History Optional paper II - Sample Qs

16 Qs out of 28 as asked in UPSC CSE Mains History paper II optional held on 07 OCT [2 to 5 PM] have similarity/correlation with our ATS sample qs.

Qs in UPSC CSE : Modern India > 1d, 2c, 3a, 3b, 3c, 4a, 4b.

World History > 5a, 5b, 5c, 6a, 6b, 6c, 7c, 8a, 8c.

Advance Test Series

History Optional : Modern India

Max Marks  250                                                                                        Max Time 180 min

All the questions are compulsory. Marks are indicated against each question.

1. “In practice, Bengal Extremism wasted a lot of energies in purely verbal or literary violence and in-fighting over the Congress organization, though it did contribute (along with others)…..to building up an impressive chain of district organizations or samitis and in providing some novel political leadership to labour unrest.” Elaborate.       20

2. Between 1880 and World War One, successive financial crises showed that India was

incapable of shouldering the financial burden of serving the empire. The financial crises were due to various reasons, such as greater Indian demands for a share of resources. Development of an articulate political opinion made any increase in internal taxation rate a risky proposition. There were also the macro-economic factors, like fluctuating exchange rates, trade depressions etc. or the vagaries of nature.

In this context, discuss the repercussions of the financial crises.            15

3. The varied dimensions and contradictions of Non-Cooperation can best be appreciated, however, through regional and local studies—and for that recent research is rapidly accumulating data, though many gaps still remain.

Throw light on the regional variations of the Non-Cooperation movement.       15

4. This Muslim alienation -often stigmatised in Indian historiography as "communalism"- is a contentious issue among historians. One way to explain it is to dismiss it as "false consciousness" of a self-seeking petty bourgeoisie and misguided workers and peasants, who mistakenly saw their interests through the communal mirror and sought to safeguard them with constitutional privileges. Their frustration increased in the years after 1929, as depression constricted opportunities, leading to more tension, conflicts and violence.

Tender your opinion in the above context.             15

5. During the Second World War when the Communists had to tergiversate due to the Hitler-Stalin pact and Hitler’s subsequent attack on the Soviet Union, they lost the respect of all other leftists and found it difficult to recover credibility after the war. They tried to make up for this by adopting a very radical line, but with Nehru’s increasing friendship with the Soviet Union they were forced to toe the line and follow the ‘parliamentary path’.

In this backdrop, trace the rise and programmes of the Communists post 1920 till independence.   20

6. Read the following passages and answer the questions that follow:

When a peasant rose in revolt at any time or place under the Raj, he did so necessarily and explicitly in violation of a series of codes which defined his very existence as a member of that colonial, and still largely semi-feudal society. For his subalternity was materialized by the structure of property, institutionalized by law, sanctified by religion and made tolerable-and even desirable-by tradition. To rebel was indeed to destroy many of those familiar signs which he had learned to read and manipulate in order to extract a meaning out of the harsh world around him and live with it. The risk in 'turning things upside down' under these conditions was indeed so great that he could hardly afford to engage in such a project in a state of absent-mindedness.

There is nothing in the primary sources of historical evidence to suggest anything other than this. These give the lie to the myth, retailed so often by careless and impressionistic writing on the subject, of peasant insurrections being purely spontaneous and unpremeditated affairs. The truth is quite to the contrary. It would be difficult to cite an uprising on any significant scale that was not in fact preceded either by less militant types of mobilization when other means had been tried and found wanting or by parley among its principals seriously to weigh the pros and cons of any recourse to arms. In events so very different from each other in context, character and the composition of participants such as the Rangpur dhing against Debi Sinha (1783), the Barasat bidroha led by Titu Mir (1831), the Santal hool (1855) and the 'blue mutiny' of 1860 the protagonists in each case had tried out petitions, deputations or other forms of supplication before actually declaring war on their oppressors.

Again the revolts of the Kol (1832), the Santal and the Munda (1899-1900) as well as the Rangpur dhing and the jacqueries in Allahabad and Ghazipur districts during the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-8 (to name only two out of many instances in that remarkable series) had all been inaugurated by planned and in some cases protracted consultation among the representatives of the local peasant masses.

Indeed there is hardly an instance of the peasantry, whether the cautious and earthy villagers of the plains or the supposedly more volatile adivasis of the upland tracts, stumbling or drifting into rebellion. They had far too much at stake and would not launch into it except as a deliberate, even if desperate, way out of an intolerable condition of existence. Insurgency, in other words, was a motivated and conscious undertaking on the part of the rural masses.

