Consider the following statements with reference to the ‘Revolt of 1857’: 1. Syed Ahmad Khan wrote “Causes of the Indian Revolt”. 2. Mangal Pande was hanged on March 29, 1857. 3. Hazrat Mahal led the revolt at Lucknow. 4. Nana Saheb led the revolt at Bareilly. Select the correct answer from the code given below:
- (a)Only 1 & 2
- (b)Only 2 & 3
- (c)Only 2, 3 & 4
- (d)Only 1, 2 & 3
Correct — D, Only 1, 2 & 3.
Start by comparing the codes, not the statements. Statement 2 is printed inside each of the four codes, so adjudicating it eliminates nothing. The choice is settled by statements 1, 3 and 4.
Statement 1 stands. Syed Ahmad Khan wrote the Urdu tract Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind, published in English as The Causes of the Indian Revolt, which traced the rising to British misgovernment and to the exclusion of Indians from the Legislative Council.
Statement 3 stands. Begum Hazrat Mahal, a wife of the deposed Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, directed the resistance at Lucknow and had her young son Birjis Qadr proclaimed ruler of Awadh.
Statement 4 breaks. Nana Saheb's theatre was Kanpur, close to his seat at Bithur, while the Bareilly rising ran under Khan Bahadur Khan. So the code that keeps 1 and 3 and drops 4 is Only 1, 2 & 3.
One caution on statement 2: the provisional official key counts it as correct, even though the historically accepted execution date is 8 April 1857 and 29 March 1857 is the Barrackpore attack.
Because statement 2 sits inside each of the four codes, the item is answerable either way, and the code still resolves to D.
What to carry away: statement 4 turns on placing the leader, not recognising the name — the name in the list is right and only the centre beside it is wrong.
- (a)Only 1 & 2 — This code drops statement 3, but the Lucknow attribution is sound: after Wajid Ali Shah was deposed and Awadh annexed, Begum Hazrat Mahal led the resistance in the city in her son Birjis Qadr's name.
Option (a) would be the right code for a version of this list in which statement 3 attached Lucknow to a leader other than Begum Hazrat Mahal. As printed, dropping 3 discards a true statement.
- (b)Only 2 & 3 — This code drops statement 1, yet the authorship is correctly given. Sir Syed's Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind is a contemporary Indian analysis of why the revolt happened, and it circulated in English as The Causes of the Indian Revolt.
Option (b) fits a version of the list whose statement 1 handed Sir Syed a book that is not his — say The Indian War of Independence, 1857, which V. D. Savarkar wrote.
- (c)Only 2, 3 & 4 — This code accepts statement 4 and drops statement 1, and it is wrong on both counts. Nana Saheb, adopted son of Peshwa Baji Rao II, led at Kanpur; the Bareilly rising was headed by Khan Bahadur Khan, a descendant of the Rohilla chief Hafiz Rahmat Khan.
So (c) is the code you land on by letting the Bareilly line pass unchecked while also disowning a tract Sir Syed did write.
The revolt of 1857 was not one command but a set of regional risings, each with its own leadership and its own local grievance. Delhi supplied the symbolic centre, while Kanpur, Lucknow, Bareilly, Jhansi, Jagdishpur and Faizabad ran under separate figures.
Alongside the fighting sits a second body of material: what contemporaries wrote about the revolt. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind is a contemporary Indian analysis, written soon after the rising, explaining it to the government as a failure of administration rather than a conspiracy.
This sits in the modern-history block, at the point where Company rule ends and Crown rule begins. The leader-and-centre map is the spine of the topic: annexation of Awadh explains Lucknow, the refusal of Baji Rao II's pension explains Kanpur, and Rohilla memory explains Bareilly.
Because a statement-code item can mix a book, a date and two attributions in one list, the topic rewards a candidate who has fixed each name to a place and can then read the codes for what actually separates them.
- Syed Ahmad Khan's Urdu tract Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind appeared in English as The Causes of the Indian Revolt, blaming misgovernment and the exclusion of Indians from the Legislative Council.
- Begum Hazrat Mahal, a wife of the deposed Nawab Wajid Ali Shah, led the Lucknow resistance and had her son Birjis Qadr proclaimed ruler of Awadh.
- Nana Saheb, adopted son of Peshwa Baji Rao II and seated at Bithur, led the rising at Kanpur; Tatya Tope and Azimullah Khan were among his associates.
- The 1857 rising at Bareilly was led by Khan Bahadur Khan, a descendant of the Rohilla chief Hafiz Rahmat Khan.
- Mangal Pandey of the 34th Bengal Native Infantry attacked his officers at Barrackpore on 29 March 1857 and was executed there on 8 April 1857.
- At Delhi the rebels proclaimed Bahadur Shah Zafar their head, and Bakht Khan took charge of the rebel soldiery there.
- Kunwar Singh led the rising in Bihar from Jagdishpur; Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah's base was Faizabad.
Statement 4 puts Nana Saheb at Bareilly; the two highlighted rows give his actual centre and Bareilly's actual leader.
