Practice: Political and Social Conditions

(b) Karauli. 9 November 1817. Then Kota (26 December 1817), Jodhpur (6 January 1818) and Udaipur (January 1818).

Why not the others: All four are the states the question is usually built from, and the sequence Karauli → Kota → Jodhpur → Udaipur is what is being tested. Udaipur is the tempting answer because Mewar is the most famous house, and it is fourth.

(c) Charles Metcalfe, Resident at Delhi. In his capacity as British Resident at Delhi.

Why not the others: (a) is the trap: the Rajputana Agency did not exist until 1832, fourteen years after the treaties, so its head cannot have negotiated them.

(d) The Third Anglo-Maratha War, against Maratha and Pindari pressure. The states sought protection from a third party, which is why the treaties came so quickly and in such numbers once the first was concluded.

Why not the others: (a) is the standard misconception. There was no British conquest of Rajasthan. Getting this right changes the whole reading of what follows.

(a) Internal administration, revenue and justice. The Company took the external sovereignty and left the internal.

Why not the others: This is the analytical heart of the chapter. It explains why the peasant movements were aimed at jagirdars and states rather than at the British, and why the Praja Mandals had to be organised state by state.

(b) The Mughal settlement demanded participation; the British demanded abstention. Man Singh governed Bengal; no Rajput ruler governed a British province. The empire that took less of their independence took far more of their energy.

Why not the others: (a) reverses the two exactly, and is the answer given by anyone who has learned both settlements without comparing them.

(c) 1832, at Ajmer. Its head, the Agent to the Governor-General, reported directly to the Governor-General of India.

Why not the others: (b) is the near-miss: 1845 is when the seat moved to Mount Abu, not when the Agency was created. The pair 1832/Ajmer and 1845/Mount Abu is the question.

(d) Ajmer 1832-1845, then Mount Abu 1845-1947. The move is examinable in both directions.

Why not the others: (a) is what a candidate assumes because Mount Abu held the seat for over a century, which is exactly why the first thirteen years are asked about.

(a) It was directly administered British territory, not a princely state. The AGG was ex-officio Chief Commissioner of Ajmer-Merwara. Rajasthan contained both kinds of British India at once, and Ajmer was the one place where British Indian law and political activity applied directly.

Why not the others: That status, not geography, is why Ajmer became the Agency's first seat, the site of Mayo College, the Walter Sabha's opening sammelan and later the headquarters of the Rajasthan Seva Sangh.

(b) Eighteen States and two chiefships, in eight political charges. Three Residencies and five Agencies. The two chiefships are Lawa and Shahpura.

Why not the others: Totals of 19, 20 and 22 circulate precisely because the chiefships get counted as states. Knowing that Lawa and Shahpura are the chiefships explains every competing figure.

(c) 1844 or 1846, with the primacy of Jaipur not in doubt. Some accounts give 1844, others 1846. Jaipur was first in Rajasthan either way.

Why not the others: (b) 1860 is Udaipur's and (d) 1848 is Kota and Jodhpur's, both real dates from the same table. The safe answer states Jaipur's primacy and leaves the year open.

(d) State by state, over some sixteen years. Jaipur first; about eleven of eighteen states followed within roughly four months; Kota and Jodhpur in 1848; Udaipur only in 1860.

Why not the others: (a) is the intuitive answer and it is wrong for a reason worth knowing: the treaties had left internal administration with the states, so each had to legislate separately. The staggered record is evidence for the settlement, not an accident.

(a) Colonel C. K. M. Walter, AGG, in 1888. Founded 9 March 1888, after Walter's 1887 circular to political agents on Rajput marriage expenditure. The opening sammelan was at Ajmer on 10 March 1888, with 41 representatives; Bharatpur, Dhaulpur and Banswara were absent.

Why not the others: The name encodes the founder: it is the Hitkarini Sabha made by Walter. An Indian reform association is the wrong category.

(b) 14 for girls, 18 for boys. Alongside curbing marriage and funeral expenditure, promoting education, abolishing dowry and the customs Teeka and Rit, and ending polygamy.

Why not the others: The other options are plausible modern figures, which is what makes them distractors. The 14/18 pair is the one recorded.

