BPSC 69th CCE Prelims General Studies · Question 138 of 144

Correct — C, J. Andrew. The Cabinet Mission that Clement Attlee's Labour government sent to India in 1946 had exactly three members, and all three were serving British Cabinet ministers — which is precisely what the name of the mission means. They were Lord Pethick-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India, who led it; Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade; and A. V. Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty. The mission reached India on 24 March 1946 and issued its plan on 16 May 1946. Match that roster against the options. Option (a) 'P. Lawrence' is the booklet's compressed rendering of Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, 1st Baron Pethick-Lawrence — he was a member and in fact the head of the mission. Option (b) 'A. V. Alexander' is exact and he too was a member. Option (c) 'J. Andrew' matches nobody in the mission, nobody in the Attlee Cabinet of 1946 and nobody in the constitutional negotiations of that year; the name is planted. The real name it is designed to echo is Charles Freer Andrews — C. F. Andrews, the English clergyman who persuaded Gandhi to return from South Africa and whom Gandhi named Deenabandhu — and he had died at Calcutta on 5 April 1940, six years before the mission landed, so he could not have been on it under any spelling. Option (d) therefore collapses: 'None of them' would be correct only if all three listed names had been members, and one of them plainly was not. Notice what the setter has done: the third genuine member, Cripps, is deliberately kept off the list, so you are not asked to complete the roster — only to spot the impostor in it. This paper has no official key and every answer on it is ours, derived twice; on this item the two derivations were both fully confident, and it is one of the safest questions on the paper.

• (a)P. Lawrence — He was a member, so he cannot be the answer to a 'who was NOT' question. The compressed spelling is what makes candidates hesitate: the man is Lord Pethick-Lawrence, the Labour peer who served as Attlee's Secretary of State for India from 1945 and who led the mission and chaired its talks with Congress and the Muslim League. A candidate who reads 'P. Lawrence' as an unfamiliar name and picks it has been caught by a typographical compression rather than by a fact.
• (b)A. V. Alexander — He was also a member — Albert Victor Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty, the Cabinet's political head of the Royal Navy. He is the least remembered of the three because he took the smallest part in the negotiations and left no scheme bearing his name, so a candidate working from familiarity alone tends to assume the unfamiliar-sounding minister is the outsider. Recall the offices instead of the reputations and the trap closes: India, Board of Trade, Admiralty — three departments, three ministers.
• (d)None of them — This would be the answer only if every name offered had genuinely served on the mission, and 'J. Andrew' did not. There is a second, subtler route into this trap: a candidate who firmly remembers Cripps as a member scans the list, fails to find him, concludes that the list must be defective and reaches for the catch-all. But the stem asks who among the listed names was not a member, not whether the list is complete — an incomplete list of real members is perfectly consistent with one planted name.

The Cabinet Mission of 1946 was the last British attempt to transfer power to a single undivided India. Attlee's post-war Labour government, facing a bankrupt exchequer, the Royal Indian Navy revolt of February 1946 and an army it could no longer count on, sent three of its own Cabinet ministers rather than a commission of officials — the signal being that London was negotiating, not enquiring. They arrived on 24 March 1946, spent seven weeks in talks, convened a conference at Simla in May that failed to reconcile Congress and the League, and then published their own award on 16 May 1946. It rejected a sovereign Pakistan and offered a three-tier structure instead: an all-India Union confined to defence, foreign affairs and communications, with the power to raise the finances needed for them; below it, three optional groups of provinces — Group A of Madras, Bombay, the United Provinces, Bihar, the Central Provinces and Orissa, Group B of the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan, and Group C of Bengal and Assam; and at the base the provinces, holding all residuary powers. A Constituent Assembly of 389 members was to write the constitution, and a second statement of 16 June 1946 dealt with the interim government. Elections to the 296 British Indian seats were completed by August 1946, the Congress winning 208 of them and the Muslim League 73; the interim government took office on 2 September 1946 and the Assembly first met on 9 December 1946.

