Indian National Movement — UPSC Mains Model Answer

The doctrine held that a princely state whose ruler died without a natural male heir would lapse to the paramount British power. It denied the long-standing Indian custom of adoption as a legitimate means of succession. This unilateral reinterpretation of paramountcy violated treaty obligations and eroded trust between the Company and ruling elites.

Under Dalhousie, states including Satara, Jhansi, Nagpur, and Sambalpur were annexed through this doctrine. Awadh, though annexed separately on grounds of misgovernance in 1856, compounded the sense of dispossession among the nobility. Jhansi's annexation in 1853 and Nagpur's in 1854 were among the most politically consequential, directly fuelling grievances that fed into the 1857 Revolt.

Dispossessed rulers, their retainers, and dependent economies generated a class of disaffected elites with organisational capacity and local legitimacy. The Rani of Jhansi became emblematic of resistance precisely because her state's annexation was widely perceived as unjust. The doctrine thus converted passive resentment into active rebellion.

The Crown's proclamation of 1858 formally repudiated the doctrine, guaranteeing adoption rights to princely rulers. This reversal acknowledged that the policy had been administratively counterproductive and politically destabilising, offering a lesson in the limits of coercive territorial consolidation.