Consider the following statements : The arrival of Babur into India led to the
1. introduction of gunpowder in the subcontinent
2. introduction of arch and dome in the region’s architecture
3. establi

Question

Consider the following statements : The arrival of Babur into India led to the
1. introduction of gunpowder in the subcontinent
2. introduction of arch and dome in the region’s architecture
3. establishment of Timurid dynasty in the region
4. introduction of cannons in warfare
Which of the above statements are correct?

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — C, 3 and 4. Take the two false statements first, because they decide the question. Statement 2 is refuted by Babur's own memoir. Four days after Panipat, on Wednesday 13 Rajab, he went sightseeing in Delhi and recorded it: 'I made the circuit of Khwaja Qutbu'd-din's tomb and visited the tombs and residences of Sl. Ghiyasu'd-din Balban and Sl. 'Alau'u'd-din Khilji, his Minar, and the Hauz-shamsi, Hauz-i-khas and the tombs and gardens of Sl. Buhlul and Sl. Sikandar.' Every one of those is an arcuated, domed Sultanate monument that was standing before he arrived, and ASI protects the whole ensemble to this day — the Qutb archaeological area is listed as including the mosque, the Iron Pillar, the Minar of Qutbu'd-din, the tomb of Altamash, the buildings of Alau'd-Din and the Alai Darwaza, while Balban's tomb has its own entry in Lado Sarai. True arch-and-dome construction entered the subcontinent with the Delhi Sultanate from the late twelfth century, and Balban's tomb is conventionally cited for the earliest true arch in India. A ruler cannot introduce what he tours as a visitor. Statement 1 fails for the same kind of reason: gunpowder weapons were in Indian use through the fifteenth century in the Bahmani, Gujarat and Malwa sultanates, and the Portuguese had been fighting a cannon war in Indian waters since the first decade of the sixteenth century. Statement 3 is straightforwardly true — Babur was a Timurid prince descended from Timur, and his victory at Panipat in April 1526 planted that line on the throne of Delhi as the dynasty we call Mughal. Statement 4 is what BPSC added to the UPSC original, and it is true in the sense the paper intends: the Baburnama records that 'seven hundred carts (araba) were brought in' and that the order to Ustad Ali-quli was that they 'should be joined together in Ottoman fashion, but using ropes of raw hide instead of chains, and that between every two carts 5 or 6 mantelets should be fixed, behind which the matchlockmen were to stand to fire'; in the battle itself Ustad Ali-quli 'made good discharge of firingi shots' while Mustafa the commissary fired zarb-zan from the left of the centre. That integrated use of field artillery behind a fortified cart-line is what changed Indian warfare. With 1 and 2 out and 3 in, only option (c) survives.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Selects precisely the two statements that are false and drops the one that is unarguably true. It is the answer of a candidate running on the popular story that the Mughals brought both firearms and Islamic architecture to India — when in fact both had arrived with earlier dynasties, and what the Mughals actually brought was a new scale and a new refinement of each. The clue that should stop this choice is that it excludes statement 3, and no reading of Babur's career makes him not a Timurid.  (b) Correctly keeps the Timurid statement but carries the two false ones with it. This is the most-marked wrong option on questions of this family, because statement 3 feels so secure that a candidate stops evaluating once it is in and 'all the plausible ones' becomes the default. It is also the option a candidate lands on if they take 'introduction' loosely, in the sense of 'made much greater use of' — which is true of Babur but is not what the word says.  (d) Cannot stand, because statement 3 is not in dispute on any reading — Babur was a fifth-generation descendant of Timur, was descended from Chinggis Khan on his mother's side, and the dynasty he founded at Delhi in 1526 is a Timurid house. Any option that excludes statement 3 is eliminable before the harder statements about gunpowder and architecture have even been examined, which is why the question is really a two-way choice between (b) and (c).

Concept: Babur, born 1483, was a Timurid prince of Farghana who lost Samarkand more than once, took Kabul in 1504, and turned towards Hindustan only after repeated failures in Central Asia. He was descended from Timur on his father's side and from Chinggis Khan on his mother's, which is why the house he founded is properly Timurid and only loosely 'Mughal', a name that derives from 'Mongol'. His four Indian battles — Panipat against Ibrahim Lodi in 1526, Khanwa against Rana Sanga in 1527, Chanderi in 1528 and the Ghaghra against the eastern Afghans in 1529 — were all won by the same method: a defensive centre of carts and mantelets bristling with matchlocks and light guns, with mobile cavalry wheeling round the enemy flanks in the tulughma manoeuvre. The technique itself was Ottoman, learned second-hand and delivered by two specialists whose names Babur records, Ustad Ali-quli and Mustafa Rumi, and at Khanwa he says plainly that 'we imitated the ghazis of Rum'. He died at Agra in 1530 having ruled India less than five years, and left the Baburnama, one of the very few autobiographies written by the founder of an Indian dynasty and a source unusually candid about what he found in India and what he thought of it. His own building in India was modest and survives: ASI protects the Kabuli Bagh Mosque with its enclosure wall at Panipat, and the site of Ibrahim Lodi's tomb stands in the same town.

State PCS 2023 Q64 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2023 Q64 — History PYQ with Answer