(a) The Carnatic Wars, the Anglo-Mysore Wars and the Anglo-Maratha Wars had virtually eliminated the French from the contest of supremacy in South India. Discuss. (20 marks)

(b) While introducing the Indian Councils Bill of 1861, the British thought

Question

(a) The Carnatic Wars, the Anglo-Mysore Wars and the Anglo-Maratha Wars had virtually eliminated the French from the contest of supremacy in South India. Discuss. (20 marks)

(b) While introducing the Indian Councils Bill of 1861, the British thought that the only Government suitable for India 'is a despotism controlled from home'. Comment. (20 marks)

(c) The root of the whole question behind the Indigo Revolt 'is the struggle to make the raiyats grow indigo plants without paying them the price of it'. Analyse. (10 marks)

UPSC Answer Check · Accepted Answer

Carnatic, Mysore and Maratha wars. The elimination of France from the contest for supremacy in South India was not a single event but the cumulative result of three conflicts that successively removed French, Mysorean and Maratha rivals. In the Carnatic Wars (1746–63), French ambitions under Dupleix turned the Carnatic into a theatre of European rivalry. The first and second wars ended without decisive settlement, but the third war, fought against the Nawab of Carnatic and his French-backed forces, ended in French defeat. Pondicherry was surrendered as a base of independent French power; after the Treaty of Paris (1763), France was reduced to commercial enclaves and could no longer project military power in the Carnatic. The British later used subsidiary alliances with the Nizam, the Nawab of Carnatic and other rulers to keep French influence out of their courts and armies.

The Anglo-Mysore Wars (1767–99) completed the process in the south. Tipu Sultan’s alliance with France made Mysore a French client, and the British treated each war as a struggle against that combination. The first three wars, though costly, failed to destroy Mysore; the fourth war ended with the storming of Seringapatam and Tipu’s death in 1799. Mysore was divided and its independent power destroyed, removing the last organized French-backed rival in South India. The Anglo-Maratha Wars (1775–1818) then turned the same logic against the Marathas. The first two wars checked Maratha expansion, but the third war of 1817–18 ended with the defeat of the Peshwa, Baji Rao II, who was pensioned off and deposed. British paramountcy was thereby established over the Deccan and beyond, leaving no major indigenous power capable of challenging British control or sheltering French influence.

Despotism controlled from home. The phrase “a despotism controlled from home,” used while introducing the Indian Councils Bill of 1861, reflected the British parliamentary and Secretary of State view after 1857 rather than a single minister’s formula. It meant that India should be governed by a strong, centralized authority under the Crown, answerable to London, with only limited Indian participation. The Government of India Act 1858 had transferred power from the Company to the Crown, and the Indian Councils Act 1861 expanded the Governor-General’s legislative council, permitted nominated Indians, and separated legislative from executive functions. These changes were a safety valve, not genuine devolution: Indians were consulted, not responsible; the council advised, but real power remained with the Governor-General and the Secretary of State. Later reforms, such as the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 and the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms of 1919, increased representation and provincial institutions, yet retained the same imperial principle of control from home.

Indigo Revolt. The root of the Indigo Revolt of 1859–60 was economic coercion. European planters compelled raiyats to grow indigo on a fixed proportion of their land—often three-twentieths, a proportion later associated with Champaran as tinkathia—while paying them far less than the market price. The system was enforced through contracts, Indian mahajans, police and courts, making cultivation a debt-bound obligation rather than a free choice. Peasant resistance was led by figures such as the Biswas brothers, and it was given literary force by Dinabandhu Mitra’s Neel Darpan. The revolt forced the government to appoint the Indigo Commission in 1860, whose recommendations brought partial regulation of indigo cultivation and a check on the worst abuses, though the planter economy survived in modified form.

Together, the wars created the military base of British supremacy, the 1861 council expressed its political logic, and the indigo revolt revealed its agrarian exploitation. The British consolidation of South India was thus a sequence of conquest, constitutional control and economic extraction, each stage making the next possible.

(a) The Carnatic Wars, the Anglo-Mysore Wars and the Anglo-Maratha Wars had virtually eliminated the French from the contest of…

Model answer

What "Discuss" is asking you to do

Structure that answers it

Where marks are lost

How this answer will be evaluated

Approach

Key points expected

Evaluation rubric

Must cover

Loses marks

Earns more

Extra mark

Must cover

Loses marks

Earns more

Extra mark

Must cover

Loses marks

Earns more

Extra mark

Practice this exact question

More from History 2023 Paper II