MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 86 of 100

Correct — option (1), Lok Sabha. The first thing to see is that this question is not about Parliament. Three of the four names offered are familiar today as the names of constitutional chambers — the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha of the Union Parliament and the Vidhan Sabha of a State legislature — and none of those bodies existed at the time the question is about. The Constitution came into force on 26 January 1950 and the first Lok Sabha was constituted in 1952, whereas the All India States Peoples' Conference held its first session at Bombay in December 1927. One point about that name, since the question prints it differently: the stem calls the national body the All India States Peoples' <i>Congress</i>, while the organisation founded in 1927 was the All India States People's <b>Conference</b> — अखिल भारतीय संस्थानी प्रजा परिषद. The paper's wording is reproduced above exactly as it is printed, in both columns, and nothing in the question turns on the difference; but a reader searching for 'States Peoples' Congress' will not find the body this question is about. The question is therefore asking about an organisation working inside a princely state a full generation before independence, and the answer is a name that happens to be spelt like a modern chamber. Read in its own period, the name is transparent: the Marathi column prints it as two words, लोक सभा, and it means simply an assembly of the people. That is the family of names the people's movements of the princely states used. The All India States Peoples' Conference, when it was founded in 1927 to give those scattered movements a common platform, was a federation of bodies that were 'variously called Praja Mandals or Lok Parishads' — people's associations and people's councils — and a Kolhapur body called the Lok Sabha belongs to exactly that family. Its purpose was the standard purpose of such bodies: to place the grievances of the subjects of a princely state before its ruler and administration, in states where there was no elected legislature and no press freedom of the kind British India had won. The Kolhapur context is worth carrying with the answer. Kolhapur was the senior Maratha princely state, ruled by descendants of Shivaji through the line of Tarabai's son, and by the 1920s it had behind it the reforming reign of Shahu Maharaj, who ruled from 1894 to 1922 and had already given his subjects a reservation order in 1902 and free and compulsory primary education in 1917. It was a state, in other words, with an unusually politically awake population, which is why an organised body for the ventilation of popular grievances appeared there early. Kolhapur acceded to the Dominion of India on 14 August 1947 and was merged into Bombay State on 1 March 1949. The answer to be marked is option (1).

• (2)Rajya Sabha — The Rajya Sabha is the Council of States, the upper house of the Parliament of India, created by the Constitution and first constituted in 1952; it is a permanent body that cannot be dissolved, its members are chosen by the elected members of the State and Union Territory legislatures rather than directly by the people, and the Vice-President of India is its ex-officio Chairman. Nothing about it belongs to the world of the princely states in the 1920s. The option is included because the four names in this question are deliberately drawn from the same verbal family, so that a candidate who does not know the Kolhapur body has to guess among three chamber names and one religious society. It is worth pausing on the word sabha itself, which simply means an assembly and was used across nineteenth and twentieth century India for organisations of every description — the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha of 1870, the British Indian Association, the Bombay Presidency Association — long before the Constitution attached it to particular chambers.
• (3)Vidhan Sabha — The Vidhan Sabha is the Legislative Assembly of a State under the Constitution of India, provided for by Article 170 and elected directly by the people of the State for a term of five years unless dissolved earlier. Like the Rajya Sabha, it is a post-1950 constitutional institution and cannot have been active in Kolhapur before 1927. There is a further reason the option is wrong in principle rather than merely in date: a princely state had no legislature of this kind at all. Its ruler governed through a Dewan and an administration, with at most an advisory or nominated council, and the whole point of the praja mandal movement was that subjects of the states had neither the vote nor the representative institutions that British India had been granted in stages by the Acts of 1909, 1919 and 1935. A body raising grievances in Kolhapur was therefore necessarily an association of the people, not a chamber of a legislature.
• (4)Paropakarini Sabha — The Paropkarini Sabha is a real organisation, which is what makes it the most instructive of the wrong options, but it belongs to a different movement, a different region and a different purpose. It was founded by Swami Dayanand Saraswati, the founder of the Arya Samaj, on 16 August 1880, and was registered at Ajmer in Rajasthan in February 1883; Dayanand willed his property and his works to it, and it exists to continue his religious and educational mission, publishing his writings and maintaining institutions at Ajmer. It is a religious and philanthropic body of the Arya Samaj, not a political association of the subjects of a princely state, and it has no connection with Kolhapur. A candidate who recognises the name will recognise it correctly as Dayanand's foundation, which is precisely why it is offered here as the one plausible-looking historical organisation among three constitutional chambers.

About two-fifths of the territory of India before independence lay outside British India, in some five hundred and sixty princely states that acknowledged British paramountcy but were governed by their own rulers. The subjects of these states shared none of the political rights that were being won next door: the reforms of 1909, 1919 and 1935 applied to British India, so the states had no elected legislatures, no responsible ministries, and often no protection for the press or for public meeting. The response was the praja mandal movement — associations of the people formed inside individual states to demand civil liberties and responsible government, called by various names, among them praja mandal, praja parishad and lok parishad. The All India States Peoples' Conference was created to give these scattered bodies a common platform, and held its first session at Bombay in December 1927. The Indian National Congress kept its distance from the movement for over a decade, on the view that agitation inside the states was the states' own business, and changed course only in 1939, when Jawaharlal Nehru became president of the Conference and held that office until 1946. After independence the Conference dissolved itself on 25 April 1948 and its constituent units merged into the Congress, the sole exception being the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference. Kolhapur, the senior Maratha state and the seat of Shahu Maharaj's reforms, acceded to India on 14 August 1947 and merged into Bombay State on 1 March 1949.

