BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 131 of 144

Correct — A, The Treaty of Allahabad. The Battle of Buxar was fought on 22 October 1764 at Buxar, a fortified town on the south bank of the Ganga in what is today Buxar district of Bihar, where Major Hector Munro's East India Company army broke the combined forces of Mir Qasim, the deposed Nawab of Bengal, Shuja-ud-Daula, the Nawab of Awadh, and the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II. The settlement of that victory was made at Allahabad in August 1765 by Robert Clive, who had returned to Bengal in May 1765 for his second governorship, and it was concluded in two separate agreements. The agreement with Shuja-ud-Daula restored Awadh to him but stripped away the districts of Kora and Allahabad, imposed a war indemnity of fifty lakh rupees, and tied him to a defensive alliance under which Company troops would garrison Awadh at his expense — the working prototype of every later subsidiary alliance. The second agreement, dated 16 August 1765 and signed with Shah Alam II, is the one that decides this question and the one that matters most to Bihar: the Emperor granted the Company the Diwani, the right to collect and administer the revenue, of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, in return for an annual tribute of twenty-six lakh rupees and the districts of Kora and Allahabad, where his court was to be maintained. That grant is the hinge of Indian modern history. Plassey in 1757 had given the Company influence over who sat on the masnad of Bengal; Allahabad in 1765 gave it legal title to the revenue of three provinces, issued in the Emperor's own name, so that the Company became on paper an officer of the Mughal state while in practice it became its successor. Out of it came the 'dual government' Clive designed for 1765-1772, under which the Company held the diwani while the Nawab retained the nizamat — police, criminal justice and the outward dignity of rule — with the result that the Company had revenue without responsibility and the Nawab responsibility without revenue, an arrangement Warren Hastings ended in 1772 by moving the treasury and the administration to Calcutta. So the pairing here is not a coincidence of dates: Buxar and Allahabad are the two ends of one event, and the Treaty of Allahabad is the document by which the land revenue of Bihar passed to the East India Company.

• (b)The Treaty of Sugauli — The designed trap on a Bihar paper, because Sugauli is itself a town in Bihar's Champaran region and the name reads as local and therefore likely. But the Treaty of Sugauli was signed on 4 March 1816 between the East India Company and Nepal, closing the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-16 — fifty-two years after Buxar and against an entirely different adversary. Under it Nepal ceded the Tarai, the lowlands between the Kali and the Rapti, and all its hill territory west of the Kali river, which is how Kumaon and Garhwal came under Company rule; Nepal kept Kathmandu and its sovereignty and conceded only a permanent British Resident there. Nothing in it concerns the Nawab of Bengal, the Nawab of Awadh or the Mughal Emperor.
• (c)The Treaty of Bassein — Wrong war, wrong adversary and wrong side of the subcontinent. The Treaty of Bassein was signed on 31 December 1802 at Bassein (Vasai, near Bombay) between the Company and Peshwa Baji Rao II, who had fled Poona after Yashwantrao Holkar defeated his forces there in October 1802. It brought the Peshwa into a subsidiary alliance — Company troops stationed in his territory, his foreign relations surrendered — and other Maratha chiefs refused to accept a treaty that made their nominal head a British protégé, which precipitated the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803-05. It belongs to the story of Maratha collapse in western India, not to the Bengal-Awadh settlement of 1765.
• (d)The Treaty of Salbai — The most tempting wrong answer for a candidate who remembers only that the treaty is 'late eighteenth century', because 1782 sits closer to 1764 than either 1802 or 1816 does. The Treaty of Salbai was signed on 17 May 1782 and ended the First Anglo-Maratha War of 1775-82, negotiated through Mahadji Scindia, who was also made its guarantor. Under it the Company retained Salsette and Broach, pensioned off its own protégé Raghunathrao and recognised Madhavrao II as Peshwa, and the Marathas undertook to help recover territory from Hyder Ali; it bought roughly twenty years of Anglo-Maratha peace. Again the parties are the Company and the Marathas, not the coalition beaten at Buxar.

Between 1757 and 1765 the East India Company changed from a trading corporation with an army into a territorial revenue power, and the two steps are usually confused. Plassey (23 June 1757) made the Company the kingmaker of Bengal: Mir Jafar was installed, then Mir Qasim, then Mir Jafar again, each purchased with a fresh donation. What the Company still lacked was a legal right to revenue, and its abuse of the dastak — the duty-free trade pass — was what drove Mir Qasim to abolish inland duties for everyone, fight the Company, lose, and flee to Awadh. Buxar in 1764 was the decisive engagement, and unlike Plassey it was a real battle against a real coalition that included the reigning Mughal Emperor. Its settlement, the Treaty of Allahabad of 1765, converted victory into title: the grant of the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa gave the Company the standing revenue of roughly a quarter of the subcontinent's people under Mughal legal cover. In Mughal administration the diwani (revenue) and the nizamat (military command, police and criminal justice) were deliberately kept in different hands; Clive's 'dual government' of 1765-1772 took one half and left the other with the Nawab, and the famine of 1770 in Bengal and Bihar, in which contemporaries estimated that a third of the population died, exposed what a revenue authority with no administrative duty produced.