(c) It pursued real reforms and was also a British body concerned with the ruling class's expenditure. The minimum-age and anti-dowry provisions were substantive; it was also created by a British official and preoccupied with the solvency of states the paramount power had an interest in. Reform and fiscal supervision arrived in the same institution.

Why not the others: (a) and (b) each take half the evidence. An answer that holds both is worth more than one that picks a side.

(d) Ajmer, 1875. Named after the 6th Earl of Mayo, Viceroy 1869-1872, for the education of the sons of princely houses.

Why not the others: (c) 1888 is the Walter Sabha's year, also at Ajmer, which is why the two get merged.

(a) Female infanticide. Across Udaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Kota, Jhalawar, Jaisalmer, Dholpur, Sirohi, Banswara and other states.

Why not the others: (b) sati is the reform associated with the state-by-state prohibitions from Jaipur onwards, not with a single named officer in this chapter.

(b) The Governor-General of India, directly. And he was ex-officio Chief Commissioner of Ajmer-Merwara, holding appellate authority.

Why not the others: (a) is the trap for anyone who remembers that Sirohi's administration was later handled by Bombay — a different arrangement, three decades later.

(c) Paramountcy left internal revenue and justice with the states. The taxing power that pressed on a cultivator was the state's. Paramountcy removed the states' capacity to fight each other and left their capacity to tax their subjects intact.

Why not the others: This single point makes the next three chapters intelligible, and an answer that opens with it is already ahead.

(a) R is the cause of A, and the whole of the next three chapters follows from it.

(d) R is true and A is false. There was no conquest of Rajasthan; the states sought protection against Maratha and Pindari pressure, which is why the treaties came so fast once the first was signed.

(a) R explains A exactly. A single imperial regulation was not available, because internal legislation was not the paramount power's to make.

(d) R is true and makes A impossible: the Agency postdates the treaties by fourteen years. Metcalfe negotiated as Resident at Delhi.

(a) R contains both halves of A. Holding them together is the answer; choosing between them is not.

(a) R explains A. Agency seat, Mayo College, the Walter Sabha's sammelan, and later the Rajasthan Seva Sangh's headquarters — all on the one piece of non-princely ground in the region.

(b) Both are true, but R does not explain A — it qualifies it. The primacy is secure; the year is not, and knowing which half is contested is the examinable skill.

(a) Jaisalmer, on 12 December 1818, closes the sequence. Udaipur sits fourth, in January 1818, on a day given variously as the 13th or the 23rd.

(a) Sixteen years separate A from D. That spread is the evidence that each state legislated for itself.

(a) Three of the four are British officials in Rajputana within sixty years of each other, which is what makes the set confusable.

(a) From the Imperial Gazetteer of 1908. The other four charges are Haraoti and Tonk, Kotah-Jhalawar, Bikaner and Alwar.

(d) About 181 lakhs in cash, together with territory of an annual value of 28 lakhs. One state, over one stretch of the eighteenth century. It is why the tribute clauses of 1817-18 were negotiable at all: the states were not being asked to start paying, only to change payee, and the treaties of 1818 with Udaipur and Jodhpur transferred to the Company the tribute that had been payable to Sindhia.

Why not the others: (a) swaps the two figures, which is the only way to get them wrong once they are known. (b) and (c) are real figures from a different transaction sixty years later — the seventeen parganas of twelve lakhs' revenue made over to Madan Singh in 1838, and the Rs 80,000 tribute fixed on him.

(a) Rana Bhim Singh II of Mewar (r. 1778-1828). The feud ran from roughly 1806 to 1810, and the Imperial Gazetteer records that the dispute was "compromised upon the basis of poisoning the girl".

Why not the others: (b) Man Singh of Jodhpur and (c) Jagat Singh of Jaipur are the two suitors, not the father; (d) Sajjan Singh belongs to the 1870s and 1880s. Note what the official record does not say: it names no poisoner. Jawan Das as the agent, with Amir Khan and Ajit Singh Chundawat as instigators, circulates widely and is in no official source, and neither official source names a battle at Gingoli or Parbatsar or gives a date for one.

(b) 9 November 1817, the same day as the Karauli treaty. Engagement No. XCIX. The coincidence is the point: the Company bought off the largest freelance army in the region on the day it signed its first Rajput state.