- Statement 2 appears inside each of the four printed codes, so time spent settling it buys no elimination; read the codes first and work only the statements that differ between them.
- Nana Saheb belongs to Kanpur — letting Bareilly stand beside his name, and then dropping statement 1 to find a code that fits, is what converts D into C.
- 29 March 1857 is the date of Mangal Pandey's attack at Barrackpore; his execution followed on 8 April 1857, so keep the two dates separate when a statement fuses them.
- Lucknow's resistance ran under Begum Hazrat Mahal in Birjis Qadr's name, so a code that drops the Lucknow statement is discarding a sound one.
- Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind is Sir Syed's; the title The Indian War of Independence, 1857 belongs to Savarkar, written half a century later.
The idea reaches you as a place-and-person pairing. Sometimes it is a bare one-liner — who led the rebellion at Bareilly, at Kanpur, at Lucknow — and sometimes it is a match-the-list with revolts on one side and leaders on the other.
In statement-code form, as here, the pairing is buried among a book, a date and a second attribution, and the code itself tells you which statements are worth checking.
UPPSC_2023_PRE_GSI_Q462023Asks outright who led the 1857 rebellion at Bareilly, with Nana Saheb sitting among the options — exactly the attribution that statement 4 here gets wrong. The fact is the same; there it is posed directly, here it is hidden inside a statement code.
UPPSC_2023_MAINS_GSI_Q22023Also on Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, but on his contribution to modern education. Statement 1 here concerns his post-revolt tract on the causes of 1857, so the person is shared while the phase of his career is different.
UKPSC_2012_PRE_PaperI_Q82012The same commission on the same cast: Azimullah Khan as an adviser points back to Nana Saheb and the Kanpur circle. It tests an association around Nana Saheb rather than the centre he led at, which is what this item turns on.
UKPSC_2024_MAINS_GSI_Q182024The same commission's descriptive treatment of 1857 — causes, results and nature. The prelims item wants leader-to-centre precision; the mains answer wants interpretation, and Sir Syed's tract on the causes becomes evidence there rather than a fact to verify.
HPSC_2021_PRE_GSII_Q812021The same statement-code device applied to a 1857 personality, and Nana Saheb reappears through the Bithur connection. The subject there is Tatya Tope's identity and theatres, not the Lucknow and Bareilly attributions asked here.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Who led the rebellion at Bareilly during the revolt of 1857?
- (a)Nana Saheb
- (b)Khan Bahadur Khan
- (c)Kunwar Singh
- (d)Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah
Answerb — Khan Bahadur Khan, a descendant of the Rohilla chief Hafiz Rahmat Khan, headed the 1857 rising at Bareilly.Nana Saheb led at Kanpur from his seat at Bithur, so (a) misplaces him. Kunwar Singh's theatre was Jagdishpur in Bihar, which rules out (c). Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah's base was Faizabad, so (d) names an Awadh figure, not the Bareilly leader.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The tract Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind, an analysis of the causes of the revolt of 1857, was written by:
- (a)Syed Ahmad Khan
- (b)V. D. Savarkar
- (c)Sir John Kaye
- (d)Abul Kalam Azad
Answera — Syed Ahmad Khan wrote Asbab-e-Baghawat-e-Hind in Urdu soon after the revolt; it circulated in English as The Causes of the Indian Revolt.Savarkar's book on 1857 is The Indian War of Independence, 1857, so (b) is a different work. Sir John Kaye wrote the British account, A History of the Sepoy War in India, ruling out (c). Abul Kalam Azad belongs to the twentieth-century national movement, so (d) fails on period.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Mangal Pandey's attack on his officers in March 1857 took place at:
- (a)Meerut
- (b)Barrackpore
- (c)Dum Dum
- (d)Ambala
Answerb — Mangal Pandey served with the 34th Bengal Native Infantry at Barrackpore, where the attack occurred on 29 March 1857 and where he was executed on 8 April 1857.Meerut is where the sepoy outbreak began on 10 May 1857, so (a) is a later and different event. Dum Dum is associated with the greased-cartridge rumour rather than with Pandey's attack, ruling out (c). Ambala was another cantonment touched by the unrest, but not Pandey's station, so (d) fails.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Consider the following statements: 1. Begum Hazrat Mahal had her son Birjis Qadr proclaimed ruler of Awadh at Lucknow in 1857. 2. Nana Saheb was the adopted son of Peshwa Baji Rao II. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a)1 only
- (b)2 only
- (c)Both 1 and 2
- (d)Neither 1 nor 2
Answerc — both statements hold, so the two single-statement codes and the rejection code all fail.Statement 1 is accurate: after Wajid Ali Shah was deposed and Awadh annexed, Begum Hazrat Mahal led the Lucknow resistance and had Birjis Qadr proclaimed ruler.
Statement 2 is accurate too: Nana Saheb was Baji Rao II's adopted son, and the refusal of the Peshwa's pension to him was a grievance behind the Kanpur rising.