A. Do you agree with the viewpoint of the author?                           15

B. Paint a picture of the tribal and peasant rebellions in colonial India and analyse through the prism of the author.                                                20

7. The elections should have been held in 1976, but Indira Gandhi did not dare to face the people in that year and postponed them. Then suddenly at the end of 1976 she announced that elections would be held early in 1977. She released the opposition leaders only a few weeks before the polling date, hoping that they would not be able to organise a proper campaign in this way. Sanjay, who was confident of the strength of his Youth Congress and who was obviously keen on getting parliamentary legitimation for his power, encouraged his mother to take this step. At the last minute a prominent supporter of Indira Gandhi, the leader of the untouchables in the Lok Sabha, Jagjivan Ram, broke with her and established his own party—the Congress for Democracy—which joined the opposition parties in an electoral alliance. For the first time in Indian history the opposition had learned the lesson of the prevailing election system and had managed to match every Congress candidate with only one opponent. In spite of having been given no time for running a campaign, this did the trick for the opposition: much to everyone’s

surprise Indira Gandhi lost the elections.

Was declaration of emergency or the political alliances responsible for the downfall of the Congress government as discussed here?                   20

8. The principle of personal local rule began to be attenuated before the rebellion, and when the Crown assumed direct control over India in its aftermath, local authority had become an oligarchy of European civil servants. By the later nineteenth century, European wives and families of district officials joined their men, and in some places other Europeans – teachers, planters, businessmen – constituted large enough colonies to form small and exclusive European enclaves within the vast Indian world.

Critically discuss.          15

9. Success proved illusory when the results of the first national census conducted in 1951 were analysed and revealed that inadequate account had been taken of the rapid increase of the population; impressive gains in food production resulted in no gain in per capita food availability. In 1952 India became the first country in the world to pursue a policy of attempting to limit the natural increase in its population.

What steps were taken by India for population control post-independence. Were they successful?         15

10. Despite the passions it unleashed, the ‘Quit India’ movement did not drive the British from India. To the contrary, it was ruthlessly suppressed.          Discuss.        20

11 Critically discuss the following in about 150 words each        10 X 6 = 60

A.       Dr. V. A. Smith defended the action of Warren Hastings on the ground of expediency. According to him, "Urgent necessities of the time justified Hastings in cancelling treaty obligation and putting a certain amount of pressure on the Begums to make them disgorge."

B.       Another cause of the failure of dyarchy was the reservation of the Department of Finance in the hands of the Member of the Executive Council.

C.       The result of all these reforms was that law and order was established in the Punjab within a short period. The people got contented. So great was the measure of their contentment that when after the lapse of eight years, the mutiny broke out in 1857, the Sikhs did not join it. On the other hand, the Sikh soldiers went to Delhi to crush the mutiny.

D.      Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a Muslim League politician of Karachi, was appointed a member of the State Council of Ministers of Junagadh. In May 1947, he was appointed the Dewan of the state. The Nawab of Junagadh came under the influence of the Muslim League.

E.       The middle class, in the context of nineteenth century colonial Bengal, had a fluid identity eluding any particular socio-economic categorisation but is generally recognised as characteristics which serve as the primary markers of middle class identity namely the western education, a white collar job or ‘chakri’, and participation in a print culture.

F.        The historiography of the Indian mutiny (1857-8) suggests that livelihood classes responded to the episode differently but pays more attention to the agricultural classes than the urban commercial ones in studying the response.

                                                               Advance Test Series 

History Optional : Modern World History

Max Marks  250                                                                                        Max Time 180 min

All the questions are compulsory. Marks are indicated against each question.

Q1 Using the following documents, analyze similarities and differences in the mechanization of the cotton industry in Japan and India in the period from the 1880s to the 1930s.              20

Document A

Source: Report of the British Royal Commission of Labour in India, Calcutta, 1935.

Most of the workers in the cotton mills are recruited from among the small

peasants and agricultural laborers of the villages, along with unemployed

hand weavers. They live in small rented huts. The average worker remains

in the same factory for less than two years. Wages are low, and there has

been no significant change in wages over the last decades.

Document B

Source: Photo from an official company history, Nichibo cotton mill,

Japan, 1920s.

Document C

Source: Arno S. Pearse, British official of the International Federation of

Master Cotton Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Associations. Photo from a

report on Indian textile mills, 1935.