Why not the others: The other three are treaty days — Kota, Udaipur and Jaipur. Amir Khan had espoused first the cause of Jaipur and then of Jodhpur, frightened the Maharaja of Jodhpur into abdication and a pretended insanity, ran that state himself for two years and left after plundering the treasury; his troops were still extracting money at Jaipur in 1817 while the negotiations went on.

(c) Alwar, 14 November 1803, with Sawai Bakhtawar Singh. An offensive and defensive alliance, under which Alwar paid no tribute at all but its troops were to co-operate with the Company's, which is why Alwar never appears in the tribute tables the other states populate.

Why not the others: (a) Karauli is first only among the subordinate alliances of 1817-18, and an option naming 1803 is not a trick. (b) Jaipur's treaty of 1803 was dissolved by Sir George Barlow over Lord Lake's protest, after Cornwallis resolved to abandon subsidiary alliances; (d) Jodhpur's was cancelled in May 1804, Man Singh having proposed different terms instead of ratifying and having meanwhile assisted Holkar. Partabgarh's treaty of 25 November 1804 was superseded in 1818. The 1803-04 treaties were alliances of co-operation made during a war; those of 1817-18 were subordinate alliances offering protection.

(d) 13 January 1818. The instrument closes "Done at Delhi, this 13th day of January, A.D. 1818", and the tribute schedule cites "Article 6 of the Treaty, dated the 13th January 1818".

Why not the others: (a) 23 January is the date most often repeated, and it is refuted rather than merely unpreferred: (b) 22 January is the day the Governor-General ratified the treaty, in camp at Oochar, and a treaty cannot be ratified nine days before it is signed. A source giving 23 January has transposed the digits of the day or confused signature with ratification. (c) 6 January is Jodhpur's.

(a) Bundi's treaty closes "Done at Boondee, this 10th day of February, A.D. 1818", and the rival date of 21 March 1818 belongs to no instrument. Bikaner's is with Surat Singh, 9 March 1818; Kishangarh's is done at Delhi on 26 March 1818. Partabgarh (5 October), Dungarpur (11 December), Jaisalmer (12 December) and Banswara (25 December) close the year.

(a) Sirohi, 11 September 1823. Sirohi wanted British protection in 1817 and waited six years, because Jodhpur claimed supremacy over it. Before granting protection the Company had to decide whether Sirohi was a state at all, and it wrote the finding into the treaty's preamble: the British Government "has satisfied itself that the State of Serohi is not politically dependent on any of the other Princes or Chiefs of Rajpootana". Rao Sheo Singh signed as Regent, not as Rao.

Why not the others: (b) Jaisalmer is the usual answer and it is wrong twice over: it is not the last state overall, and (c) Banswara, 25 December 1818, closes even the 1818 group. Sirohi is the clearest case of the paramount power settling the internal hierarchy of the Rajput houses, five years before anyone spoke of lapse or misgovernment.

(a) Four officers in Rajputana within twenty years of each other, which is what makes the set confusable. Tod's Kaulnamah of 4 May 1818, signed by the Maharana, Tod and thirty-three chiefs, restored the khalsa land taken during the troubles and renounced newly imposed rakhwari, bhum and lagat; Mewar's net revenue was Rs 4,41,218 in 1819 and Rs 8,77,634 in 1821. Lockett heads the list of substantive AGGs, on which Colonel C. K. M. Walter appears against 1887.

(d) R is true and A is false. Metcalfe signed at Delhi for Karauli, Kota, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Kishangarh and Jaipur. Dungarpur, Banswara and Partabgarh were concluded by Captain James Caulfield under Sir John Malcolm and executed at the states' own capitals. There was no single negotiation: three British establishments, at Delhi, in Central India and in Malwa, made the settlement in parallel, which is why the southern terms and the tribute arrangements are not uniform.

(b) A Supplementary Article of 20 February 1818, ratified at Lucknow on 7 March 1818. It vests the entire administration in Raj Rana Zalim Singh, and after him in his eldest son Madho Singh and his heirs, "in regular succession and perpetuity".

