Consider the following Jat peasant leaders of 17th and early 18th centuries: 1. Badan Singh 2. Raja Ram Jat 3. Gokula Jat 4. Churaman Jat Which one of the following is the correct chronological order of the above leaders?

Correct — A, 3-2-4-1. The four leaders follow one another in an unbroken line of Jat resistance around Mathura and Agra. Gokula, a headman of Tilpat, led the rising of 1669 against Aurangzeb's revenue exactions and was executed at Agra the following year. Raja Ram took up the revolt from 1685 and was killed in 1688; the plundering of Akbar's tomb at Sikandra belongs to his years. Churaman, his nephew, built the resistance into something like a state, holding out from the fortress of Thun until his death in 1721. Badan Singh, who followed, consolidated that territory and founded the ruling house of Bharatpur, later raised to its height by his successor Suraj Mal. So the order runs Gokula, Raja Ram, Churaman, Badan Singh, which is 3-2-4-1.

• (b)1-2-3-4 — The order as printed in the list, which reverses the sequence almost exactly — Badan Singh is the last of the four, not the first.
• (c)3-4-1-2 — Starts correctly with Gokula but then jumps to Churaman, leaving Raja Ram out of the 1680s where he belongs.
• (d)2-3-1-4 — Puts Raja Ram before Gokula, which inverts the two earliest risings, and strands Badan Singh in the middle.

Jat resistance in the Agra-Mathura region ran for more than half a century and changed character as it went. It began as a peasant revolt against revenue demands and the conduct of local officials, hardened into armed raiding during the years when Mughal authority in the Doab was thinning, and ended as a territorial principality — Bharatpur — with forts, revenue and a standing force. The same trajectory can be traced among the Satnamis and the Sikhs in the same decades.

Chronology questions of this kind are best anchored at the ends rather than worked through in order. Gokula belongs to Aurangzeb's reign and is the earliest by a wide margin; Badan Singh belongs to the 1720s and after, when the empire was already breaking up. Fixing 3 first and 1 last leaves only one option standing, and Raja Ram and Churaman fall into place between them.

• Gokula led the rising of 1669 at Tilpat and was executed in 1670.
• Raja Ram led the revolt from 1685 until his death in 1688.
• Churaman consolidated Jat power from the fort of Thun and died in 1721.
• Badan Singh, from 1722, founded the Bharatpur ruling house.
• Suraj Mal, Badan Singh's successor, took Bharatpur to its greatest extent and built the fort at Bharatpur and the gardens at Deeg.

• Reading the numbered list as though it were already chronological.
• Placing Badan Singh early because his name opens the list.

A chronology item best solved by fixing the two ends rather than sequencing all four.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Jat revolt of 1669 at Tilpat was led by

  • (a)Gokula
  • (b)Raja Ram
  • (c)Churaman
  • (d)Badan Singh

  Answer(a) Gokula — he was captured and executed at Agra in 1670.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The ruling house of Bharatpur was founded by

  • (a)Churaman
  • (b)Badan Singh
  • (c)Suraj Mal
  • (d)Raja Ram

  Answer(b) Badan Singh — his successor Suraj Mal then took the state to its greatest extent.