Modern Indian History (Mid-Eighteenth Century to the Present)

What the official syllabus says

UPSC Civil Services (Main) Examination, Paper II: General Studies I.

Modern Indian history from about the middle of the eighteenth century until the present- significant events, personalities, issues.

The national movement is treated on its own page, The Freedom Struggle, and the years after 1947 on Post-independence Consolidation. This page covers the rest of the period.

Topics in detail

India in the eighteenth century

• Decline of the Mughal Empire after Aurangzeb; invasions of Nadir Shah (1739) and Ahmad Shah Abdali
• Successor and regional states: Bengal, Awadh, Hyderabad, Mysore (Haidar Ali, Tipu Sultan), the Marathas under the Peshwas, the Sikhs under Ranjit Singh, the Rajputs, Travancore
• The Third Battle of Panipat (1761) and its effects

The European companies and the British conquest

• Arrival of the Portuguese, Dutch, English, French and Danes; trade and rivalry
• The Carnatic Wars and the Anglo-French contest
• Bengal: the Battle of Plassey (1757), the Battle of Buxar (1764), the Treaty of Allahabad (1765) and the Diwani; dual government
• The Anglo-Mysore, Anglo-Maratha and Anglo-Sikh wars
• Expansion policies: Wellesley’s Subsidiary Alliance, Dalhousie’s Doctrine of Lapse, the annexation of Awadh
• Relations with neighbours: Afghanistan, Burma, Nepal

Administration and constitutional development under the British

• The Regulating Act (1773), Pitt’s India Act (1784) and the Charter Acts (1793, 1813, 1833, 1853)
• The Government of India Act, 1858 and the Queen’s Proclamation
• The Indian Councils Acts of 1861, 1892 and 1909
• Civil services, police, army and judicial organisation; local self-government (Ripon’s resolution, 1882)
• Policy towards princely states

Economic impact of British rule

• Land revenue systems: the Permanent Settlement (1793), Ryotwari and Mahalwari
• Commercialisation of agriculture, rural indebtedness and famines
• Decline of handicrafts (deindustrialisation) and the drain of wealth theory (Dadabhai Naoroji, R.C. Dutt)
• Railways, posts and telegraph; plantations (indigo, tea, coffee)
• Rise of modern industry and the Indian capitalist class; the working class

Education, press and social change

• Growth of modern education: the Charter Act of 1813, Macaulay’s Minute (1835), Wood’s Despatch (1854), the first universities (1857), the Hunter Commission (1882)
• The Indian press and the Vernacular Press Act (1878)
• Socio-religious reform: Raja Ram Mohan Roy and the Brahmo Samaj; the abolition of sati (1829); Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and the Hindu Widows’ Remarriage Act (1856); Prarthana Samaj; Dayananda Saraswati and the Arya Samaj; Swami Vivekananda and the Ramakrishna Mission; the Theosophical Society; the Young Bengal movement
• Reform among Muslims (Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Aligarh movement), Sikhs (Singh Sabha) and Parsis
• Anti-caste and lower-caste movements: Jyotiba and Savitribai Phule (Satyashodhak Samaj), Sree Narayana Guru, Ayyankali, E.V. Ramasamy (the Self-Respect movement)
• Women’s questions in the nineteenth century: Pandita Ramabai, Tarabai Shinde, the Age of Consent Act (1891)

Resistance before 1857 and the Revolt of 1857

• Peasant and tribal uprisings: the Sannyasi–Fakir rebellion, Paika rebellion, Kol, Santhal (1855–56) and other revolts
• The Revolt of 1857: causes, the spread and its centres, leaders (Bahadur Shah Zafar, Nana Saheb, Rani Lakshmibai, Tantia Tope, Begum Hazrat Mahal, Kunwar Singh), reasons for failure, nature (differing historians’ views) and consequences
• Later peasant and tribal movements: the Indigo revolt (1859–60), Pabna, the Deccan riots (1875), Birsa Munda’s Ulgulan

Overlaps

• Prelims General Studies Paper I asks about modern history in objective form.
• The Optional Subject History covers the same period in more depth.