Indian History Quiz: Regional States of the 18th Century: Awadh, Bengal, Hyderabad and Mysore

The correct answer is C, Saadat Khan. Saadat Khan, who held the title Burhan-ul-Mulk, was appointed governor of Awadh in 1722 and converted the governorship into a hereditary principality, keeping the outward forms of allegiance to the Mughal emperor while ruling independently. Option A is wrong because Chin Qilich Khan founded Hyderabad, not Awadh; he took the title Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah when he withdrew to the Deccan in 1724, and he is the standard distractor in this question. Option B is wrong because Marthanda Varma was the ruler who built up Travancore in the far south, an independent kingdom of a quite different region. Option D is wrong because Haidar Ali took power in Mysore in 1761, displacing the Wodeyar rulers, and had no connection with Awadh at all.

The correct answer is B, Chin Qilich Khan. He served as Mughal governor of the Deccan and for a short time as wazir of the empire, and on withdrawing to the south in 1724 he ruled as Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah, founding the line of the Nizams of Hyderabad. Option A is wrong because Murshid Quli Khan was the officer who made Bengal effectively independent and after whom Murshidabad is named. Option C is wrong because Saadatullah Khan established the authority of the Nawabs of Arcot in the Carnatic, a dependency of Hyderabad that drifted into independence of its own. Option D is wrong because Safdar Jung was the second ruler of Awadh, successor to Saadat Khan, and also served as wazir at Delhi, which is why his name is used as a distractor here.

The correct answer is D, Robert Clive. Clive commanded the forces of the East India Company at Plassey on 23 June 1757 and defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, a victory owed chiefly to the defection of the Nawab's commander Mir Jafar. Option A is wrong because Lord Dalhousie was Governor-General almost a century later, from 1848 to 1856, and is remembered for the doctrine of lapse and the annexation of Awadh. Option B is wrong because Captain Hodson belongs to the revolt of 1857, in which he captured Bahadur Shah Zafar and killed the Mughal princes. Option C is wrong because Warren Hastings became the first Governor-General of Bengal in 1773 and is linked with ending the dual government, not with Plassey. Clive had already made his name at Arcot in 1751, and after Plassey he went on to become the first Governor of Bengal, which is why his name dominates this period.

The correct answer is B, Mir Qasim, Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II and Shuja-ud-Daulah of Awadh. At Buxar on 22 October 1764 Hector Munro defeated this alliance of the deposed Nawab of Bengal, the reigning Mughal emperor and the Nawab of Awadh, and the Treaty of Allahabad of 1765 followed. Option A is wrong because Mir Jafar was the Company's own candidate for the throne of Bengal and fought on its side, not against it. Option C is wrong on two counts: Mir Jafar was never in the opposing alliance, and Bahadur Shah II came to the Mughal throne only in 1837, long afterwards. Option D is wrong because Siraj-ud-Daulah had been killed in 1757 after Plassey and could not have been present seven years later.

The correct answer is A, the Diwani, or revenue collection rights, of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. After Buxar the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II granted the Company the Diwani of these provinces, which gave it a legal title to their revenues and turned a trading body into a territorial power. Option B is wrong because the Company never acquired the right to appoint the wazir at Delhi, an office that remained a matter of court politics. Option C is wrong because the Carnatic was under the Nawabs of Arcot and passed under Company control through the separate Carnatic wars and later arrangements. Option D is wrong because Bombay had come to the English crown as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza in 1661, and Salsette was obtained from the Marathas much later.

The correct answer is B, set up by Robert Clive, abolished by Warren Hastings. Clive arranged after 1765 that the Company should hold the Diwani, the right to collect revenue, while the Nawab kept the Nizamat, the duty of administration and justice without the money to perform it; the result was a government in which nobody was answerable, and the famine of 1770 followed. Warren Hastings ended the arrangement in 1772. Option A is wrong because it reverses Hastings's role, making the man who abolished the system its author. Option C is wrong because Wellesley and Lord Hastings belong to a later period of subsidiary alliances and wars. Option D is wrong because Mir Jafar was a puppet Nawab and framed no such system. The famine of 1770, in which a large part of the population of Bengal perished, is the standard illustration of what the arrangement produced.