Why not the others: (a) is the usual answer, encouraged by looser phrasing in the Imperial Gazetteer. The treaty of 26 December 1817 did no more than recognise the split at signature, being concluded with Maharao Umed Singh "through Raj Rana Zalim Singh Bahadoor, the Administrator of the affairs of that Principality". The perpetual clause came seven weeks later. (d) Kishor Singh tried to take the administration by force on Umed Singh's death in 1820, was defeated by a British force, and in 1821 recognised the arrangement in return for an allowance of about Rs 1,64,877 — a consequence of the Article, not its source.

(c) 1838. Seventeen parganas yielding twelve lakhs of revenue were made over to Raj Rana Madan Singh by treaty of 8 April 1838, which vested in him the title Maharaj Rana and a tribute of Rs 80,000; the corresponding new treaty with Kota, reducing the Maharao's tribute by the same Rs 80,000, is dated 10 April 1838.

Why not the others: (a) 1837 circulates, and two Government of India sources refute it, the Imperial Gazetteer stating twice that "the existence of Jhalawar as a separate State dates only from 1838". (b) 1834 is the year of the Ram Singh versus Madan Singh dispute that produced the dismemberment. (d) 1899 is the unmaking: the chief was deposed in 1896, fifteen of the seventeen parganas went back to Kota on 1 January 1899, and a much smaller Jhalawar was formed for Bhawani Singh on 6 February 1899.

(d) R is true and A is false. The Chief Commissionership dates from 1871, not from 1832. Mr Wilder took charge of Ajmer as its first Superintendent in July 1818, and from 1818 to 1832 the Superintendents reported first to the Resident at Delhi and then to the Resident in Malwa and Rajputana. From 1832 to 1871 Ajmer-Merwara was administered by the North-Western Provinces. Only in 1871 were Ajmer and Merwara formed into a Chief Commissionership under the Foreign Department, with the AGG for Rajputana becoming Chief Commissioner.

(d) A Council of Regency of five principal nobles, under the superintendence of the Political Agent. It was formed after the Company intervened following the death of Maharaja Jai Singh III in 1835 and the murder of the AGG's Assistant by a conspiracy of the minister Jota Ram. Under it "the army was reduced; every branch of the administration was reformed; and sati, slavery, and infanticide were prohibited."

Why not the others: (a) circulates with that vernacular name, that year and that president, and none of the three is in the official record. (b) is the standard misconception: internal legislation was not the paramount power's to make. Note what this does and does not settle — no year is recorded for the prohibition itself, so the 1844-or-1846 conflict stands; what is settled is that Jaipur legislated through machinery the Company had built.

(a) At Udaipur on 2 July 1877, out of a meeting convened by Maharana Sajjan Singh. It was attended by thirty-two chiefs and state officials, and its three declared objects — regulating Rajput marriage expenses, fixing the amounts of tyag given to Charans and Bhats, and restricting polygamy — are the Walter Sabha's three targets exactly, eleven years earlier and with no British officer in the room.

Why not the others: (b) is the Walter Sabha, which applied to every state rather than to one. (c) is the date given in circulation for a Mahendraraj Sabha at Udaipur, which is absent from the official record. What the British official supplied in 1888 was not the idea and not the rules but uniformity across a region, the one thing no single ruler could supply.

(b) Permitted a Rajput's third marriage up to the age of 45, and only if there was no issue from previous marriages. Read the polygamy rules honestly: they are licensing, with an age ceiling and a childlessness condition, which is what nineteenth-century Rajput marriage reform mostly was, in Udaipur in 1877 and at Ajmer in 1888 alike.

Why not the others: (a) is what a summary says rather than what a rule says. (d) Brahmans and Mahajans had a rule of their own: they might spend 25 per cent of annual income on marriages and might marry up to the age of 40 if there was no issue from the first wife. (c) inverts the Rs 500 threshold, which is the income above which tyag was owed at all, capped at 10 per cent of total annual income, with the marriage of an eldest son or a daughter capped at 25 per cent.

(c) The Maharao Raja of Bundi, in his correspondence with Walter.

Why not the others: (a) Walter adopted the suggestion and publicised it, calling a voluntary proposal by an Indian prince "the greatest social reform that could be introduced into Hindu society in India" — in a speech at a state banquet given by (d) the Maharaja of Jaipur, who is the host of that banquet and not the author of the proposal. The ages are the Sabha's most quoted figures, and their origin is the part that gets lost.

