(a) “Superior Maritime strength proved to be England's most powerful weapon in the struggle for colonial supremacy, particularly in the Carnatic Wars.” (10 marks)

(b) “No educated Indian has ever forgotten the lesson of Ilbert Bill.” (10 marks)

(c)

Question

Critically examine the following statements in about 150 words each :

(a) “Superior Maritime strength proved to be England's most powerful weapon in the struggle for colonial supremacy, particularly in the Carnatic Wars.” (10 marks)

(b) “No educated Indian has ever forgotten the lesson of Ilbert Bill.” (10 marks)

(c) “Permanent settlement policy resulted in an unfair distribution of assessment, particularly when there was no survey.” (10 marks)

(d) “The poverty of India was not a product of the Geography or of the lack of natural resources, it was mainly a product of the History of the last two centuries.” (10 marks)

(e) Alan Hume's ultimate aim in encouraging the foundation of the Indian National Congress was to provide a ‘Safety Valve’ for the release of growing Indian discontent. (10 marks)

UPSC Answer Check · Accepted Answer

(a) Sea power in the Carnatic Wars
Sea power was decisive but not sufficient. In the First Carnatic War (1746-48), La Bourdonnais's squadron let the French take Madras, which the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) returned. In the Third (1758-63), Admiral Pocock fought d'Ache's fleet in 1758-59 until the French squadron withdrew to Mauritius, leaving Lally without supplies or reinforcements; Coote then won at Wandiwash (22 January 1760) and Pondicherry fell in 1761, before the Treaty of Paris (1763). Yet other factors mattered. The English Company was autonomous and credit-worthy, while the French Company depended on a distant state that recalled Dupleix in 1754. Clive's defence of Arcot (1751) showed English land capability, and the victory at Plassey (1757) gave the English Bengal's revenues to fund the war. Lally's quarrels with colleagues weakened the French further. Historians such as G. B. Malleson and P. J. Marshall stress this mix. Naval mastery was the necessary framework; money, organisation and leadership completed it.

(b) The lesson of the Ilbert Bill
Lord Ripon's law member Courtenay Ilbert introduced the Bill on 2 February 1883 to let senior Indian judges, such as Behari Lal Gupta, who had raised the anomaly, try Europeans in the districts. Europeans organised a "white mutiny" through the European and Anglo-Indian Defence Association, and the government retreated: Act III of 1884 let a European accused claim a jury at least half European. The lesson was twofold. It exposed the racial limits of British liberalism, and it showed that organised, all-India agitation, which the Europeans themselves had used, could move government. Surendranath Banerjea's Indian Association held a National Conference in Calcutta in December 1883, and the Indian National Congress followed in December 1885. The statement therefore holds for the political consciousness of the educated class. But the Bill was one catalyst among several, alongside the Vernacular Press Act, the lowered civil service age, and a decade of associational politics; it did not by itself create nationalism.

(c) Permanent Settlement and assessment without survey
Lord Cornwallis made the Decennial Settlement (1789-90), prepared with John Shore, permanent on 22 March 1793 for Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The demand was fixed at ten-elevenths of the assessed rental, leaving the zamindar one-eleventh. Because there was no cadastral survey, assessment rested on earlier collections and rent-rolls rather than measured land. Estates already heavily taxed were over-assessed and defaulted; under the Sunset Law they were auctioned, and many old zamindaris changed hands in the first decades. Others were under-assessed, and as cultivation expanded the state lost the increase to zamindars and a chain of intermediaries (patni taluqs). Ryots' rights went unrecorded, exposing them to enhanced rents and abwabs until the Bengal Rent Act X of 1859 and the Bengal Tenancy Act of 1885. The Fifth Report (1812) already noted these problems, and Ranajit Guha's A Rule of Property for Bengal traces the physiocratic ideas behind the scheme. The statement is broadly valid, though the Settlement did give the Company a stable revenue.

(d) Poverty as a product of history
The statement expresses the economic-nationalist case, restated by Bipan Chandra. Dadabhai Naoroji and R. C. Dutt identified the "drain of wealth": Home Charges, salaries, pensions and profits remitted to Britain without an equivalent return. De-industrialisation hit handicraft textiles as British machine goods entered duty-free while Indian goods faced barriers in Britain. High land revenue and neglect of agriculture made famines such as those of 1876-78 and 1899-1900 lethal, and the Bengal famine of 1943 showed the same failure. Angus Maddison's estimates show India's share of world output falling sharply and per capita income almost stagnant between 1900 and 1947. Critics qualify this. Morris D. Morris argued that British rule did not cause the decline, and Tirthankar Roy stresses demography, land scarcity, climate and the resilience of some crafts. Pre-colonial India also knew famine. The best verdict is that colonial policy did not create every constraint, but it did turn structural poverty into long stagnation.

(e) The safety-valve theory of the Congress
The theory rests on William Wedderburn's 1913 biography of A. O. Hume, which says Hume, alarmed by reports of unrest, wanted a safe outlet for discontent and consulted the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin. Lala Lajpat Rai (Young India, 1916) used it to attack the Moderates, and R. P. Dutt (India Today, 1940) to portray the Congress as a British device. The evidence is weaker than it seems. The reports Hume cited have never been found, and Dufferin soon turned hostile to the Congress. Indian political associations already existed, such as the Indian Association, the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha, the Madras Mahajan Sabha and the Bombay Presidency Association, and the first session in Bombay (28 December 1885), presided over by W. C. Bonnerjee with 72 delegates, grew from that base. Bipan Chandra argues that Indians used Hume as a "lightning conductor" to shield their effort from official suspicion. Hume's motive may have included a safety valve, but the Congress soon outgrew any such purpose.

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