UPPSC 2025 Prelims GS Paper-I · Question 41 of 150

Correct — D, 4, 2, 3, 1 — that is, Sanyasi → Indigo → Kuka → Pabna. The Sanyasi rebellion is much the oldest of the four: it ran from about 1763 to 1800 across Bengal and Bihar, in the disorder that followed the East India Company's acquisition of the diwani after Buxar, when the wandering ascetics found the alms-paying zamindars squeezed dry by the new revenue demand and the great Bengal famine of 1770 had emptied the countryside; Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay later built Anandamath (1882) on it. The Indigo Revolt came next: it broke out in 1859 at Chougacha village near Krishnanagar in Nadia district, where the ryots, led by Digambar Biswas and Bishnucharan Biswas, refused to sow indigo for the planters, and it forced the Indigo Commission of 1860 and the Indigo Act of 1862. The Kuka (Namdhari) movement of Punjab, organised by Ram Singh at Sri Bhaini Sahib in 1857, reached its violent climax in January 1872: after a Namdhari band attacked Malerkotla, sixty-six Kukas were blown from cannon on 17-18 January 1872 and Ram Singh himself was arrested and deported to Rangoon that March. The Pabna agrarian rising is the most recent of the four — the Pabna Raiyats' (Agrarian) League was formed in May 1873 in the Yusufshahi pargana of Pabna district in eastern Bengal, against illegal rent enhancement by the zamindars. 1763-1800, 1859, 1872, 1873 reads off as 4, 2, 3, 1.

• (a)4, 3, 2, 1 — This is the intended trap, and it is a plausible-looking one: it gets the first and last slots right but puts the Kuka movement before the Indigo Revolt. The Namdhari sect is indeed older than 1859 — its Namdhari guru-lineage runs back into the 1840s, and Ram Singh organised the sect at Sri Bhaini Sahib in 1857. But what history calls the Kuka revolt is the armed confrontation with the British of 1871-72, more than a decade after the Bengal indigo ryots struck in 1859-60. A movement is dated by its rising, not by the founding of the sect behind it.
• (b)3, 4, 2, 1 — It places the Kuka movement first of all — ahead even of the Sanyasi rebellion. That is impossible on any dating. The Sanyasi disturbances were already under way in the 1760s in Bengal and Bihar, a full generation before the Namdhari sect existed at all, let alone took up arms in 1872.
• (c)3, 4, 1, 2 — Wrong twice over. It repeats the error of option (b) by putting the nineteenth-century Kuka movement ahead of the eighteenth-century Sanyasi rebellion, and it also reverses the last two: the Pabna Raiyats' League was formed in May 1873, after — not before — the indigo ryots' strike of 1859-60.

Nineteenth-century India saw a long succession of agrarian and tribal risings that were separate from, and mostly earlier than, organised nationalism. They fall into rough phases, and knowing the phase usually settles a chronology question without recalling exact years. First come the post-Plassey dislocation revolts — Sanyasi-Fakir, Chuar, Rangpur — provoked by the Company's new revenue demands in the late eighteenth century. Then the mid-century tribal and commercial-crop risings: the Santhal Hul of 1855-56 and the Indigo Revolt of 1859-60. Then religio-social movements that turned political under British rule, such as the Kuka and the Wahabi. Last come the late-century tenancy struggles against Permanent-Settlement zamindars and moneylenders — Pabna in 1873 and the Deccan Riots in 1875 — which pushed the state towards tenancy legislation.

In a four-item ordering question you never need all four dates; you need only the two or three comparisons that separate the options. Here the first slot decides half the paper: only the Sanyasi rebellion is an eighteenth-century event, so any option beginning with 3 is dead, which eliminates (b) and (c) at a glance. That leaves (a) and (d), and a single comparison settles it — Indigo versus Kuka. Fix the two by their most famous artefacts: Dinabandhu Mitra's play Nil Darpan, on the indigo planters, appeared in 1860, while the Kuka executions at Malerkotla belong to January 1872. Indigo therefore precedes Kuka and the answer is (d). The reason (a) tempts is that the Namdhari sect itself is older than its revolt.

• Sanyasi rebellion, c. 1763-1800 — Bengal and Bihar; ascetics and dispossessed peasants against the East India Company's revenue demands after the grant of the diwani; the setting of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's Anandamath (1882), which carries 'Vande Mataram'
• Indigo Revolt, 1859-60 — began at Chougacha village near Krishnanagar in Nadia district under Digambar Biswas and Bishnucharan Biswas; produced the Indigo Commission of 1860 and the Indigo Act of 1862; Dinabandhu Mitra's Nil Darpan was published in 1860
• Kuka (Namdhari) revolt, 1871-72 — Punjab; Ram Singh had organised the sect at Sri Bhaini Sahib in 1857; after the raid on Malerkotla, 66 Namdharis were blown from cannon on 17-18 January 1872 and Ram Singh was deported to Rangoon in March 1872
• Pabna agrarian rising, from May 1873 — the Pabna Raiyats' (Agrarian) League in the Yusufshahi pargana of Pabna district, eastern Bengal, against illegal rent enhancement; its methods were largely legal and constitutional, and the agitation faded under police action and the famine of 1873-74
• Chronology to memorise: Sanyasi (18th century) → Indigo (1859) → Kuka (1872) → Pabna (1873)

• Dating the Kuka movement from the founding of the Namdhari sect (1840s-1857) instead of from the revolt of 1871-72 — the shortcut straight to option (a)
• Confusing the Pabna rising (1873, eastern Bengal, against zamindars' rent enhancement) with the Deccan Riots (1875, Bombay Deccan, against moneylenders)
• Assuming the Sanyasi rebellion must be a nineteenth-century event because it is listed alongside three nineteenth-century names

UPPSC favours the ordering format — 'arrange the following revolts in chronological order' — and has also asked the same set as a movement-to-year match; UPSC more often asks movement-to-region, movement-to-leader, or a single identification such as which revolt Anandamath is built on.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Indigo Revolt of 1859-60 began in which district of Bengal?

  • (a)Nadia
  • (b)Pabna
  • (c)Midnapore
  • (d)Birbhum

  Answer(a) Nadia — it started at Chougacha village near Krishnanagar and spread across the indigo districts of Bengal.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Consider the following: 1. Santhal Rebellion 2. Indigo Revolt 3. Sanyasi Rebellion. Which one of the following is the correct chronological order, earliest first?

  • (a)3, 1, 2
  • (b)1, 3, 2
  • (c)3, 2, 1
  • (d)2, 3, 1

  Answer(a) 3, 1, 2 — Sanyasi (c. 1763-1800), Santhal Hul (1855-56), Indigo Revolt (1859-60).