British Rule & 1857 — PPSC previous year questions

The Battle of Buxar was fought on 22 October 1764. On one side was the English East India Company under Major Hector Munro. On the other were Mir Qasim of Bengal, Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh and the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II. The British victory led to the Treaty of Allahabad (1765) and the grant of the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Dupleix was a French governor. Cornwallis and Hastings came later.

Lord Cornwallis introduced the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa in 1793. It fixed the land revenue permanently. It made the zamindars owners of the land. John Shore was then a Board of Revenue member. He helped frame the scheme and became Governor-General after Cornwallis. Philip Francis had earlier urged a permanent settlement. Clive had obtained the Diwani of Bengal in 1765.

Only pair 3 is right: Zeenat Mahal was the wife of the last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and was exiled with him to Rangoon after 1857. Pairs 1 and 2 are swapped: Lakshmi Bai was the Rani of Jhansi and Begum Hazrat Mahal led the revolt in Awadh (Lucknow). Pair 4 is wrong because Jhalkari Bai was a soldier in the women's wing of Rani Lakshmi Bai's army at Jhansi, not of Bahadur Shah.

The Doctrine of Lapse was applied vigorously by Lord Dalhousie (Governor-General 1848-56): a princely state without a natural male heir 'lapsed' to the Company, adoption being disallowed. States annexed under it include Satara (1848), Jaitpur and Sambalpur (1849), Udaipur (1852), Jhansi (1853) and Nagpur (1854); Awadh was annexed in 1856 on grounds of misgovernment. The policy was a major cause of the Revolt of 1857.

Awadh was annexed by Lord Dalhousie in 1856 on the plea of misgovernment by Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, not under the Doctrine of Lapse. The Doctrine of Lapse denied adopted heirs the right to succeed and was used to annex Satara (1848), Jaitpur and Sambalpur (1849), Udaipur (1852), Jhansi (1853) and Nagpur (1854). The annexation of Awadh was a major grievance behind the 1857 revolt.

In India the British built roads, and later railways, chiefly to move troops quickly to trouble spots and to tighten administrative control. The economic motive was to carry raw materials to the ports for export. Lord Dalhousie's Public Works Department (1854) and the Grand Trunk Road rebuilt from Calcutta to Peshawar are typical examples. Serving local markets, rural connectivity or tourism was never the aim. That is why the network ran between garrisons, ports and administrative centres, not into the countryside.

Wood's Despatch of 1854 is called the 'Magna Carta of English Education in India'. Sir Charles Wood, President of the Board of Control, sent it. It recommended a graded system from primary schools up to universities. It also asked for a Department of Public Instruction in each province, grants-in-aid to private schools and teacher training. It led to the founding of the universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1857. The Hunter Commission (1882), Sadler Commission (1917) and Hartog Committee (1929) came later.

Birsa Munda led the Ulgulan ('Great Tumult') of the Mundas in the Chhotanagpur region in 1899-1900 against dikus (outsiders), landlords and British rule. The Tebhaga movement was the Bengal sharecroppers' agitation of 1946-47, Champaran Satyagraha (1917) was Gandhi's campaign for indigo cultivators, and the Arcot revolt is unrelated to Munda history.

Indigo cultivation collapsed after German chemists produced cheap synthetic indigo dye (from 1897), which made natural indigo unprofitable in the world market. Peasant revolts (1859-60) and the Champaran movement (1917) hurt planters but did not end the trade by themselves.

The Babington-Smith Committee (1919) was set up to examine how the First World War had affected Indian exchange and currency and to advise on the rupee's exchange rate and note issue. Famine matters were handled by the Famine Commissions and education by the Hunter, Sadler and other commissions.