By which treaty did Peshwa Baji Rao II accept the subsidiary alliance of the East India Company?

The correct answer is A, Bengal, Bihar and Odisha. The Treaty of Allahabad was signed in 1765 by Robert Clive with the Mughal emperor Shah Alam II and Shuja-ud-Daula of Awadh after the Company's victory at the Battle of Buxar in 1764. By it the emperor granted the Company the diwani, that is the right to collect the revenue, of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha, which made the Company the real ruler of eastern India while the Nawab kept only the nizamat or police and judicial duties. Option B is wrong because Awadh and Rohilkhand were not ceded; Awadh was restored to Shuja-ud-Daula on payment of an indemnity and was kept as a buffer state. Option C is wrong because Awadh again does not belong in the list. Option D is wrong for the same reason, and because Odisha is the third province that completes the grant.

The correct answer is B, the First Anglo-Maratha War. The Treaty of Salbai of 1782 closed the First Anglo-Maratha War, which had begun with the Company's attempt to place Raghunath Rao in power at Pune. The treaty restored the position as it stood before the war, recognised Madhav Rao II as the Peshwa and gave the Company about twenty years of peace with the Marathas, which it used against Mysore. Option A is wrong because the Second Anglo-Mysore War was ended by the Treaty of Mangalore in 1784, signed with Tipu Sultan. Option C is wrong because the Second Anglo-Maratha War followed the Treaty of Bassein of 1802 and ended with separate treaties at Deogaon and Surji-Arjungaon in 1803 and 1804. Option D is wrong because the First Anglo-Sikh War ended with the Treaty of Lahore in 1846.

The correct answer is B, the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej. The Indus Waters Treaty was signed at Karachi in 1960 by Jawaharlal Nehru and President Ayub Khan, with the World Bank as the third party to the agreement. It divided the six rivers of the Indus system: the three eastern rivers, the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej, were allotted to India, and the three western rivers, the Indus, the Chenab and the Jhelum, to Pakistan, with India allowed limited non-consumptive, domestic and run-of-the-river use of the western rivers. Options A, C and D are wrong because each mixes the two groups: A names exactly the three western rivers that went to Pakistan, while C and D each place one western river, the Chenab and the Jhelum respectively, in India's share.

The correct answer is C, the Soviet Union. The Tashkent Declaration was signed in January 1966 by Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and President Ayub Khan at Tashkent, then in the Soviet Union and now the capital of Uzbekistan, with Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin as mediator. Both sides agreed to withdraw their forces to the positions held before the 1965 war and to restore diplomatic relations. Shastri died in Tashkent the same night the declaration was signed. Option A is wrong because the United States did not mediate this settlement, although it later hosted the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel. Option B is wrong because Britain played no mediating role here. Option D is wrong because Egypt, though a close non-aligned partner of India, was not a party to the talks.

The correct answer is B, Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The Shimla Agreement was signed in July 1972, after the war of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh. Its central provisions were that the ceasefire line in Jammu and Kashmir would be respected as the Line of Control and that India and Pakistan would settle their differences bilaterally and by peaceful means, without third-party involvement. Option A is wrong because Ayub Khan had left office by 1969; his agreement with India was the Tashkent Declaration of 1966. Option C is wrong because Lal Bahadur Shastri died in January 1966. Option D is wrong because Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif signed the Lahore Declaration in 1999, after the Delhi-Lahore bus service was started. A further point worth remembering is that the agreement was signed at Shimla in July 1972 and that the exchange of territory and the return of prisoners of war taken in 1971 followed from it, which is why the Shimla Agreement and the Tashkent Declaration are so often set against each other in a single question.