Consider the following events and arrange them in correct chronological order.
1. Cripps Mission
2. Cabinet Mission
3. Shimla Conference
4. Wavell Plan
Select the correct answer from the code given be

Question

Consider the following events and arrange them in correct chronological order.
1. Cripps Mission
2. Cabinet Mission
3. Shimla Conference
4. Wavell Plan
Select the correct answer from the code given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — A, 1, 4, 3, 2 (Cripps Mission → Wavell Plan → Shimla Conference → Cabinet Mission). The dates settle it. 1. The Cripps Mission belongs to March 1942: the British cabinet agreed to send it on 9 March 1942, Sir Stafford Cripps landed in Delhi on 22 March 1942, his draft declaration was published on 29 March 1942 and the talks collapsed in April. 4. The Wavell Plan came more than three years later — it was made public on 14 June 1945, announced simultaneously by the Secretary of State for India in the House of Commons and by Viceroy Lord Wavell in a broadcast from Delhi. 3. The Shimla Conference was convened to negotiate that very plan and opened at the Viceregal Lodge, Simla, on 25 June 1945, adjourning on 14 July 1945. 2. The Cabinet Mission came last: announced by Attlee in February 1946, its three members reached India on 24 March 1946 and issued their plan on 16 May 1946.

Why the other options are wrong — (b) It opens with the Wavell Plan (June 1945) and only then the Cripps Mission (March 1942) — a three-year inversion. Cripps came in the darkest phase of the Second World War, after the fall of Singapore; Wavell's offer came as the war in Europe was ending.  (c) It repeats the Wavell-before-Cripps inversion and adds a second error by placing the Cabinet Mission (1946) ahead of the Shimla Conference (June-July 1945). Both halves of the sequence are wrong.  (d) The most tempting wrong option, because it starts correctly with Cripps and then the Wavell Plan. Its error is at the end: it puts the Cabinet Mission (March-May 1946) before the Shimla Conference (25 June - 14 July 1945). The Shimla Conference was the negotiation of the Wavell Plan itself, held eleven days after the plan was broadcast, so it cannot come after 1946.

Concept: Between 1942 and 1946 Britain made three successive attempts to settle the Indian constitutional question, and the middle one came in two parts. The Cripps Mission (1942) offered Dominion status after the war, a constituent assembly and a right for any province to stay out — rejected by the Congress. The Wavell Plan (announced 14 June 1945) proposed a fully Indianised Executive Council, with only the Viceroy and the Commander-in-Chief remaining British, and parity between caste Hindus and Muslims; the Shimla Conference (25 June - 14 July 1945) was the meeting called to fill that Council and it failed when Jinnah insisted the Muslim League alone could nominate Muslim members. The Cabinet Mission (1946) then proposed a three-tier federal Union with grouped provinces, and it was the Cabinet Mission's scheme that produced the Constituent Assembly.

State PCS 2025 Q52 — History PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q52 — History PYQ with Answer