The correct answer is A, Tipu Sultan. Tipu openly identified with the French Revolution: he planted a Tree of Liberty at Seringapatam, allowed a Jacobin club to be formed there, let himself be addressed as a citizen and sought a French alliance against the English. Option B is wrong because Aurobindo Ghosh was a nationalist and later a philosopher of the early twentieth century, associated with the Swadeshi movement and the Alipore conspiracy case. Option C is wrong because Annie Besant led the Theosophical Society and the Home Rule League and presided over the Congress in 1917, more than a century after the Revolution. Option D is wrong because Badruddin Tyabji was an early Congress leader and its president in 1887, again of a much later generation.

The correct answer is D, Tipu Sultan. Mysore under Haidar Ali and then Tipu Sultan built iron-cased war rockets and organised regular rocket units, using them against the English in the Anglo-Mysore wars; specimens taken at Seringapatam were studied in England and shaped the rockets developed there. Option A is wrong because Lord Cornwallis was the Governor-General who fought Tipu in the Third Anglo-Mysore War and introduced the Permanent Settlement, not a maker of weapons. Option B is wrong because Babar is remembered for introducing field artillery and matchlocks at Panipat in 1526, which is a different technology and nearly three centuries earlier. Option C is wrong because Akbar II was a titular Mughal emperor of the early nineteenth century with no military role of any kind.

The correct answer is B, Battle of Seringapatam. The Fourth Anglo-Mysore War closed with the storming of Seringapatam, Tipu Sultan's capital, in which he was killed on 4 May 1799; Mysore then passed to a restored Wodeyar ruler under a subsidiary alliance. Option A is wrong because Vandiwash, fought in 1760, belongs to the Third Carnatic War and decided the contest between the English and the French in India, not the Mysore wars. Option C is wrong because Porto Novo, in 1781, was an English victory over Haidar Ali during the Second Anglo-Mysore War, which continued for three more years. Option D is wrong because Polilur, in 1780, was a serious English defeat early in that same Second war and settled nothing. Candidates should also note that the Wodeyar family was restored to a reduced Mysore after 1799, so the dynasty outlasted the man who had displaced it.

The correct answer is C, Asaf-ud-Daulah. He moved the seat of government from Faizabad to Lucknow and in 1784 built the Bara Imambara there as a famine relief work, employing thousands on it, and so began the age of nawabi Lucknow with its architecture, cuisine and courtly culture. Option A is wrong because Saadat Khan founded the state in 1722 and ruled from Faizabad. Option B is wrong because Safdar Jung, his successor, divided his time between Awadh and Delhi, where he was wazir, but did not change the capital. Option D is wrong because Wajid Ali Shah was the last ruler of Awadh, deposed by Lord Dalhousie in 1856 on the plea of misgovernment, by which time Lucknow had been the capital for some seventy years.

The correct answer is D, Mir Qasim. Installed by the Company in place of Mir Jafar, Mir Qasim moved his capital from Murshidabad to Munger in Bihar precisely to put distance between himself and the Company's establishment at Calcutta, raised a new army and abolished the inland duties that the Company's servants were evading; the quarrel that followed led to Buxar. Option A is wrong because Alivardi Khan ruled from Murshidabad after seizing power in 1740. Option B is wrong because Siraj-ud-Daulah also kept Murshidabad as his capital through his brief reign of about a year. Option C is wrong because Mir Jafar, a puppet in both his terms, never had the independence to make such a move. Munger also gave Mir Qasim an arsenal of his own, where muskets were manufactured on the European pattern, and it is this military independence that the Company found intolerable.

The correct answer is A, the Marathas and Ahmad Shah Abdali. On 14 January 1761 the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali defeated the Maratha army led by Sadashivrao Bhau, in which the young Vishwasrao was also killed, and the defeat ended the Maratha bid to succeed the Mughals as the paramount power of northern India. Option B is wrong because Babar defeated Ibrahim Lodi at the First Battle of Panipat in 1526. Option C is wrong because the forces of Akbar, under Bairam Khan, defeated Hemu at the Second Battle of Panipat in 1556. Option D is wrong because the Marathas fought the East India Company in the three Anglo-Maratha wars, which were waged elsewhere and in later decades. The battle is also remembered for the scale of the Maratha losses, which left the field open for the East India Company to become the paramount power in the north.