(d) One official, one leading jagirdar and one Charan from each state. The circular went to the Political Officers in October 1887. Note what the composition means: Charans were members, not merely subjects, of the body that regulated the payments made to Charans.

Why not the others: (b) is Jaipur's Council of Regency, a different body in a different decade. Every ruling chief approved the proposal with one exception: the Maharawal of Banswara replied that he could not find a suitable person to represent either the Darbar or the Charans of Banswara, which is the recorded reason for one absence and is not indifference.

(a) Were twenty-two in number and were drawn up entirely by the representatives themselves. The committee began sitting on Monday 5 March 1888 and worked through the week deliberately without a British officer present, Walter's stated wish being that whatever was decided should be unanimous and settled by the delegates. On the morning of Saturday 10 March 1888 Walter and Colonel Trevor, Commissioner of Ajmer, went to the Daulat Bagh, where the document was read out and accepted; Kaviraj Shyamaldas of Mewar thanked them on the delegates' behalf.

Why not the others: (c) 41 is the delegate count in Walter's despatch, not the number of rules, and mixing the two is the easiest slip on this question. (d) reverses the procedure that was deliberately chosen.

(b) Walter's despatch names 41, and one name on the archival list, Kaviraj Baldeo Raj of Khetri, is struck out by hand. Both figures in circulation are right, and the reason is on the file. Give 41 if the question follows Walter's despatch, and know where 40 comes from.

Why not the others: (a) is a real absence and a different fact — the Maharawal of Banswara reported that he could find no suitable representative for the Darbar or the Charans. (c) is the second meeting, in February 1889, from which Jaisalmer and Dungarpur were absent.

(c) At its second meeting, at Ajmer from 15 to 24 February 1889. That meeting, attended by every state except Jaisalmer and Dungarpur, framed supplementary rules and resolved that the committee should be known as the "Walter Krit Rajputra Hitkarini Sabha", with the AGG as President and the Commissioner of Ajmer as Vice-President. March 1888 is when the rules were made; February 1889 is when the Sabha was named — which is where the competing "1889" start date comes from.

Why not the others: (d) 1 January 1941 is when the rules were recast and "Rajputana" was prefixed, as the Rajputana Walterkrit Rajputra Hitkarini Sabha. The contemporary form is Rajputra, not Rajputana, and both forms are correct at different dates.

(d) Barred one during the first wife's lifetime, unless she had no offspring or was afflicted with an incurable disease. A restriction with two exceptions, not an abolition of polygamy. The same set of rules barred expenditure on betrothals altogether, and it was subsequently ruled that no girl should remain unmarried after 20.

Why not the others: (a) is the usual summary and it overstates the rule. (b) is the Desh Hitaishini rule of 1877, not the Ajmer rules of 1888. Note too that tyag — the claim of Charans, Bhats and Dholis on gifts at a marriage — is a distinct custom and is not the same thing as teeka or rit.

(a) The age limits were infringed in 87 cases and the expenditure rule in 54. The Sabha met annually at Ajmer in the spring, discussed the reports of the local committees appointed by the Darbars, and published a printed report.

Why not the others: (b) swaps the two figures, which is the only way to get them wrong once they are known. Treat the figure with the caution it deserves: it counts reported marriages and was compiled by the very committees whose work it assessed. It is still the only contemporary measure of compliance available, and a great deal better than an assertion either way.

(d) R is true and A is false, and R is exactly where A came from. The conference, chaired by Raja Amar Singh of Banera, decided against abolition and appointed a sub-committee of five to revise rules the delegates agreed had outgrown their usefulness. The states' own poll had split nine for abolition and nine for continuance. The Sabha's last recorded meeting was in 1924; new rules took effect on 1 January 1941, and an annual conference was held in December 1943. 1936 is the year abolition was proposed and rejected. The honest answer is a shape, not a date.

(b) The second edition of the Satyarth Prakash. The rewriting is dated 1882, and the proofs were finished only shortly before his death in October 1883, well after he had left Mewar.

Why not the others: (a) is the trap, and it is chronologically impossible: the first Satyarth Prakash was published in 1875, seven years before he ever saw Udaipur. The flat claim that "the Satyarth Prakash was written at Udaipur" is a half-truth on which an option can be built either way. (c) The first will was registered at Meerut on 16 August 1880.

