MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 14 of 100

Correct — option (4), 'All of the above'. Note first that this question prints only THREE statements, not the usual four, so the escape option here means i, ii and iii together and nothing more. Each of the three holds. Statement i places the impulse: the Bhil country of the Satpura and Vindhya tracts lay across the routes that connected the Deccan with central and northern India, news of the sepoy risings of 1857 travelled down them, and the Bhils of that division took their cue from what was happening in the north. Statement ii names the two leaders. Bhagoji Naik, a Bhil who had served in the British-officered Bhil corps in the Ahmadnagar district before turning against the government, raised the country in the Nashik and Ahmadnagar tract; Kajising Naik — the same man appears in the records as Khaja Naik and Kazi Singh — had likewise been employed by the government to guard the Bombay-Agra road in Khandesh and had grievances of his own, and he took the opening that 1857 offered. His kinsman Bhima Naik of Barwani rose with him, and between them the hill country between the Vindhyas and the Satpuras passed out of British control for a time. Statement iii describes what such a rising attacked: the visible apparatus of an alien administration in a district — its treasuries and its posts along the great road — and the paper records Kajising and his associates burning government treasuries and post offices. Since all three statements stand, the answer is the option that takes all three. It is worth adding that the Khandesh rising was not a sudden loyalty transferred from the sepoys: the Bhils had risen repeatedly from the 1810s onwards as British forest, revenue and police arrangements closed in on them, and 1857 supplied an opportunity rather than a cause.

• (1)i and ii — This option accepts the inspiration from the north and the joining of the revolt by the two leaders but drops statement iii, the attack on treasuries and post offices. There is no ground for dropping it: a rising of this kind is known precisely by what it destroyed, and the destruction of the treasury and of the government's communications is the standard record of the Khandesh disturbances. A candidate arrives here by treating the third statement as too specific to be safe, which is a common instinct in combination questions and a costly one. The right test is not whether a statement is detailed but whether anything in it contradicts what is known, and nothing here does.
• (2)ii and iii — This option keeps the two statements about the leaders and their actions but discards statement i, which supplies the context that makes the rest intelligible. The Satpura Bhils' rising was not an isolated local affair; it belongs to the year 1857 precisely because the uprising in the north created the conditions for it, and the second statement of this very question says as much when it speaks of taking advantage of the revolt of 1857. Rejecting statement i while accepting statement ii is therefore internally inconsistent, since the second depends on the first. Checking a combination answer for internal consistency is one of the quickest ways to eliminate an option.
• (3)i and iii — This option accepts the inspiration and the burning of treasuries and post offices but rejects the statement that names Bhagoji Naik and Kajising Naik as having joined the revolt — which leaves the burning without anyone to do it, since statement iii itself begins with Kajising's name. That is the internal contradiction that condemns the option. Both men are well attested: Bhagoji Naik in the Nashik and Ahmadnagar country and Kajising Naik, also written Khaja Naik, in Khandesh, both of them former servants of the government who turned against it. A candidate choosing this option has probably failed to recognise the unfamiliar transliterations of the two names and has struck the statement he could not verify.

The Bhils are among the largest tribal communities of western India, and their country lies in the hills of the Satpura and Vindhya ranges and the Khandesh plain between them. Their resistance to outside authority begins long before 1857: risings are recorded from the second decade of the nineteenth century, as first Maratha and then British administration pressed on them through forest regulation, revenue demands and the policing of the roads. The British response combined force with recruitment, raising Bhil corps under British officers to police the very tracts from which the men were drawn — which is why several leaders of later risings, Bhagoji Naik and Kajising Naik among them, had first served the government. In 1857 that arrangement broke down. The revolt in the north offered an opportunity, and risings followed in Khandesh and the neighbouring hill country, attacking treasuries, government establishments and the Bombay-Agra road, with Bhima Naik of Barwani joining Kajising in the Vindhya-Satpura tract while Bhagoji Naik raised the Nashik and Ahmadnagar country. The risings were suppressed within a year or two, but they matter to Maharashtra's history because they show that the events of 1857 in the west were tribal and agrarian as much as they were military.