The way to solve this in fifteen seconds is to attach one adversary and one year to each treaty name rather than trying to recall the treaty itself. Buxar was fought against three parties — the deposed Nawab of Bengal, the Nawab of Awadh and the Mughal Emperor — so the treaty that closes it must be signed with those parties, and a peace normally follows within a year or two of the battle. Run the four names through that filter. Sugauli is Nepal, 1816. Bassein is the Peshwa, 1802. Salbai is the Marathas, 1782. Only Allahabad involves the Mughal Emperor at all, and Allahabad in 1765 is where Shah Alam II was in fact living and holding court, which is precisely why the deed was executed there. A second check confirms it: the question is being asked on a Bihar paper, and the one outcome of Buxar that concerns Bihar directly is the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa — a right conferred by no other treaty in the option set. The mistake to guard against is treating the Treaty of Sugauli's Bihar location as evidence of a Bihar subject; the place a treaty is signed at says nothing about who signed it, and Sugauli's parties were the Company and Nepal.

• Battle of Buxar, 22 October 1764 — Major Hector Munro's Company force defeated the combined armies of Mir Qasim (deposed Nawab of Bengal), Shuja-ud-Daula (Nawab of Awadh) and the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II, at Buxar on the Ganga in present-day Buxar district, Bihar
• Treaty of Allahabad with Shah Alam II, 16 August 1765 — Robert Clive obtained the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa for the East India Company against an annual tribute of twenty-six lakh rupees, with the districts of Kora and Allahabad assigned to the Emperor for the upkeep of his court
• The companion agreement with Shuja-ud-Daula restored Awadh to him less Kora and Allahabad, exacted a war indemnity of fifty lakh rupees, and created a defensive alliance under which Company troops were stationed in Awadh at the Nawab's cost
• Dual government, 1765-1772 — the Company held the diwani (revenue) and the Nawab of Bengal the nizamat (police and criminal justice); Warren Hastings abolished it in 1772 by shifting the treasury and administration to Calcutta, and the Regulating Act followed in 1773
• Treaty of Sugauli, signed 4 March 1816 after the Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-16 — Nepal ceded the Tarai and all hill territory west of the Kali river and accepted a permanent British Resident at Kathmandu; the town of Sugauli lies in Bihar's Champaran region
• Treaty of Bassein, 31 December 1802, brought Peshwa Baji Rao II into a subsidiary alliance and triggered the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803-05; Treaty of Salbai, 17 May 1782, ended the First Anglo-Maratha War with Mahadji Scindia as guarantor and the Company keeping Salsette and Broach

• Assuming a treaty named after a Bihar town must be Bihar's treaty — Sugauli is in Bihar's Champaran region but was signed with Nepal in 1816
• Crediting Plassey with the Diwani. Plassey gave the Company influence over the Nawab's throne; the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa came only with the Treaty of Allahabad in 1765
• Naming Mir Jafar as the Nawab defeated at Buxar. It was Mir Qasim, whom the Company itself had installed in place of Mir Jafar in 1760 and then displaced again

BPSC asks colonial treaties as a one-line pairing anchored to a place — which treaty followed which battle, which treaty ceded what — and it favours the Buxar chain because Buxar is a Bihar district and the Diwani carried Bihar's own revenue. UPSC almost never asks the bare pairing. It asks chronology (2005: order Ambur, Plassey, Wandiwash and Buxar), consequence (2002: which hill tribe the British first met after the grant of the Diwani in 1765), or which parties actually fought a named battle, so the same facts have to be held as a sequence with named adversaries rather than as a list of treaty names.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Treaty of Allahabad of 1765, the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II granted the East India Company the Diwani of which territories?

  • (a)Bengal, Bihar and Orissa
  • (b)Bengal, Awadh and Benares
  • (c)Bihar, Orissa and the Northern Circars
  • (d)Bengal, Bihar and Awadh

  Answer(a) Bengal, Bihar and Orissa — granted against an annual tribute of twenty-six lakh rupees, with Kora and Allahabad assigned to the Emperor. Awadh was restored to Shuja-ud-Daula under the companion agreement, not annexed.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who commanded the East India Company forces at the Battle of Buxar in 1764?

  • (a)Robert Clive
  • (b)Hector Munro
  • (c)Warren Hastings
  • (d)Eyre Coote

  Answer(b) Hector Munro — Clive was in England at the time and returned only in May 1765 to negotiate the Treaty of Allahabad; Eyre Coote had commanded at Wandiwash in 1760.