BPSC 70th CCE Re-exam Prelims General Studies · Question 127 of 142

Correct — A, iii iv ii i. Take the pairs one at a time. Kunwar Singh was the ruler of the Jagdishpur estate in the Bhojpur region of Bihar and organised the revolt from there — he is item iii. Begum Hazrat Mahal, the junior wife of the exiled Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, made her son Birjis Qadr the ruler of Awadh with herself as regent and led the rising at Lucknow — item iv. Khan Bahadur Khan, a grandson of Hafiz Rahmat Khan of Rohilkhand, formed a government at Bareilly and even issued silver coin there — item ii. Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah is known to history simply as the Maulvi of Faizabad and was described as the lighthouse of the rebellion in Awadh — item i. That gives a-iii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i, which is exactly code (a). The other codes fail immediately at the first pair and there is no need to check them further: code (b) puts Kunwar Singh at Lucknow and code (c) puts him at Bareilly, when he belongs to Jagdishpur and nowhere else. Since a consistent and complete matching exists, option (d) 'None of the above' cannot stand. The Bihar detail is worth holding: Kunwar Singh was roughly eighty when he took the field, won an engagement near Jagdishpur on 23 April 1858 and died in his village three days later, on 26 April 1858.

• (b)iv i ii iii — Assigns Kunwar Singh to Lucknow and Maulvi Ahmadullah to Jagdishpur, swapping the Bihar leader with the Awadh ones. It gets Khan Bahadur and Bareilly right, which is what makes it survive a careless glance — but a matching code is wrong the moment any one pair is wrong, so a single check on the first item disposes of it.
• (c)ii i iii iv — Puts Kunwar Singh at Bareilly, Hazrat Mahal at Faizabad, Khan Bahadur at Jagdishpur and the Maulvi at Lucknow — every pair displaced. It is the option for a candidate who recognises all four names and all four places but has attached none of them to each other.
• (d)None of the above — On a matching question this option is correct only when no offered code reproduces the true pairing. Here code (a) does, pair for pair, so 'None of the above' fails. The efficient method is to establish two pairs you are certain of, eliminate every code that contradicts them, and only then check whether anything is left.

The Revolt of 1857 had no single command, and that is why it is examined as a map of centres and leaders. Delhi had Bahadur Shah Zafar as its nominal head with Bakht Khan commanding; Kanpur had Nana Sahib with Tantia Tope; Jhansi had Rani Lakshmibai; Lucknow had Begum Hazrat Mahal in the name of her son Birjis Qadr; Faizabad produced Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah, who carried the fighting across Awadh; Bareilly had Khan Bahadur Khan at the head of a Rohilla government; and Bihar had Kunwar Singh at Jagdishpur. Each centre had its own social base — a deposed dynasty here, a landholding elite there, a religious preacher elsewhere — and that fragmentation is one of the standard explanations for the rising's failure, alongside British military superiority and the absence of a common programme. The Bihar theatre is the part a state paper will press hardest: Arrah, the siege and its relief by Vincent Eyre in August 1857, the destruction of Jagdishpur, Kunwar Singh's long campaign across the Ganga and his return home to die in April 1858.

Matching questions are won by economy. Do not attempt all four pairs: find the one or two you are surest of, and use them as a filter. Here the safest anchor is Kunwar Singh, whose association with Jagdishpur is the single most examined fact of 1857 in Bihar — and that anchor alone kills codes (b) and (c), because both move him elsewhere. If two codes had survived, the next anchor would be the Maulvi of Faizabad, whose place is embedded in the name by which he is known. The general habit worth building is to store 1857 as a table of centre and leader rather than as a narrative, and to note which leaders are known by their place — the Maulvi of Faizabad, the Rani of Jhansi, the Nawab of Farrukhabad — because in those cases the pairing is carried inside the name itself.

• Kunwar Singh was the ruler of the Jagdishpur estate in the Bhojpur region of Bihar and organised the revolt there; he won an engagement near Jagdishpur on 23 April 1858 and died on 26 April 1858
• Begum Hazrat Mahal, junior wife of Wajid Ali Shah, made her son Birjis Qadr ruler of Awadh with herself as regent and led the rising at Lucknow; she later took asylum in Nepal, where she died in 1879
• Khan Bahadur Khan, grandson of Hafiz Rahmat Khan of Rohilkhand, formed a government at Bareilly during the rebellion and issued silver coins there
• Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah, known as the Maulvi of Faizabad, was called the lighthouse of the rebellion in Awadh; a reward of 50,000 was announced for his capture and he was killed in 1858
• In Bihar the revolt centred on Arrah and Jagdishpur; Major Vincent Eyre relieved Arrah on 3 August 1857 and destroyed Jagdishpur

• Attempting all four pairs in a matching question instead of using one certain pair to eliminate codes
• Confusing the two Awadh leaders — Hazrat Mahal belongs to Lucknow, Ahmadullah Shah to Faizabad, and both operated across the same region
• Assuming 'None of the above' is safe on a match list; it is correct only if no code reproduces the true pairing

BPSC sets 1857 as a matching exercise with a Bihar leader planted in the list, so the Bihar pairing is the one that must be automatic. UPSC asks the same material as single-fact questions — which state Kunwar Singh belonged to, which territory was not affected by the revolt — so the table of centres and leaders serves both, with the state paper demanding the whole table and the central one any single cell of it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Who led the revolt of 1857 at Bareilly ?

  • (a)Bakht Khan
  • (b)Khan Bahadur Khan
  • (c)Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah
  • (d)Nana Sahib

  Answer(b) Khan Bahadur Khan — grandson of Hafiz Rahmat Khan, who set up a government at Bareilly; Bakht Khan commanded at Delhi and Nana Sahib at Kanpur.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The 1857 revolt in Bihar was led from Jagdishpur by

  • (a)Amar Singh
  • (b)Kunwar Singh
  • (c)Peer Ali Khan
  • (d)Waris Ali

  Answer(b) Kunwar Singh — the octogenarian ruler of the Jagdishpur estate in Bhojpur, who died on 26 April 1858 days after a victory near his home; his brother Amar Singh carried on the struggle afterwards.