This is a pure composition question, and composition questions are answered by counting offices rather than by recalling faces. The mission was named for the British Cabinet because its members held Cabinet portfolios: India, the Board of Trade, the Admiralty. Fix those three chairs and every 'who was on it' question about 1946 becomes mechanical. The discriminating move here is to notice which names in the list are real people at all. Two are — Pethick-Lawrence in an abbreviated form, and Alexander exactly. The third, 'J. Andrew', is not a person in this story; its only purchase on memory is the echo of C. F. Andrews, who belongs to a completely different chapter of the freedom struggle and who was six years dead in 1946. A useful habit follows: when a membership question offers a name you cannot place anywhere in the period, check whether the name is real before you assume your own memory has failed. Two further confusions are worth pre-empting. Cripps sat on both the 1942 Cripps Mission and the 1946 Cabinet Mission, so 'Cripps' alone never dates a question. And Lord Wavell, the Viceroy, took part in the 1946 negotiations and hosted the Simla conference, but he was not a member of the mission — he was the man it was negotiating through. Knowing what happened to the plan is worth as much as knowing who carried it: the League accepted the long-term scheme on 6 June 1946 and the Congress on 24 June, but on opposite readings of one clause. The League wanted grouping to be compulsory so that Sections B and C could harden into the future Pakistan; the Congress held that compulsory grouping contradicted provincial autonomy and was unsatisfied by the mission's clarification of 25 May that grouping would be compulsory at first with a right to opt out only after the constitution was framed and fresh elections held. Nehru, newly Congress president, told a press conference on 10 July that his party was committed only to contesting the Constituent Assembly elections and that 'the big probability is that there will be no grouping'. The League withdrew its acceptance on 29–30 July and called for Direct Action from 16 August 1946.

• The 1946 Cabinet Mission had exactly three members: Lord Pethick-Lawrence (Secretary of State for India, leader), Sir Stafford Cripps (President of the Board of Trade) and A. V. Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty)
• The mission arrived in India on 24 March 1946; its plan was published on 16 May 1946 and a further statement on the interim government followed on 16 June 1946
• The 16 May plan rejected a sovereign Pakistan and proposed a Union limited to defence, foreign affairs and communications, three optional groups of provinces (A, B and C) and residuary powers with the provinces
• The Constituent Assembly under the plan was to have 389 members — 292 from the British Indian provinces, 4 from the Chief Commissioners' provinces (Delhi, Ajmer-Merwara, Coorg, British Baluchistan) and 93 from the princely states
• Elections to the 296 British Indian seats were completed by August 1946: Congress 208, Muslim League 73, others 15; the Assembly first met on 9 December 1946 and the interim government had taken office on 2 September 1946
• C. F. Andrews (Charles Freer Andrews, 1871–1940), the 'Deenabandhu' of the option's echo, died at Calcutta on 5 April 1940 and had no connection with any 1946 mission
• Sir Stafford Cripps served on both the 1942 Cripps Mission and the 1946 Cabinet Mission, and Viceroy Lord Wavell took part in the 1946 talks without being a member of the mission

• Assuming that a name you cannot place must be someone you have forgotten — 'J. Andrew' is not a real participant, and the question is testing whether you will invent a memory for it
• Confusing C. F. Andrews, Gandhi's friend who died in 1940, with any figure of the 1946 negotiations
• Counting Lord Wavell as a fourth member because he sat through the talks; he was the Viceroy, not a member of the mission

BPSC asks the Cabinet Mission as a membership roll-call and plants a fabricated name among the real ones, so the whole item turns on recognising that a name does not exist rather than on knowing the plan. UPSC has never asked it that way: it asks what the plan contained — 2015 tested whether the mission recommended a federal government, enlarged the powers of Indian courts or provided for more Indians in the ICS, and 1996 asked which feature was not part of the plan — or how Indian leaders reacted to it, as in 1999's question on which Congress leader was wholly in favour of it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Under the Cabinet Mission Plan of 16 May 1946, which subjects were reserved for the proposed Union of India?

  • (a)Defence, foreign affairs and communications
  • (b)Defence, foreign affairs, communications and education
  • (c)All subjects except law and order
  • (d)Defence and internal security only

  Answer(a) Defence, foreign affairs and communications — with the power to raise the finances needed for them; every residuary power was left with the provinces.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Constituent Assembly envisaged by the Cabinet Mission Plan was to consist of how many members?

  • (a)296
  • (b)299
  • (c)389
  • (d)429

  Answer(c) 389 — 292 from the British Indian provinces, 4 from the Chief Commissioners' provinces and 93 from the princely states; 296 was only the number of British Indian seats actually contested.