruled India as a colony” so shouldn’t we stick with the meaning of A? We have to leave out any outside information - for all we know Britain might really have ruled India as a colony and India wasn’t an actual colony. (Try replacing Britain with “country X” and India with country Y”).

Thanks!
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Option A has no special significance. It is not any more (or less) likely to be correct than the other options are. That means that we should look at all 5 options and choose the one that conveys the intended meaning, without worrying about whether that meaning differs from the meaning in option A.
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 28 Aug 2019, 12:33
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Hi Kyle,

I understand that you explained that D is wrong because of the meaning. However, choice A used “ruled India as a colony” so shouldn’t we stick with the meaning of A? We have to leave out any outside information - for all we know Britain might really have ruled India as a colony and India wasn’t an actual colony. (Try replacing Britain with “country X” and India with country Y”).

Thanks!
Option A has no special significance. It is not any more (or less) likely to be correct than the other options are. That means that we should look at all 5 options and choose the one that conveys the intended meaning, without worrying about whether that meaning differs from the meaning in option A.
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Hi Ajitesh,

Thanks for your response. If that's the case, then how can we decide which meaning is better than which? How can we know what the author intends to say? To me, the meaning of "ruled some country as a colony" can be the author's intention just as much as "being some country's colony". Please help me explain that! Thanks.
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 28 Aug 2019, 20:54
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shabuzen102
Hi Ajitesh,

Thanks for your response. If that's the case, then how can we decide which meaning is better than which? How can we know what the author intends to say? To me, the meaning of "ruled some country as a colony" can be the author's intention just as much as "being some country's colony". Please help me explain that! Thanks.
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Hi shabuzen102,

That's a good question, but there are no easy answers here. Here are a few things we could do/consider:

1. Focus on official questions. If you feel that a non-official question is asking you to take an unfair/unreasonable call, let that question go.
2. (But) be open to taking a call on other questions. There are many official questions (like this one and this one and this one) in which option A does not provide us the correct meaning.
3. The intended meaning has less to do with what is possible than with what is likely. We may have to read the entire question (all 5 options) before we have enough information to make a decision.

Also, we cannot overlook the fact that the GMAT will test meaning:
Quote:
In recent years, GMAT item writers have been concentrating on the reasoning aspects rather than the purely grammatical aspects of Sentence Correction skills. As always, test takers need to carefully read the prompt in order to choose the answer that produces the most effective sentence. This means that whereas two sentences may both be grammatically appropriate, the correct answer is the sentence that is most “effective”―the sentence that better expresses the idea.
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From the official mba.com blog... in 2011.

There is a lot of bad advice out there about how option A always contains the intended meaning. Ignore it. And if that were actually true (about option A), what would be the point of testing meaning in the first place? :)
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 04 Mar 2021, 21:30
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A quick question, can anyone please confirm -

Before its independence in 1947, India was ruled by Britain
Before independence in 1947, India had been a colony of the British.

Both forms of verb tense are correct for this question in the gmat?
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 13 Mar 2021, 19:49
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I don't know that I am the biggest fan of the usage of 'who' in E. A colony is not a person, but a collection of individuals.
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 13 Mar 2021, 20:49
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CEdward
I don't know that I am the biggest fan of the usage of 'who' in E. A colony is not a person, but a collection of individuals.
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CEdward "who" actually refers to the british and not colony.
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 13 Mar 2021, 20:58
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CEdward
I don't know that I am the biggest fan of the usage of 'who' in E. A colony is not a person, but a collection of individuals.

CEdward "who" actually refers to the british and not colony.
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But isn't "British" part of the prepositional modifier? Is who allowed to refer to the British, then?
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 24 Dec 2021, 08:59
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In GMAT we always talk about meaning, this ans to this q is quite obvious to me should be D not E. So OA is wrong in my view.

1) a colony != ruled as colony.
2) British != Britain; ie who are we referring to when we reference British, Queen? A random person from Manchester? The colonisation is set at Sovereign level. British could refer to the empire, but the relative pronoun should be which not who

while D is more lengthy, E is not correct to me. But with this mindset, I will be wrong in the actual test
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 07 Feb 2022, 18:14
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manhattan is totally a disaster....YOU CAN NEVER USE WHO TO REFER A country or colony....E is totally inappropriate, you can easily eliminate E,
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 08 Feb 2022, 05:48
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ElijahTimroyalty
manhattan is totally a disaster....YOU CAN NEVER USE WHO TO REFER A country or colony....E is totally inappropriate, you can easily eliminate E,
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Hello ElijahTimroyalty,

We hope this finds you well.

To provide a bit of clarity here, in Option E "who" correctly refers to "the British" rather than to "colony".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 05 Aug 2022, 01:26
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Taulark1
A quick question, can anyone please confirm -

Before its independence in 1947, India was ruled by Britain
Before independence in 1947, India had been a colony of the British.

Both forms of verb tense are correct for this question in the gmat?
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Experts, please address. I have an understanding that when 'before' makes the time sequence clear we do not need 'had', but in the case of a time marker eg 'In 1947' we do need 'had'. I know somehow I am misinterpreting these rules and this question hits the grey area in my understanding. Please help me correct my understanding.
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 05 Aug 2022, 04:44
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InLimbo
Taulark1
A quick question, can anyone please confirm -

Before its independence in 1947, India was ruled by Britain
Before independence in 1947, India had been a colony of the British.

Both forms of verb tense are correct for this question in the gmat?

Experts, please address. I have an understanding that when 'before' makes the time sequence clear we do not need 'had', but in the case of a time marker eg 'In 1947' we do need 'had'. I know somehow I am misinterpreting these rules and this question hits the grey area in my understanding. Please help me correct my understanding.
AjiteshArun ExpertsGlobal5 KarishmaB
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Hello InLimbo,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, assuming they make the order of events clear, both terms such as "Before" and the mention of dates and times negate the need for the past perfect tense (marked by the use of "had").

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 05 Aug 2022, 04:59
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ExpertsGlobal5

Thank you for responding. With the same learning in mind. I believed the use of 'had' to be unnecessary in the correct answer choice.

(E) Before independence in 1947, India had been a colony of the British, who relinquished power

We know when India was a colony (has to be before the British relinquished power, also 'Before independence in 1947' makes it clear)

Can you please help me understand why 'had' is required here?
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 05 Aug 2022, 05:23
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InLimbo
ExpertsGlobal5

Thank you for responding. With the same learning in mind. I believed the use of 'had' to be unnecessary in the correct answer choice.

(E) Before independence in 1947, India had been a colony of the British, who relinquished power

We know when India was a colony (has to be before the British relinquished power, also 'Before independence in 1947' makes it clear)

Can you please help me understand why 'had' is required here?
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Hello InLimbo,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, if the order of events is made clear through time markers such as before or the mention of times and dates, the use of the past perfect tense is redundant, but not incorrect; it is preferable not to use the past perfect tense for the sake of conciseness, but it is not wrong to use it either.

We hope this helps.
All the best!
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Before its independence in 1947, Britain ruled India as a co 05 Aug 2022, 05:39
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ExpertsGlobal5

So the takeaway is that it isn't an absolute rule and shouldn't be treated as low-hanging fruit. Instead, the POE remains misplaced modifiers, pronoun error (They), and the absolute error with 'which'.

Redundancy in a correct logical (meaning-wise) answer choice shouldn't be an issue as long as there isn't any other more concise absolute error-free answer choice?

Thank you again for responding :)
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