UPPSC 2024 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 148 of 150

Correct — C, Only 1. Statement 1 is accurate in every particular. Kunwar Singh, born on 13 November 1777, held the Jagdishpur estate in Shahabad district — a large zamindari of a cadet branch of the Ujjainiya house, which is exactly what the booklet's word 'landlord' means — in what is today Bhojpur district of Bihar. Close to eighty and in poor health, he took command of the sepoys who mutinied at Danapur on 25 July 1857, occupied the district headquarters at Arrah on 27 July, was dislodged when Major Vincent Eyre relieved the town on 3 August, and then kept the rising alive by guerrilla marching — Lucknow in December 1857, Azamgarh in March 1858, and a last victory near Jagdishpur over Captain Le Grand on 23 April 1858. He died three days later, on 26 April 1858. So he did lead the rebellion, and he did so from Bihar. Statement 2 reverses what actually happened, and that reversal is the whole point of the question. Raja Gangadhar Rao of Jhansi died on 21 November 1853, having on his deathbed adopted a five-year-old kinsman, Anand Rao, renamed Damodar Rao. Lord Dalhousie's government refused to recognise the adoption. It applied the Doctrine of Lapse, held that the British — as the power that had conquered Jhansi's Maratha overlords — were entitled to decide the succession, and annexed Jhansi in 1854. The Rani's appeals, pressed as far as London, were rejected; she was granted a pension of five thousand rupees a month and required to vacate the fort. Far from recognising the boy as heir apparent, Dalhousie's refusal to do so is precisely why Rani Lakshmi Bai took the field in 1857. One statement true, one false — hence (c). A note on spelling: the booklet prints 'Rani Lakshmi Bai'; the standard rendering is Lakshmibai (also written Laxmibai), the Rani of Jhansi born Manikarnika Tambe. It is the same person, and nothing in the question turns on the spelling.

• (a)Only 2 — This inverts the truth of both statements at once. It would require Kunwar Singh not to have led the Bihar rising — which is beyond dispute, the Arrah siege and the Jagdishpur campaign are among the best-documented episodes of 1857 — and would require Dalhousie to have accepted the Jhansi adoption, which is exactly what he refused to do.
• (b)Neither 1 nor 2 — Only statement 2 is false. Statement 1 stands: Kunwar Singh was the head of the Jagdishpur zamindari and the outstanding rebel leader in Bihar in 1857. The one detail worth knowing is administrative rather than factual — in 1857 Bihar was governed as part of the Bengal Presidency and became a separate province only in 1912 — but the place is Bihar, and calling Jagdishpur 'in Bihar' is correct.
• (d)Both 1 and 2 — The most tempting wrong answer, and it traps a candidate who remembers that an adoption took place at Jhansi but not what the British did about it. The adoption of Damodar Rao is real; the recognition is not. Dalhousie's government treated the state as having lapsed for want of a natural heir and annexed it in 1854. Under the Doctrine of Lapse the whole issue was that adopted sons of dependent rulers were NOT accepted as heirs without British sanction, and Jhansi is the textbook case of that sanction being withheld.

The Doctrine of Lapse was Lord Dalhousie's application of an existing principle of British paramountcy: a dependent Indian state whose ruler died without a natural male heir would lapse to the Company unless the British had specifically sanctioned an adoption. Under it Dalhousie annexed Satara in 1848, Jaitpur and Sambalpur in 1849, and Nagpur and Jhansi in 1854. Awadh, taken in 1856, belongs to a different category — it was annexed on the alleged ground of misgovernance, not lapse. Each annexation created a dispossessed royal household, and in 1857 several of those households supplied the revolt with its leaders: the Rani of Jhansi, Nana Sahib of Bithur whose adoptive pension was stopped, and the Begum of Awadh.

