EPFO EO/AO 2023 General Ability Test · Question 64 of 120

Correct — B, (b) A.J. Wilson. The booklet prints the 'not' of the stem in bold italic, and it is doing real work: the question asks which of the four names was NOT on the committee, so three of the options are right about the committee and only the odd one out can be marked. The body the stem describes is the Indian States Committee, universally called the Butler Committee after its chairman. Lord Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India, appointed it in 1927 to report on the relationship between the Indian States and the paramount power, and on the financial and economic relations between the States and British India. It had exactly three members, and all three are on this option list: Sir Harcourt Butler as chairman, William Searle Holdsworth, and Sidney Peel — printed here as S.C. Peel. The committee visited sixteen States and reported in 1929. That leaves A.J. Wilson, who was not a member of it. Because the committee was so small, this item is answerable with certainty rather than by elimination: three names is a list short enough to hold, and once you know it is Butler, Holdsworth and Peel, the fourth name on any option list is the answer whatever it happens to be. It is worth knowing what the committee concluded, because the same three names carry the conclusions. The 1929 report reaffirmed paramountcy and set out guidelines for applying it; it described the relationship between the Crown and the States as not a merely contractual one but a living relationship resting on history as much as on theory; it said the financial relationship between the Raj and the States should be fair; and — the recommendation that mattered most politically — that the States should not be transferred without their own consent to a relationship with a new government in British India responsible to an Indian legislature. That last point set the princes against the emerging federal scheme and is why the Butler Committee is taught alongside the Round Table Conferences and the federal provisions of the Government of India Act, 1935.

• (a)Harcourt Butler — He WAS a member — he was the chairman, and the committee is named after him. Sir Harcourt Butler was a senior officer of the Indian Civil Service whose name attaches to this inquiry so firmly that most textbooks call it the Butler Committee rather than by its formal name, the Indian States Committee. On a 'who was not a member' stem the chairman is the one name that can never be the answer, which makes this option the safest of the three to strike out.
• (c)W.S. Holdsworth — He WAS a member. William Searle Holdsworth was one of the two members appointed alongside Butler. His presence tells you what kind of inquiry this was: the question referred to the committee — what paramountcy means, and what the Crown's relationship with the States rests on — was a question of constitutional law before it was a question of policy, and the committee was built to answer it as one.
• (d)S.C. Peel — He WAS a member. This is Sidney Peel, the third man on the committee with Butler and Holdsworth. The initials as printed make him easy to mistake for someone else, and a candidate who remembers only 'Butler and two others' will often strike this option out for that reason alone. The committee's membership is short enough to learn as a list, and doing so is the whole defence against this question.

About two-fifths of India by area lay outside British India, in some five hundred princely States bound to the Crown not by statute but by treaties, engagements and usage, over which the Crown exercised an undefined authority called paramountcy. By the 1920s that undefined quality had become a problem for both sides: the princes wanted to know the limits of the power that could be exercised over them, and the British needed to know what would happen to those relationships if British India moved towards responsible self-government. Lord Birkenhead's answer in 1927 was the Indian States Committee — Butler, Holdsworth and Peel — which visited sixteen States and reported in 1929. It reaffirmed paramountcy rather than defining it away; it insisted that the relationship was with the Crown and was a living one shaped by history and circumstance rather than a contract to be read off a document; it asked for fairness in the financial relations between the Raj and the States; and it held that a State could not be transferred to a new government in British India responsible to an Indian legislature without its own consent. The last holding is the reason the federation contemplated by the Government of India Act, 1935 could never be brought into being: it depended on the accession of the princely States, and the princes had been told they need not accede.

The EO/AO history block likes committees and commissions, and it asks about them in the two forms this question uses — who appointed it, and who sat on it. Committees with very short memberships are the natural material for a 'who was not a member' item, because the examiner can be certain the answer is unarguable. The habit rewarded is learning each inquiry as a small dossier: the year, the Secretary of State or Viceroy who appointed it, the members, the terms of reference and the one recommendation that changed something.

• The Indian States Committee, better known as the Butler Committee, was appointed in 1927 by Lord Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India, to report on the relationship between the Indian States and the paramount power.
• It had three members: Sir Harcourt Butler as chairman, William Searle Holdsworth and Sidney Peel.
• The committee visited sixteen States and submitted its report in 1929.
• The report reaffirmed paramountcy and gave guidelines for its application, rather than defining or limiting it.
• It described the relationship between the Crown and the States as a living, growing relationship resting on history and theory, not a merely contractual one.
• It held that the States should not be transferred without their own consent to a relationship with a new government in British India responsible to an Indian legislature.
• It also said the financial relationship between the Raj and the States should be fair — the economic limb of the terms of reference the stem quotes.

• Answering the positive question. The 'not' is in bold italic in the booklet; three of these four names ARE members.
• Confusing the Butler Committee with the Simon Commission. Both were appointed in 1927 by Birkenhead, but Simon looked at the constitution of British India and Butler at the States.
• Reading the committee's report as a limitation on paramountcy. It reaffirmed paramountcy; what it limited was the transfer of the States to a self-governing British India.
• Assuming a large membership. The committee had three members, which is exactly why the question can be asked this way.

Commission and committee questions in EO/AO come in three shapes — the year and appointing authority, the membership, and the single recommendation with consequences. This paper's history block prefers the second, and builds the option list by adding one invented or unconnected name to a real membership. The defence is to know the real list exactly; elimination alone will not settle it.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Butler Committee of 1927 was appointed to enquire into the relationship between :

  • (a)The Government of India and the provincial governments
  • (b)The Indian States and the British Government
  • (c)The Secretary of State and the India Council
  • (d)The Central Legislature and the Viceroy's Executive Council

  Answer(b) The Indian States and the British Government

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following was a recommendation of the Butler Committee report of 1929 ?

  • (a)Paramountcy should be abolished and replaced by written treaties
  • (b)The Indian States should be merged into the adjoining British Indian provinces
  • (c)The States should not be transferred without their consent to a government in British India responsible to an Indian legislature
  • (d)The Chamber of Princes should be given legislative powers over the States

  Answer(c) The States should not be transferred without their consent to a government in British India responsible to an Indian legislature