Read the passage and answer the questions:
Revolt of 1857
In the meantime the British became increasingly interested in acquiring the territory of Awadh. They felt that the soil there was good for producing indigo and cotton and the region was ideally located to be developed into the principal market of Upper India. By the 1850s, moreover, all the major areas of India had been conquered: the Maratha lands, the Doab, the Carnatic, the Punjab and Bengal. The takeover in 1856 was expected to complete a process of territorial annexation that had begun with the conquest of Bengal almost a century earlier. Lord Dalhousie’s annexations created disaffection in all the areas and principalities that were annexed but nowhere more so than in the kingdom of Awadh in the heart of North India. Here, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was dethroned and exiled to Calcutta on the plea that the region being misgoverned. The British government also wrongly assumed that Wajid Ali Shah was an unpopular ruler. On the contrary, he was widely loved, and when he left his beloved Lucknow, there were many followed him all the way to Kanpur singing songs of lament. The widespread sense of grief and loss at the Nawab’s exile was recorded by many contemporary observers. One of them wrote: “The life was gone out of the body, and the body of this town had been left lifeless.....there was no street or market and house which did not wail out the cry of agony in separation of Jan-i-Alam.” One folk song bemoaned that “the honourable English came and took the country”.
Why were the British interested in acquiring the territory of Awadh?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → The soil was good for producing indigo and cotton
The passage gives the British reasons for wanting Awadh. They felt that its soil was good for producing indigo and cotton, two crops in demand for trade, and that the region was ideally placed to become the principal market of Upper India. Awadh was annexed in 1856.
Note: This passage is taken from the NCERT chapter ‘Rebels and the Raj’, almost word for word. Read the sections on Awadh slowly, line by line; a few paragraphs there have given this paper four questions.
NCERT (2025-26): “2.1 ‘A cherry that will drop into our mouth one day’ … In the meantime the British became increasingly interested in acquiring the territory of Awadh. They felt that the soil there was good for producing indigo and cotton, and the region was ideally located to be developed into the principal market of Upper India. By the early 1850s, moreover, all the major areas of India had been conquered: the Maratha lands, the Doab, the Carnatic, the Punjab and Bengal. The takeover of Awadh in 1856 was expected to complete a process of territorial annexation that had begun with the conquest of Bengal almost a century earlier.…” |