Short Answer TypeRead the ‘value-based’ passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was dethroned and exiled to Calcutta on the plea that the region was being misgoverned. The British government also wrongly assumed that Wajid Ali Shah was an unpopular ruler. On the contrary, he was widely loved, and when he left his beloved Lucknow, there were many who followed him all the way to Kanpur singing songs of lament. The widespread sense of grief and loss at the Nawab’s exile was recorded by many contemporary observers. One of them wrote: “The life was gone out of the body, and the body of this town had been left lifeless … there was no street or market and house which did not wail out the cry of agony in separation of Jan-i-Alam.” One folk song bemoaned that “the honourable English came and took the country’’
(Angrez Bahadur ain, mulk lai linho).
Questions:
(a) Why did people bemoan and show an emotional upheaval at? Explain.
(b) What human values are revealed in the above passage?
Why ‘Objectives Resolution’ of Nehru is considered a momentous resolution? Give any two reasons.
How have the different kinds of available sources helped the historians in reconstructing the political career of Gandhiji and the history of the national movement that was associated with it? Explain.
”The colonial cities offered new opportunities to women during the 19th century. ” Support the Statement with facts.
On the given political map of India five centres of the Revolt of 1857 are marked as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. Identify them and write their names on the line given against each on the map.
Long Answer TypeRead the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
Buddhism in practice
This is an excerpt from the Sutta Pitaka, and contains the advice given by the Buddha to a wealthy householder named Sigala:
In five ways should a master look after his servants and employees … by assigning them work according to their strength, by supplying them with food and wages, by tending them in sickness; by sharing delicacies with them and by granting leave at times … In five ways should the clansmen look after the needs of samanas (those who have renounced the world) and Brahmanas: by affection in act and speech and mind, by keeping open house to them and supplying their worldly needs. There are similar instructions to Sigala about how to behave with his parents, teacher and wife.
(a) What advice was given by Buddha to Sigala regarding relationship between a master and his servants and employee?
(b) List the instructions given by Buddha to the clansmen for Samanas and Brahmanas.
(c) According to you what suggestion Buddha would have advocated regarding parents and teachers?
OR
A divine order?
To justify their claims, Brahmanas often cited a verse from a hymn in the Rigveda known as the Purusha sukta, describing the sacrifice of Purusha, the primeval man. All the elements of the universe, including the four social categories, were supposed to have emanated from his body:
The Brahmana was his mouth, of his arms was made the Kshatriya. His thighs became the Vaishya, of his feet the Shudra was born.
(a) How does Rigveda describe the sacrifice of Purusha?
(b) According to Rigveda how did the elements of universe and four social categories emanate?
(c) How did the Brahmanas enforce these norms?
Explain why Abdur Razzak, a Persian Ambassador, was greatly impressed by the fortification of Vijayanagara Empire during the 15th century.
OR
Explain the ways through which Mughal village Panchayats and village headmen regulated rural society.
Read the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
“Moistening the rose garden of fortune”
In this extract Abul Fazl gives a vivid account of how and from whom he collected his information:
. . . to Abul Fazl, son of Mubarak … this sublime mandate was given. “Write with the pen of sincerity the account of the glorious events and of our dominion-conquering victories … Assuredly, I spent much labour and research in collecting the records and narratives of His Majesty’s actions and I was a long time interrogating the servants of the State and the old members of the illustrious family. I examined both prudent, truth-speaking old men and active-minded, right actioned young ones and reduced their statements to writing. The Royal commands were issued to the provinces, that those who from old service remembered, with certainty or with adminicle of doubt, the events of the past, should copy out the notes and memoranda and transit them to the court. (Then) a second command shone forth from the holy Presence-chamber; to wit – that the materials which had been collected should be . . . recited in the royal hearing, and whatever might have to be written down afterwards, should be introduced into the noble volume as a supplement, and that such details as on account of the minuteness of the inquiries and the minutae of affairs, (which) could not then be brought to an end, should be inserted afterwards at my leisure.
