RAS question
Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner represented India at which international event after World War I?
Correct answer: (B) Treaty of Versailles (1919).
Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner represented India at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, associated here with the Treaty of Versailles after World War I.
Explanation
Maharaja Ganga Singh of Bikaner is linked with the post-World War I peace settlement because he represented India at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. The official FRUS record for Protocol No. 1 of the Preliminary Peace Conference, dated 18 January 1919, lists the section “Dominions and India” among those present. Under “India”, it names “Major General His Highness Sir Ganga Singh Bahadur, Maharaja of Bikaner”. The relevant international event was therefore the Paris Peace Conference/Treaty of Versailles setting, not a later or different constitutional meeting. Ganga Singh was also a progressive Bikaner ruler associated with the Gang Canal, administrative modernisation, and later Round Table Conferences.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) The League of Nations is related to the post-war settlement, but Ganga Singh's documented presence was at the 1919 Preliminary Peace Conference, not at a separate League founding event.
- (C) The Potsdam Conference belongs to the period after World War II, whereas Ganga Singh's relevant international role followed World War I.
- (D) The Round Table Conferences were held in the 1930s, so they were not the immediate post-World War I event involving Ganga Singh's representation of India.
Concept
Ganga Singh's role connects Rajasthan's princely-state leadership with imperial and international politics after World War I. RAS repeats it because Ganga Singh connects local Bikaner history with larger constitutional and diplomatic developments.