History: 2017: CBSE: [All-India]: Set – I

Brahmanas enforced these norms as –

• They told people that Varna order was of divine origin.
• They also asked kings to enforce Varna system in their kingdoms.
• They attempted to persuade people that their status was determined by birth.

The amara-nayakaswere military commanders who collected taxes from peasants, craftsperson and traders in the area, sent tribute to the king annually and personally appeared in the royal court with gifts to express their loyalty.

One consequence of Partition has been the emergence of stereotypes in both the nations, wherein people’s loyalty is associated with religion, not nation. Simultaneously, partition generated memories and hatred that still shape history of people in both countries.

Some members of the Depressed Castes, who were present in the Constituent Assembly, stressed that protection and safeguards could not solely resolve the problem of “Untouchables”.

According to them, their misery was due to social norms and moral values of caste society. The latter had used their services and labour, but socially stayed aloof from them, refusing to mix or dine with them or allow them into temples.

Depressed Castes formed between 20-25% per cent of total population. Yet, their suffering was caused by systematic marginalisation. They had neither access to education, nor share in administration.

For Mahatma Gandhi, freedom of India meant not just political freedom, but also social and religious freedom. He wanted to root out all the social problems that had plagued and divided Indian society for centuries. He also viewed unity of all religions as necessary to achieve India’s freedom. Hence, his focus was not merely centered on politics, but also on social welfare and equality of all Indians, regardless of their caste or religious identities.

Many residential buildings in Lower Town of Mohenjodaro were centred on a courtyard, surrounded by rooms on all sides. All activities were probably centred on the courtyard.

Concern for privacy is apparent by the lack of windows in walls at ground level. Moreover, the main entrance does not provide a direct view of the courtyard’s interior.

Every house had its own brick-paved bathroom, with drains connected, through walls, to street drains. Some houses have remains of staircases, leading to a second storey or roof. Many houses had wells, often in rooms accessible from outside, probably used by passers-by.

Historians use two categories to classify the contents of Mahabharata. These are known as narrative and didactic categories.

The narrative category caters to verses that tell a story to the reader, whereas, the didactic category showcases the prescriptions about the social norms of the period in question.

Nevertheless, the classification of the content along narrative and didactic means is not binding. Many stories seep into the didactic part of the content, while many narratives carry a social message.

Most of the historians believe that Mahabharata was meant to be a dramatic story. The didactic elements were probably added later by other writers.

Al-Biruni, who was born in 973 A.D., at Khwarizm, in modern Uzbekistan, was well-versed in severallanguages, including Sanskrit. In 1017, when Sultan Mahmud invaded Khwarizm, he took several scholars, including Al-Biruni, to his capital city of Ghazni, where Al-Biruni developed interest in India. When Punjab was annexed to the Ghaznavid Empire, contacts with locals helped create an environment of mutual trust and understanding. Al-Biruni spent years with Brahmana priests and scholars, learning Sanskrit, and studying religious and philosophical texts. Apparently, he travelled widely in the Punjab and parts of Northern India.

The Mughal kings commissioned court historians to write accounts. These accounts recorded the events of the emperor’s time. In addition, their writers collected vast amounts of information from the regions of the subcontinent to help the rulers govern their domain.

These accounts arean indispensable source for anyscholarwishing to write a historyof the Mughals. At one level,they were a repository of factualinformation about theinstitutionsof the Mughal state, painstakinglycollectedand classified byindividuals closely connected with thecourt. Atthe same time these texts were intended asconveyors of meanings that the Mughal rulerssought toimpose on their domain. They thereforegive us a glimpseinto how imperial ideologieswere created anddisseminated.

Communal identities were consolidated by many developments in early 20^th century, especially during 1920s and early 1930s. Muslims were angered by “music-before-mosque”, by cow protection movement, and by AryaSamaj’s efforts to bring back recent converts to Islam, to Hinduism (shuddhi). Simultaneously, Hindus were angered by rapid spread of tabligh(propaganda) and tanzim(organisation) by Muslims, after 1923.

As middle-class publicists and communal activists built greater solidarity and unity within their own communities, against other communities, riots spread all over India. Every communal conflict deepened inter-religious differences, creating disturbing memories of violence.