Being relieved by this royal order – the interpreter of the Divine ordinance – from the secret anxiety of my heart, I proceeded to reduce into writing the rough draughts (drafts) which were void of the grace of arrangement and style. I obtained the chronicle of events beginning at the Nineteenth Year of the Divine Era, when the Record Office was established by the enlightened intellect of His Majesty, and from its rich pages, I gathered the accounts of many events. Great pains too, were taken to procure the originals or copies of most of the orders
which had been issued to the provinces from the Accession up to the present-day … I also took much trouble to incorporate many of the reports which ministers and high officials had submitted, about the affairs of the empire and the events of foreign countries. And my labour-loving soul was satiated by the apparatus of inquiry and research. I also exerted myself energetically to collect the rough notes and memoranda of sagacious and well-informed men. By these means, I constructed a reservoir for irrigating and moistening the rose garden of fortune. (The Akbar Nama)
(a) Who was Abul Fazl?
(b) Enumerate the sources he used to compile his work.
(c) Name any two administrative and two literary projects compiled by him at the order of Emperor Akbar.
OR
Kings and traders
Krishnadeva Raya (ruled 1509-29), the most famous ruler of Vijayanagara, composed a work on statecraft in Telugu known as the Amuktamalyada. About traders he wrote:
A king should improve the harbours of his country and so encourage its commerce that horses, elephants, precious gems, sandalwood, pearls and other articles are freely imported … He should arrange that the foreign sailors who land in his country on account of storms, illness and exhaustion are looked after in a suitable manner … Make the merchants of distant foreign countries who import elephants and good horses be attached to yourself by providing them with daily audience, presents and allowing decent profits. Then those articles will never go to your enemies.
Explain how Indian partition was a culmination of communal politics that started developing in the opening decades of the 20th century.
OR
Explain how the constitution of India protects the right of the Central government and the states.
Some scholars see Partition as a culmination of a communal politics that started developing in the opening decades of the twentieth century.
(i) They suggest that separate electorates for Muslims, created by the colonial government in 1909 and expanded in 1919, crucially shaped the nature of communal politics.
(ii) This created a temptation for politicians working within this system to use sectarian slogans and gather a following by distributing favours to their own religious groups.
(iii) Religious identities thus acquired a functional use within a modern political system; and the logic of electoral politics deepened and hardened these identities.
(iv) Community identities no longer indicated simple difference in faith and belief; they came to mean active opposition and hostility between communities.
(v) Communal identities were consolidated by a host of other developments in the early twentieth century.
(vi) During the 1920s and early 1930s tension grew around a number of issues. Muslims were angered by “music-before-mosque”, by the cow protection movement, and by the efforts of the Arya Samaj to bring back to the Hindu fold (shuddhi) those who had recently converted to Islam.
(vii) Hindus were angered by the rapid spread of tabligh (propaganda) and tanzim (organisation) after 1923.
(viii) As middle class publicists and communal activists sought to build greater solidarity within their communities, mobilising people against the other community, riots spread in different parts of the country.
(ix) Every communal riot deepened differences between communities, creating disturbing memories of violence.
(x) Some historians, both Indian and Pakistani, suggest that Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s theory that the Hindus and Muslims in colonial India constituted two separate nations can be projected back into medieval history.
OR
The right of the Central government and the states:
(i) One of the topics most vigorously debated in the Constituent Assembly was the respective rights of the Central Government and the states
(ii) Among those arguing for a strong Centre was Jawaharlal Nehru. As he put it in a letter to the President of the Constituent Assembly, “Now that partition is a settled fact, … it would be injurious to the interests of the country to provide for a weak central authority which would be incapable of ensuring peace, of coordinating vital matters of common concern and of speaking effectively for the whole country in the international sphere”.
(iii) The Draft Constitution provided for three lists of subjects: Union, State, and Concurrent.
(iv) The subjects in the first list were to be the preserve of the Central Government, while those in the second list were vested with the states.
(v) As for the third list, here Centre and state shared responsibility.
(vi) However, many more items were placed under exclusive Union control than in other federations, and more placed on the Concurrent list too than desired by the provinces.
(vii) Besides, Article 356 gave the Centre the powers to take over a state administration on the recommendation of the governor
(viii) The Constitution also mandated for a complex system of fiscal federalism. In the case of some taxes (for instance, customs duties and Company taxes) the Centre retained all the proceeds.
(ix) In other cases (such as income tax and excise duties) it shared them with the states; in still other cases (for instance, estate duties) it assigned them wholly to the states.
(x) The states, meanwhile, could levy and collect certain taxes on their own: these included land and property taxes, sales tax, and the hugely profitable tax on bottled liquor.
Switch