MPSC's history section is built to a large extent on Maharashtra, and within Maharashtra on two things — the social reform movement and the politics of the princely states, above all Kolhapur and Baroda. Questions on the princely states almost always require a candidate to hold two levels at once: the national body and the local one. Here the national body is the All India States Peoples' Conference of 1927 and the local one is the Kolhapur organisation that preceded it, and the stem gives the national body as the anchor for the date. The question also illustrates a favourite construction of this Commission: offering options whose names are familiar from an entirely different context, so that recognition works against the candidate rather than for him. Three of these four names are chambers a schoolchild can identify, and every one of them is wrong for the same reason — they are creatures of a Constitution that would not exist for more than twenty years after the events in the stem. The habit worth building from this item is to date the options before evaluating them. Any option that names an institution created after the period in the stem can be struck out without any knowledge of the subject at all, and in this question that single test removes two of the four.

• The All India States Peoples' Conference held its first session at Bombay in December 1927 as a common platform for the people's movements of the princely states, which were variously called praja mandals or lok parishads.
• The Indian National Congress supported the states' peoples' movement only from 1939, when Jawaharlal Nehru became president of the Conference and served until 1946; the Conference dissolved itself on 25 April 1948 and its units merged into the Congress.
• The princely states had no elected legislatures and their subjects had none of the political rights extended to British India by the reforms of 1909, 1919 and 1935, which is why associations of the people were formed inside them to voice grievances.
• Kolhapur was the senior Maratha princely state, ruled by descendants of Shivaji, and had behind it the reforming reign of Shahu Maharaj from 1894 to 1922, including the reservation order of 1902 and free and compulsory primary education from 1917.
• Kolhapur acceded to the Dominion of India on 14 August 1947 and was merged into Bombay State on 1 March 1949; the former state's boundaries correspond closely to the modern Kolhapur district of Maharashtra.

• Reading the option 'Lok Sabha' as the lower house of Parliament, which was first constituted in 1952 and cannot have existed in a princely state before 1927
• Failing to date the options against the period given in the stem, which alone removes both Rajya Sabha and Vidhan Sabha without any knowledge of Kolhapur
• Confusing the Paropkarini Sabha, Dayanand Saraswati's foundation of 1880 registered at Ajmer, with a political organisation of the princely states
• Assuming that a princely state had a legislature of the modern kind; it had a ruler and an administration, and popular grievances had to be carried by voluntary associations

The politics of the princely states is examined in MPSC papers through names and dates rather than through argument: which organisation worked in which state, when the All India States Peoples' Conference was founded and where, who presided over it in a given year, when a named state acceded or merged, and which reform is associated with which ruler. Kolhapur and Baroda appear more often than any other states because both had reforming rulers whose measures are part of the Maharashtra social-reform syllabus. The Commission also builds questions of this shape, in which the options are names rather than descriptions, so that the candidate must recognise a name rather than reason from a principle; the defence is to date each option before judging it, since an institution that did not exist in the period of the stem is wrong regardless of anything else. A candidate preparing this area should keep a short list of the states of the Deccan with their rulers, their people's organisations and their dates of merger.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The All India States Peoples' Conference, which gave a common platform to the people's movements of the princely states, held its first session in which year and at which place ?

  • (a)1919, at Amritsar
  • (b)1927, at Bombay
  • (c)1938, at Haripura
  • (d)1946, at Udaipur

  Answer(b) 1927, at Bombay. The Conference federated the bodies that had grown up inside individual princely states, variously called praja mandals or lok parishads, and pressed for civil liberties and responsible government in the states. The Indian National Congress held aloof from it until 1939, when Jawaharlal Nehru became its president and held the office until 1946; after independence the Conference dissolved itself on 25 April 1948 and its units merged into the Congress, the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference alone remaining separate.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Paropkarini Sabha, sometimes offered as a distractor in questions on Maharashtra's princely states, was founded by whom and is associated with which place ?

  • (a)Mahadev Govind Ranade, and Pune
  • (b)Swami Dayanand Saraswati, and Ajmer
  • (c)Shahu Maharaj, and Kolhapur
  • (d)Jyotirao Phule, and Bombay

  Answer(b) Swami Dayanand Saraswati, and Ajmer. The founder of the Arya Samaj established the Paropkarini Sabha on 16 August 1880 and it was registered at Ajmer in February 1883; he willed his property and his works to it, and it continues his religious and educational mission from that city. It has no connection with Kolhapur or with the movements of the subjects of the princely states, and a candidate who recognises the name will be able to eliminate it at once.