Match List – I of leaders with List – II of their territory and select answer from the code given below :
List – I List – II
a. Kunwar Singh i. Faizabad
b. Hazrat Mahal

Question

Match List – I of leaders with List – II of their territory and select answer from the code given below :
List – I                    List – II
a. Kunwar Singh        i. Faizabad
b. Hazrat Mahal        ii. Bareilly
c. Khan Bahadur        iii. Jagdishpur
d. Maulvi Ahmadullah        iv. Lucknow
Code :
     a     b     c     d

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, iii iv ii i. Take the pairs one at a time. Kunwar Singh was the ruler of the Jagdishpur estate in the Bhojpur region of Bihar and organised the revolt from there — he is item iii. Begum Hazrat Mahal, the junior wife of the exiled Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, made her son Birjis Qadr the ruler of Awadh with herself as regent and led the rising at Lucknow — item iv. Khan Bahadur Khan, a grandson of Hafiz Rahmat Khan of Rohilkhand, formed a government at Bareilly and even issued silver coin there — item ii. Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah is known to history simply as the Maulvi of Faizabad and was described as the lighthouse of the rebellion in Awadh — item i. That gives a-iii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i, which is exactly code (a). The other codes fail immediately at the first pair and there is no need to check them further: code (b) puts Kunwar Singh at Lucknow and code (c) puts him at Bareilly, when he belongs to Jagdishpur and nowhere else. Since a consistent and complete matching exists, option (d) 'None of the above' cannot stand. The Bihar detail is worth holding: Kunwar Singh was roughly eighty when he took the field, won an engagement near Jagdishpur on 23 April 1858 and died in his village three days later, on 26 April 1858.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Assigns Kunwar Singh to Lucknow and Maulvi Ahmadullah to Jagdishpur, swapping the Bihar leader with the Awadh ones. It gets Khan Bahadur and Bareilly right, which is what makes it survive a careless glance — but a matching code is wrong the moment any one pair is wrong, so a single check on the first item disposes of it.  (c) Puts Kunwar Singh at Bareilly, Hazrat Mahal at Faizabad, Khan Bahadur at Jagdishpur and the Maulvi at Lucknow — every pair displaced. It is the option for a candidate who recognises all four names and all four places but has attached none of them to each other.  (d) On a matching question this option is correct only when no offered code reproduces the true pairing. Here code (a) does, pair for pair, so 'None of the above' fails. The efficient method is to establish two pairs you are certain of, eliminate every code that contradicts them, and only then check whether anything is left.

Concept: The Revolt of 1857 had no single command, and that is why it is examined as a map of centres and leaders. Delhi had Bahadur Shah Zafar as its nominal head with Bakht Khan commanding; Kanpur had Nana Sahib with Tantia Tope; Jhansi had Rani Lakshmibai; Lucknow had Begum Hazrat Mahal in the name of her son Birjis Qadr; Faizabad produced Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah, who carried the fighting across Awadh; Bareilly had Khan Bahadur Khan at the head of a Rohilla government; and Bihar had Kunwar Singh at Jagdishpur. Each centre had its own social base — a deposed dynasty here, a landholding elite there, a religious preacher elsewhere — and that fragmentation is one of the standard explanations for the rising's failure, alongside British military superiority and the absence of a common programme. The Bihar theatre is the part a state paper will press hardest: Arrah, the siege and its relief by Vincent Eyre in August 1857, the destruction of Jagdishpur, Kunwar Singh's long campaign across the Ganga and his return home to die in April 1858.

State PCS 2025 Q127 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q127 — History PYQ with Answer