(c) Dayananda's wills. The Sabha exists by a will, not by a founding meeting, and that single fact explains every competing date. The second will cancelled the first, enlarged the trustees from eighteen to twenty-three and made Maharana Sajjan Singh of Udaipur its President, adding nine men from the ruling strata of the states — four of the Maharana's Council, the ruler of Shahpura and the minor rulers of Delwara, Asind and Masuda. None of the nine was an Arya.

Why not the others: (a) 1882 corresponds to no document at all, and Ajmer is where the Sabha's first session was held, on 28 December 1883, and where its office moved from Udaipur in 1894 — not where it began. (b) 10 April 1875 at Bombay is the founding of the Arya Samaj itself.

(d) Rajadhiraj Nahar Singh, a ruler of twenty-eight who had collected 40,000 signatures for the cow-protection memorial and had met the Swami at the Chittor durbar. The stay ran just under three months.

Why not the others: (a) Ram Singh is the name usually given, and it is not the one in the record. (b) Sajjan Singh is the Maharana of Udaipur, whom Dayananda met at the Chittor durbar held for Lord Ripon's investiture of him with the G.C.S.I., the meeting being brokered by Pandit Mohanlal Vishnulal Pandya and Kaviraj Shyamaldas of the Udaipur State Council. (c) Pratap Singh was Jodhpur's effective Prime Minister. Note that Shahpura here means the Mewar chiefship of the 1880s, not the modern district of the name.

(a) At Ajmer, on 30 October 1883, of double pneumonia, in the evening; he was cremated the following day, and the day after that Mohanlal Vishnulal Pandya took possession of his belongings in the name of the Paropkarini Sabha.

Why not the others: (b) 27 September 1883 at Jodhpur is where the illness began, not where it ended — he left Jodhpur on 16 October, reached (c) Mount Abu on 21 October and Ajmer on 26 October, where he contracted the pneumonia. On the poisoning at Jodhpur: it is a long-standing tradition among the Aryas which the two earliest biographers did not accept, whose published versions name different people, and which no source consulted establishes or disproves. Give it if an option demands it; do not build a Mains sentence on it.

(b) Made Hindi in Devanagari its state language, and saw an Arya Samaj branch established under Pratap Singh. Jodhpur is held to be the first Indian state to take that step. Dayananda had reached Jodhpur on 31 May 1883, on the joint invitation of Maharaja Jaswant Singh II, Maharaja Pratap Singh — the state's effective Prime Minister — and Rao Raja Tej Singh.

Why not the others: (a) Jodhpur prohibited sati in 1848, with a penalty, alongside Kota. (c) is Bikaner, where a Political Agent was permanently located only after the Thakurs' rebellion of 1883, a British officer having merely been deputed there in 1868. (d) an 1885 prohibition of child marriage at Jodhpur circulates and is not in the record.

(c) Mangal Singh of Alwar. He had been chosen ruler in October 1874 by the twelve kotris of the Naruka families after the state escheated on Sheodan Singh's death without heirs, was then barely fifteen, and was invested with ruling powers in 1877.

Why not the others: All three are rulers who appear elsewhere in this chapter's nineteenth century, which is what makes them usable as options. Carry two further details with the name: the endowment fund was subscribed by seventeen of the Rajputana states and came to about seven lakhs, while the Government of India gave the 167-acre park, formerly the site of the old Residency at Ajmer, and put up the main building — the foundation stone laid in 1875 and the building opened by the Marquess of Dufferin in 1885.

(d) 1 April 1930. It forbade the marriage of boys below eighteen and girls below fourteen — the Walter Sabha's 1888 figures turned into statute, binding across British India rather than on eighteen durbars.

Why not the others: (a) 1 October 1929 is the day it became law, which is not the day it came into force, and separating the two is the whole question. (b) January 1925 is when the Bill was introduced; (c) 1 January 1941 is when the Walter Sabha's recast rules took effect. Sarda sat for Ajmer-Merwara, elected in January 1924 when that province was first given the right to return a member — the princely states returned no members to the Assembly, which is why the region's one legislator came from its one piece of directly administered British territory.