Document D

Source: Radhakamal Mukerjee, Indian economist, The Foundation of Indian Economics, 1916.

For the last few decades there has been a rapid decline of the handwoven

cloth industry throughout the country on account of the competition of

machine manufactures. Though many still wear clothing made from cloth

woven on handlooms, large numbers of handloom weavers have been

abandoning their looms.

The local textile industry owes its very existence, promotion, and growth

to the enterprising spirit of native bankers and investors, who invest large

capital as shareholders, investors, and financiers.

Document E

Source: Tsurumi Shunsuke, Japanese industrialist, circa 1900.

Where do the cheap workers come from? They all come from farming

communities. People from families that are working their own land, or

are engaged in tenant farming but have surplus workers, come to the

cities and the industrial centers to become factory workers. Income from

the farms provides for the family needs and subsistence of the parents

and siblings. The person who takes employment in the factory is an

unattached component of the family. All he or she has to do is earn enough

to maintain his or her own living. That is why the workers’ wages are low.

This shows how important a force agriculture continues to be for the

development of our nation’s commerce and industry.

Q2 Salazar of Portugal, Franco of Spain, Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Stalin in Russia depicted a trend during the inter-war years, a trend of totalitarianism. Discuss.               15

Q3 “Nazi art never caught on, its architecture was unbuilt or destroyed, but its films were shot and seen by millions. The German dictator was a keen believer in the power of cinema and used it to spread the ideology of his murderous regime” How propaganda was used as a tool to further the ideology of the Third Reich?              15

Q4 “After the annexation of Austria in March 1938, Hitler set his sights on the Sudetenland. This part of the newly formed Czechoslovakia had a majority German-speaking population. Hitler’s territorial ambitions threatened to propel Europe into another world war. Both the democracies and the dictatorships, as well as their respective populations, were materially and psychologically unprepared and ill-equipped for another total war. It was feared that this would be a war in which ‘the bomber will always get through’, making little distinction between civilian and soldier. The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain personified both the policy and the sensibility of appeasement, ready to make concessions to Germany to avoid war.” Critically comment.                       15

Q5 The Russian Revolution should not be confined to 1917. The legacy of its leader and chief ideologue lives on in all its terrible contradictions. Do you agree with this? Explain your point of view.                15

Q6 After 1805 the French won a series of astounding victories, including Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland. Napoleon’s subsequent ‘summit meeting’ at Tilsit in 1807, with Tsar Alexander I, saw the two emperors carve up the continent between them. Discuss.                            15

Q7 The Enlightenment is a term so often used and abused that it might no longer be clear what it stands for. It has been widely viewed as the source of everything that is peculiarly modern, from liberal constitutions to alienating technology. Critically examine the statements.    15


Q8 “In Edward Shorter’s view, he asserts that a nineteenth century sexual revolution happened due to the industrial revolution. Young men and women work for wages as it is because the value of self-interest and competitiveness of market economy. Thus it changes the value system of the proletarian subculture. The workers get the meaning of independency by having their own money. Most of the young women struggle to get their own personal freedom and they look at sex as one of the way to fulfil their own self-satisfaction. They only care for their independence from family control. This causes a rise in illegitimacy rates.” Evaluate this perspective. Can any correlation be shown vis-à-vis Indian industrialization post-1947?            15


Q9 Much of the history of socialism and of working class movements has been written by men whose minds were coloured by the history of the last hundred years—specifically by ideas and experience since the Communist Manifesto. St. Simon, Fourier, Proudhon, possibly Sismondi, certainly Owen—these socialists are apt to be treated as pale heralds of the Marxist dawn. Deliberate.                         15


Q10 One of the first major conflicts of the Cold War broke out in Azerbaijan, the northernmost province of Iran. Bordering the Soviet Union and divided from Soviet Azerbaijan, the regional capital Tabriz was an important gateway between the two countries. From Baku, capital of Soviet Azerbaijan, socialist ideas were brought in to Iran, inspiring the foundation of the Persian Communist Party in 1920. In 1945 the Azerbaijan Democratic Party, backed by the Red Army, declared autonomy from Tehran and established an independent government. Considering this instance and drawing other instances during the cold war period, do you believe that erstwhile USSR had an agenda of usurping nieighbouring regimes through the instrument of ‘spread of Communism’?          15


Q11 Can the study of the past really help us to understand the present? Discuss, by drawing illustrations from modern world history.                       15


