UPSC Prelims 2017 · Question 51 of 99
UPSC Prelims 2017 question on Butler Committee 1927
- ExamUPSC CSE
- Year2017
- PaperGeneral Studies Paper I
- SubjectModern History
- TopicConstitutional Development
- DifficultyMedium
- TypeDirect
The object of the Butler Committee of 1927 was to
Show answer
Answer: D. Improve the relationship between the Government of India and the Indian States.
Verdict
The answer is to improve the relationship between the Government of India and the Indian States.
Analysis
The Butler Committee of 1927, formally the Indian States Committee, was appointed to examine relations between the princely states and the paramount power. It recommended that the Viceroy rather than the Governor-General in Council should represent the Crown in dealings with the states, and it sympathised with the princes' fear that their states might pass without consent under a new government in British India. It had nothing to do with dividing central and provincial jurisdiction, defining the Secretary of State's powers or censoring the press.
Source
Spectrum, A Brief History of Modern India, page 321.
How to crack it
Translate each commission name into its subject and the whole modern history chapter becomes mechanical. Butler means princely states and paramountcy, Simon means constitutional review, Hunter means the Jallianwala inquiry, Radcliffe means the boundary, and Sapru and Nehru report mean constitutional drafting by Indians. Note that the princely states question was live throughout the late 1920s and 1930s and feeds directly into the federal scheme of the 1935 Act.