SSC MTS 2026 PYQ — Question 88

Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions based on the passage:

The pre-First World War era is particularly well-suited to an in-depth evaluation of popular movements, as they were spontaneous and were only marginally affected by intelligentsia ideologies, objectives, or techniques. The limitations of such spontaneity are fairly clear. Popular movements were usually directed against the immediate Indian oppressor rather than the distant white superior and were therefore often not consciously or subjectively anti-imperialist. They tended to be fairly widely scattered in both space and time and were extremely volatile, with different social forms of articulation interpenetrating and passing over each other with bewildering ease. All this makes it rather difficult to accept without some qualification the concept of 'peasant nationalism' as a coherent alternative to elite patriotic ideologies and movements, popular initiative and autonomy were undoubted, even remarkable at times but unlike middle class nationalism which does have certain continuity, at the level of ideology at least, from the formulation of the drain of wealth theory in the 1870s onwards, the movement that have been considered were clearly fragmented. Yet despite such limitations and crudities, popular unrest did anticipate much of middle-class nationalism in terms of issues and forms of struggle, while its specific gains were at times not inconsiderable.
Forest rights, the burdens of rent, usury, land revenue, planter exploitation, and labor grievances were all themes later taken up by middle-class nationalism.

Which primary limitation does the author identify regarding the spontaneous nature of popular movements?