UPSC 2019 GS-I · 10 marks · 150 words

The 1857 Uprising was the culmination of the recurrent big and small local rebellions that had occurred in the preceding hundred years of British rule. Elucidate.

What “Elucidate” demands

make the concept clear through explanation and concrete illustration, so a reader unfamiliar with it would understand.

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What a top answer must contain

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Preceding rebellions to name with dates: Sannyasi-Fakir (1763-1800), Chuar, Kol 1831-32, Santhal Hul 1855-56, Faraizi and Wahabi movements, Poligar wars
Common causes across them: revenue extraction, dispossession of chiefs and zamindars, forest-land encroachment, missionary anxiety
Continuity thesis: Sumit Sarkar and S.B. Chaudhuri on 1857 as the aggregation of localised grievance
Discontinuity a top answer concedes: 1857's scale, sepoy core and pan-north-Indian character were new
Company's own military-fiscal pressures as the connective tissue

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The 1857 Uprising was the culmination of the recurrent big and small local rebellions that had occurred in the preceding hundred years of British rule. Elucidate.

What a top answer must contain

Now write it, and find out what you actually scored

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