Previous Year Question
What was the purpose with which Sir William Wedderburn and W.S. Caine had set-up the Indian Parliamentary Committee in 1893?
Correct Answer: A
Detailed Solution
(a) is correct.
The Indian Parliamentary Committee was established in 1893 by Sir William Wedderburn and W.S. Caine, with the cooperation of Dadabhai Naoroji and other parliamentarians sympathetic to India.
Its purpose was to raise India’s political and administrative grievances in the British Parliament, particularly the House of Commons, and build parliamentary support for reforms.
The committee helped bring matters such as Indian land revenue, the salt tax, financial expenditure, representation in legislative councils and Indianisation of the civil services before Parliament.
Wedderburn entered the British Parliament in 1893 and chaired the committee from 1893 to 1900.
It represented the constitutional and Moderate strategy of the early Congress—securing reforms by influencing British public opinion and Parliament.
(b) is incorrect. Entry of Indians into the judiciary and higher services formed part of the wider reform agenda, but the committee was not created exclusively to secure entry into the Imperial Judiciary.
(c) is incorrect. In 1893, the principal Congress objective was constitutional and administrative reform, not an immediate parliamentary discussion on complete independence. Complete Independence was formally adopted as the Congress objective much later, at the Lahore Session of 1929.
(d) is incorrect. Dadabhai Naoroji had already been elected to the House of Commons in 1892. The committee’s purpose was not to secure parliamentary seats for eminent Indians but to organise parliamentary pressure on Indian issues.