MPSC gives tribal and peasant risings a place in its Maharashtra history section that an all-India paper would not, and 1857 in western India is asked about through Bhil and Koli leaders as often as through sepoy regiments. The format used here — a short statement list with an 'all of the above' option at the end — is common, and the escape option is genuinely available in this paper, which offers it ten times across four hundred choices. Being offered is not evidence of being keyed, and the option has to be earned statement by statement; but nor should it be avoided out of suspicion, which is the more common error. The technique that decides this question is to test the statements against each other for consistency: statement ii speaks of taking advantage of the revolt of 1857, which presupposes statement i, and statement iii names the leader introduced in statement ii, so the three are interlocking rather than independent. When a list interlocks like that, an option that admits one member while rejecting another it depends on can usually be struck at sight.

• This question prints only three statements, labelled i to iii, so the option 'All of the above' means exactly those three and nothing more.
• Bhagoji Naik had served in a British-officered Bhil corps in the Ahmadnagar district before turning against the government and raising the Nashik and Ahmadnagar country during 1857.
• Kajising Naik, who appears in the records also as Khaja Naik and as Kazi Singh, had been employed to guard the Bombay-Agra road in Khandesh and rose in 1857; his kinsman Bhima Naik of Barwani rose with him.
• The Bhil country of the Satpura and Vindhya tracts lay across the routes between the Deccan and northern India, so news of the sepoy risings reached it quickly and gave the Khandesh Bhils their opening.
• Bhil resistance long predates 1857 — risings are recorded from the second decade of the nineteenth century as forest, revenue and policing regulations extended over their hill tracts — so 1857 supplied an occasion rather than a cause.

• Assuming every statement list has four items when this one prints only three, so that 'all of the above' here means exactly i, ii and iii
• Rejecting a statement merely because it is specific; detail is not evidence of falsity, and the treasury and post office attacks are what such risings are recorded for
• Failing to notice that the three statements interlock, so that accepting one while rejecting another it depends on is internally inconsistent
• Striking a statement because a name in it is unfamiliar in transliteration; Kajising Naik also appears in the records as Khaja Naik and as Kazi Singh

Tribal risings come to MPSC as statement-combination questions of exactly this shape, with three or four short claims and an option offering all of them. The Commission draws heavily on Maharashtra's own risings — Bhil, Koli, Ramoshi — and on the western Indian face of 1857, which an all-India syllabus treats only briefly. Names are transliterated inconsistently from Marathi, so the same leader may appear in two spellings across two papers, and recognition must be tolerant. Expect also the reverse format, in which a leader is named and the region or the year must be supplied. A candidate who holds a short list of Maharashtra risings with leader, region, decade and grievance attached will find this family of questions among the most reliably scored in the paper.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Bhil leader who had earlier served in a British-officered Bhil corps and afterwards raised the country of the Nashik and Ahmadnagar districts in 1857 was which of the following ?

  • (a)Bhima Naik
  • (b)Bhagoji Naik
  • (c)Kajising Naik
  • (d)Umaji Naik

  Answer(b) Bhagoji Naik — he had served in the government's Bhil corps before turning against it, and led the rising in the Nashik and Ahmadnagar tract during 1857. Kajising Naik, also written Khaja Naik, and his kinsman Bhima Naik of Barwani led the disturbances in Khandesh and the Vindhya-Satpura country, while Umaji Naik belongs to the earlier Ramoshi rising of the 1820s.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Bhil risings of the nineteenth century in western India were directed principally against which of the following ?

  • (a)The permanent settlement of land revenue
  • (b)Forest, revenue and policing regulations that closed in on their hill tracts
  • (c)The recruitment of tribal soldiers into the Bengal army
  • (d)The introduction of the ryotwari system in Bengal

  Answer(b) Forest, revenue and policing regulations that closed in on their hill tracts — the Bhils rose repeatedly from the 1810s onwards as first Maratha and then British administration extended control over the forests, the revenue and the roads of the Satpura and Khandesh country. The permanent settlement belongs to Bengal and Bihar, and the ryotwari system was introduced in the Madras and Bombay presidencies, not in Bengal.