Which of the following State was not annexed under Lord Dalhousie's Doctrine of Lapse ?

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Correct — C, Jaipur. Lord Dalhousie was Governor-General from 1848 to 1856, and the Doctrine of Lapse was his instrument for absorbing dependent princely States. Its rule was that where a ruler under British paramountcy died without a natural heir, the State lapsed to the Company, because adoption of an heir required the sanction of the paramount power and that sanction would now be withheld. Applied over eight years it took in Satara in 1848, Jaitpur and Sambalpur in 1849, Baghat in 1850, Udaipur in 1852, Jhansi in 1853 and Nagpur in 1854 — a substantial share of the map, and the grievance that put Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi and Nana Saheb, whose adoptive pension was stopped on the same principle, into the revolt of 1857. Three of the four options are on that list: Satara was the first and the model case, Sambalpur followed the year after, and Nagpur was the largest of them. Jaipur is the odd one out and was never annexed at all. It was a Rajput State of the Rajputana agency, in subsidiary alliance with the British since a treaty of 1818, and it remained a princely State with its own ruler right through the colonial period, acceding to the Indian Union in 1947 and being merged into the new State of Rajasthan in 1949 — with Jaipur city becoming that State's capital. Two things kept Rajputana out of Dalhousie's net: those States were allies under treaty rather than dependencies created by the Company, and their rulers had heirs. Note also that Dalhousie's annexation of Awadh in 1856, the one most resented of all, was NOT made under the Doctrine of Lapse but on the separate ground of alleged misgovernment.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Sambalpur, in what is now western Odisha, was annexed in 1849 — the second year of Dalhousie's application of the doctrine, alongside Jaitpur. Its raja died without a natural heir and the State passed to the Company. Its unfamiliarity compared with Jhansi or Nagpur is what makes it a plausible thing to strike out, and it is exactly why the option is here.  (b) The first State taken under the doctrine, in 1848, and the case that established the pattern. Satara was the rump Maratha State created for the Chhatrapati's line after the Peshwa's defeat in 1818; when its ruler died leaving an adopted son, the Company refused to recognise the adoption and annexed it.  (d) Annexed in 1854, the largest acquisition made under the doctrine — the Bhonsle Maratha kingdom of Nagpur, whose territory became the core of the Central Provinces. The famous auction of the Nagpur palace effects in Calcutta, jewels and all, became one of the most quoted grievances of the period.

Concept: Dalhousie's eight years were the most aggressive expansion in the Company's Indian history, and the Doctrine of Lapse was only one of three routes he used. States lapsed for want of a natural heir; States were annexed outright by conquest, as Punjab was in 1849 after the Second Anglo-Sikh War and Lower Burma after the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852; and States were taken for alleged misgovernment, which is how Awadh went in 1856. Alongside that came the abolition of titles and pensions — the Nawab of Carnatic's and the Raja of Tanjore's titles were extinguished, Nana Saheb's pension as the Peshwa's adopted heir was stopped, and the Mughal emperor's family was told it must leave the Red Fort. The same Governor-General also introduced the railway, the electric telegraph, a uniform postal rate and the Public Works Department, and gave effect to Wood's Despatch of 1854 on education, so his record is a genuine mixture of modernisation and expropriation.

State PCS 2025 Q20 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q20 — History PYQ with Answer