What demands did the British Indian Association make to the British Parliament in 1853 AD on the occasion of the renewal of the Charter Act ?
(a) The Legislature, Executive and Judiciary should have s

Question

What demands did the British Indian Association make to the British Parliament in 1853 AD on the occasion of the renewal of the Charter Act ?
(a) The Legislature, Executive and Judiciary should have separate Jurisdictions.
(b) The salaries of high-ranking officials should be reduced.
(c) A new legislature should be formed and Indian should be represented in it.
(d) Salt, excise and stamp duty should be abolished.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (2), which carries statements (a), (b) and (d). The British Indian Association was founded at Calcutta in 1851, drawing its membership from the landholders and the English-educated professional men of the Bengal Presidency, and its first major intervention came when the East India Company's charter fell due for renewal. In 1852 it petitioned the British Parliament, and the demands recorded in that petition are exactly the material this question is built from: the establishment of a separate legislature possessing a popular character; the separation of the executive from the judicial functions of government; a reduction in the salaries of high-ranking officers; and the abolition of the salt duty, abkari (excise) and stamp duties. Statement (a) is the separation-of-powers demand, statement (b) is the salary demand, and statement (d) is the tax demand — all three are in the petition, and the only choice that carries precisely those three is (2). Statement (c) is where the question turns, and it turns on a distinction worth learning rather than resenting. The petition asked for a legislature of a popular character; the further claim that Indians should be represented in it is a separate proposition, and the Commission's final key does not count it among the 1852-53 demands. What Parliament actually conceded in the Charter Act of 1853 was six additional members added to the Governor-General's Council for legislative business — a legislative wing, not Indian membership of it — and the door to non-official Indians sitting on a legislative council was opened later, by the Indian Councils Act of 1861. Notice also what the paper does not offer you: there is no 'all four' choice here. The live combinations are (a)+(d), (a)+(b)+(d) and (a)+(b)+(c), so even a candidate carrying the demand list as one undifferentiated block could reason a way home — (3) drops the tax demand, which is the best-attested item on the whole list, while (2) drops only the one statement that goes beyond what the petition is recorded as asking.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Two of the petition's demands, correctly identified — separation of the executive from the judiciary, and abolition of the salt, abkari and stamp duties — but the combination is incomplete. It silently drops the demand for a reduction in the salaries of high-ranking officers, which is one of the most frequently quoted items in the standard account of the 1852 petition and is stated plainly in statement (b). In a 'which of these' item that offers overlapping bundles, a choice that is right as far as it goes is still wrong: MPSC is asking you to draw the full boundary of the list, not to name a couple of members of it. Since statement (b) survives scrutiny, any bundle that leaves it out fails.  (c) This is the trap the item was built around, and it is the choice that separates a candidate who has read the petition from one who has read a summary of it. It keeps the two safe statements, (a) and (b), and then swaps the fiscal demand for statement (c). But the abolition of the salt duty, abkari and stamp duties is squarely in the record of what the Association asked for in 1852, while statement (c)'s specific claim — a new legislature with Indian representation in it — goes past what the petition is recorded as demanding, which was a separate legislature of a popular character. Discarding a well-attested demand in favour of a contested one is the wrong trade, and it is what makes this option fail.  (d) An escape option is only ever correct when every named choice can be shown to fail, and here one of them plainly survives: statements (a), (b) and (d) all correspond to demands in the Association's petition, so option (2) stands and 'None of the above' collapses with it. This is the habit to build for the whole paper — 'None of the above' is offered six times in this booklet, and each time it is a definite claim that all three named combinations are defective, not a hedge you can retreat to when you are unsure. Test the named options first; reach for the escape only after all of them are dead.

Concept: The British Indian Association, founded in Calcutta in 1851, belongs to the first phase of organised Indian political activity — the era of the pre-Congress associations, before the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885. It was formed by the merger of the Landholders' Society and the Bengal British India Society, and its membership was drawn largely from the zamindars and the English-educated professional class of Bengal. Its method was constitutional and its instrument was the petition: rather than agitate, it collected grievances, drafted them in the language of British constitutional practice, and sent them to Parliament in London, on the theory that Parliament, not the Company, was the sovereign that could be persuaded. The renewals of the East India Company's charter — 1793, 1813, 1833, 1853 — were the natural moments for such petitions, because Parliament had to re-legislate for India each time and so was obliged to listen. Sister bodies formed in the other presidencies on the same model, notably the Madras Native Association and the Bombay Association, both founded in 1852, and all three petitioned Parliament ahead of the 1853 renewal.

State PCS 2026 Q1 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2026 Q1 — History PYQ with Answer