Q12 Soon after the October Revolution, civil war broke out in southern Russia which lasted with many fluctuations of fortune until 1921. White and Red armies, German, Austrian and Polish forces, and independent Ukrainian command were all at different times involved. Did the Civil War save the Bolshevik regime? What was Trotsky’s role in it?         15




Q13 Americans defended their rebellion of 1776 with appeals to the natural rights of men to liberty and property, but they deliberately excluded persons of African descent held as slaves from a share in these inherent rights. How would you explain this paradox?             15
Q14 Critically comment on the following in about 150 words each          10X5=50

A.    A decade after the conclusion of the Great War the era of the Great Depression began, reducing millions of people in the advanced Western world to the levels of grinding poverty suffered throughout the twentieth century by humanity in Asia, South America and Africa.

B.    The world of the twentieth century differed sharply from that of the nineteenth. The twentieth century was the age of the masses.

C.    One will blame me [for engaging in] war and more war. I regard such struggle as the fate of all being. No one can avoid the fight if he does not wish to be the inferior.

D.    ‘Body counts’ of Vietnamese did not matter to them. Vietnamese fertility was high. The only ‘body counts’ that mattered were those of the Americans, who sooner or later would have to abandon a war being fought in a far-away country, a war whose outcome was no possible threat to US security.

E.    Mao’s contribution to revolutionary theory, it is often claimed, is that he relied on the peasantry

                   UPSC CIVIL SERVICES MAINS EXAM 2018 [Simulated]

History Optional Paper – 2

Max Marks 250                                                                                               Max Time 180 min

Questions 1 & 5 are compulsory. Answer any 3 questions from the rest, taking at least one question from each section.

Section- A
1. Critically examine the following statements in about 150 words each: 10*5 = 50
(a) "The Anglo-French rivalry could not be exploited by the Indian princes."
(b)"Let us salute Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar for his selfless life towards his countrymen.”
(c) "The British period was indeed an era of darkness for India."
(d) "The Aligarh movement was not wholly liberal"
(e) "Dinababdhu Mitra’s Neel Darpan was a subaltern narrative"
2. (a) Did English Utilitarianism get reflected in the colonial administration?  Discuss.    15
(b) Was there any tribal-peasant connect during the Great Revolt of 1857? Cite instances to prove your point.    20
(c) The British really sinned in conquering Sind.     15
3. (a) Trace the contribution of the Azad Hind Fauj in the freedom movement of India.     20
(b) Explain the rise and growth of communalism between 1875 to 1946 and why mainstream parties failed to control it?                                                                                                     20
(c) Discuss the tenor of tribal movements in the 19^th century.                                              10
4. (a) Can it be said that Gandhi built a ‘national’ freedom movement based upon the contribution of his predecessors or was it his ‘own’ making only?                                      20
(b) How far the growth of socio-political consciousness in post-independent India has given rise to the making of modern India?                                                                                            20
(c) Citing illustrations, discuss how the freedom movement found its place in princely states. 10

SECTION- B
5. Critically examine the following statements in about 150 words each:   10*5 = 50
(a) "The Enlightenment Movement in France was a synthesis of Descarte’s Cartesian philosophy of the mechanistic understanding of nature plus British Empiricism."
(b) "The American Constitution was an economic document drawn with superb skill by men whose property interests were immediately at stake.”
(c) "I wished to found a European system, a European Code of Laws, a European judiciary: there would be but one people in Europe" [Napoleon Bonaparte]
(d) "The Industrial Revolution and its aftermath considerably transformed the western society"
(e) "The most interesting aspect of Japan was the ability of its ruling elite to understand the technological supremacy of the Americans and other Europeans and as well as to align to it"
6. (a) Distinguish between Colonialism and Imperialism.           15
(b)  Would you agree that Lenin was a ruthless dictator who paved the way for the even more ruthless and brutal dictatorship of Stalin?                                        20
(c) What was the role of leadership in Italian unification?          15
7. (a) Trace the history of modern Australia since the 18^th century.                15
(b) Explain how the effect of Communism liquidated in Eastern Europe from around 1988–89 onwards, interestingly coinciding and overlapping with the fall of Soviet Union      20
(c) Can it be said that the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials post second world war was a farce?     15
8. (a) What factors helped the Nazis establish themselves in Germany ?    15
(b) “The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan were considered by the Russian bloc as a weapon against Russia in order to restrict her influence.” Critically examine.      15
(c) What was the nature of the South African apartheid? Examine the role of the opposition movement(s) in that context.    20