Two-statement questions of this kind are usually built by taking one plainly true fact and one fact that has been quietly flipped. Here the flip is in a single verb — 'recognised'. Everything else in statement 2 is genuine: there was an adopted son, there was a Rani of Jhansi, and Dalhousie was Governor-General. Read a statement of this shape for the verb before you read it for the names. The second habit worth building is to keep the leaders of 1857 attached to their places, because that is how both commissions ask it: Kunwar Singh at Jagdishpur and Arrah in Bihar, Rani Lakshmi Bai at Jhansi, Nana Sahib and Tantia Tope at Kanpur, Begum Hazrat Mahal at Lucknow, Khan Bahadur Khan at Bareilly, Maulvi Ahmadullah Shah at Faizabad, Bakht Khan at Delhi. Kunwar Singh is doubly memorable for his age — he was near eighty when he took the field — and for the last stretch of his life, when a musket ball shattered his wrist during a river crossing and he cut the hand off at the elbow rather than risk gangrene.

• Kunwar Singh (13 November 1777 – 26 April 1858) held the Jagdishpur estate in Shahabad district, now Bhojpur district in Bihar; his line was a cadet branch of the Ujjainiya house, and he succeeded to the estate in 1826.
• His 1857–58 campaign: took command of the Danapur mutineers on 25 July 1857, occupied Arrah on 27 July, was defeated when Major Vincent Eyre relieved the town on 3 August, reached Lucknow in December 1857, occupied Azamgarh in March 1858, beat Captain Le Grand near Jagdishpur on 23 April 1858, and died on 26 April 1858. His brother Amar Singh carried on the resistance.
• Jhansi: Raja Gangadhar Rao died on 21 November 1853 after adopting Anand Rao, renamed Damodar Rao. The East India Company refused to recognise the adoption, applied the Doctrine of Lapse and annexed Jhansi in 1854; the Rani was given a pension of Rs 5,000 a month and made to leave the fort.
• Dalhousie's lapse annexations: Satara (1848), Jaitpur and Sambalpur (1849), Nagpur and Jhansi (1854). Awadh (1856) was annexed on the different ground of alleged misgovernance, after which Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was deposed.
• In 1857 Bihar was administered as part of the Bengal Presidency; it was separated from Bengal only in 1912. This does not make 'Jagdishpur in Bihar' wrong — it is the standard geographical description.

• Reading 'the adopted son of Rani Lakshmi Bai' and stopping there. The adoption of Damodar Rao is a fact; the British recognition of it is not. The falsifier in this statement is the single word 'recognised'.
• Confusing the grounds of annexation. Jhansi, Satara, Nagpur and Sambalpur were taken under the Doctrine of Lapse; Awadh was taken on the alleged ground of misgovernance in 1856; Punjab and Sind were taken by conquest.
• Displacing Kunwar Singh out of Bihar. He is regularly offered against Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh in options, and he did campaign in Azamgarh and Rewa — but his estate and his death place are both Jagdishpur in Bihar.

UPPSC asks this area as two-statement or matched-pair items on 1857 leaders and their places, and on which state was annexed on which pretext. UPSC has asked Kunwar Singh's home region directly (2005) and prefers annexation questions in chronological-ordering form. The examinable unit is leader plus centre plus one date, and, for the princely states, the specific ground of annexation.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following states was NOT annexed by the British under the Doctrine of Lapse?

  • (a)Satara
  • (b)Jhansi
  • (c)Awadh
  • (d)Nagpur

  Answer(c) Awadh — it was annexed in 1856 on the alleged ground of misgovernance, and Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was deposed. Satara (1848), Nagpur (1854) and Jhansi (1854) all lapsed for want of a British-sanctioned heir.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Kunwar Singh, the leader of the 1857 revolt in Bihar, won his last engagement against the British shortly before his death at which place?

  • (a)Arrah
  • (b)Jagdishpur
  • (c)Azamgarh
  • (d)Danapur

  Answer(b) Jagdishpur — he defeated Captain Le Grand's force near his own estate on 23 April 1858 and died there on 26 April 1858. Arrah was the town he occupied in July 1857, Danapur was where the sepoys he took command of had mutinied, and Azamgarh he occupied in March 1858.