AHSEC| CLASS 12| HISTORY| QUESTION PAPER

AHSEC| CLASS 12| HISTORY| QUESTION PAPER - 2018| H.S. 2ND YEAR

2018
HISTORY
Full Marks: 100
Pass Marks: 30
Time: 3 hours
The figures in the margin indicate full marks for the questions

1. Answer the following questions: 1x12=12

(a) Where was the Indus Valley Civilization discovered first?

(b) What was ‘Tamilakam’?

(d) Who is the writer of the ‘Fathiyah-i-Ibriah’?

(e) Who was Jean-Baptiste Tavernier?

(f) What do you mean by ‘Silsila’?

(g) What is ‘Gopuram’?

(h) Who wrote ‘ain-i-Akbari’?

(i) Who introduced the Permanent Settlement in Bengal?

(j) In which year was Railway service started in India?

(k) Who killed Mahatma Gandhi?

(l) Who coined the term ‘Pakistan’?

2. Answer the following questions in brief: 2x12=24

(a) Write briefly about the religious beliefs of the Harappan Culture.

(b) What do you mean by exogamy and endogamy?

(d) What is ‘Buranji’? Mention the name of a Buranji written in the Ahom period.

(e) Name the two rabels of Assam hanged by the British in 1858.

(f) Who were the ‘Alvars’ and the ‘Nayanars’?

(g) What was ‘Milkiyat’?

(h) What do you understand by ‘Kitabkhana’?

(i) Why was the Lahore Session of Congress, 1929 important in Indian history?

(j) Why was the Lahore Session of Congress, 1929 important in Indian history?

(k) Describe how did women experience the partition of India?

(l) Mention two measures recommended by the Constituent Assembly for the abolition of untouchability in India.

3. Answer the following questions: (any eight) 4x8=32

(a) Give a description of the town planning of the Harappan civilization.

(b) What were, according to ‘Manusmriti’, the means of acquiring wealth for men and women? Do you think that these means differentiate men and women.

(d) Give a description of the Ahom capital Garhgaon as described by Shihabuddin Talish.

(e) Discuss the role of women in the agrarian society of medieval India.

(f) Give a description of the defense arrangements of Vijayanagara. Why did it enclose the agricultural tracts?

(g) How was land classified under emperor Akbar? How was land revenue assessed?

(h) How did the American Civil War effect the lives of ryots in India?

(i) What were the concerns that influenced the British in their town planning in india in the 19^th century?

(j) Mention the arguments raised by some members in the debates of the Constituent Assembly against separate electrorate system.

4. Read the given passages carefully and answer the questions that follow:

(a) Evidence of an “invasion”

The Rigveda mentions pur, meaning rampart, fort or stronghold. Indra, the Aryan war-god is called puramdara, the fort-destrove.

Where are-or were – these citadels? It has in the past been supposed that they were mythical... . The recent excavation of Harappa may be thought to have changed the picture. Here we have a highly evolved civilization of essentially non-Aryan type, now known to have employed massive fortifications. What destroyed this firmly settled civilization ? Climatic, economic or political deterioration may have weakened it, but its ultimate extinction is more likely to have been completed by deliberate and large-scale destruction. It may be not mere chance that at a late period of Mohenjodaro men, women, and children, appear to have been massacred there. On circumstantial evidence, Indra stands accused.

From R. E. M. Wheeler, “Harappa 1946”, Ancient India, 1947.

(i) What is the meaning of the word ‘pur’?

(ii) Who is Indra? Why is he called ‘puramdara’?

(iii) What might be the causes of destruction of the Harappn civilization?

Languages and Scripts

Most Asokan inscriptions were int eh Prakrit language while those in the northwest of the subcontinent were in Aramaic and Greek. Most Prakrit inscriptions were written in Kharosthi. The Aramaic and Greek scripts were used for inscriptions in Afghanistan.

(i) To which source of history do the inscription belong?

(ii) In which languages the Asokan inscriptions were written?

(iii) What were the scripts used to inscribe the Asokan inscriptions?

(b) Widespread poverty

Pelsaert, a Dutch traveler, visited the subcontinent during the early decades of the seventeenth century. Like Bernier, he was shocked to see the the widespread poverty, “poverty so great and miserable that the life of the people can be depicted or accurately described only as the home of stark want and the swelling place of bitter woe”. Holding the state responsible, he says : “So much is wrung from the peasants that even dry bread is scarcely left to fill their stomachs.”

(i) Who was Pelsaert? Which country did he visit?

(ii) Why was the shocked?

(iii) Why were the people, according to him, poverty stricken?

Travels of the ‘Badshah Nam’

Gifting of precious manuscripts was an established diplomatic custom under the Mughals. In emulation of this, the Nawab of Awadh gifted the illustrated Badshah Nama to King George III in 1799. Since then it has been preserved in the English Royal Collections, now at Windsor Castle.

In 1994, conservation work required the bound manuscript to be taken apart. This made it possible to exhibit the paintings, and in 1997 for the first time, the Badshah Nama paintings were shown in exhibitions in New Delhi, London and Washington.

(i) Who wrote the Badshah Nama and why?

(ii) Who gifted the Badshah Nama in 1799 and to who? Why did he do so?

(iii) Why did the Mughals present such manuscripts as fits?

Section III – regarding Public Servants. It is not a secret thing, that under the British Government, natives employed in the civil and military services have little respect, low pay and no manner of influence ; and all the posts of dignity and emolument in both the departments are exclusively bestwed on Englishmen,…. . Therefore, all the natives in the British service ought to be alive to their religion and interest and abjuring their loyalty to the English, side with the Badshahi Government, and obtain salaries of 200 and 300 rupees a month for the present, and be entitled to high posts in the future…

(i) Who issued this proclamation and to whom?

(ii) What was the Badshahi Government referred to here?

(iii) Why were the public servants asked to join them?

“Without a shot being fired”

This is what Moon wrote:

For over twenty-four hours riotous mobs were allowed to rage through this great commercial city unchallenged and unchecked. The finest bazaars were burnt to the ground without shot being fired to disperse the incendiaries (i.e. those who stirred up conflict). The …. District Magistrate marched his (large police) force into the city and marched it out again without making any effective use of it all…

(i) What was the cause of this riot?

(ii) Why could not the riotous mob be challenged?

(iii) What measures the police and the administrators should have taken against the wrongdoers?

5. Draw a map of India and mark the following places: 6

Guwahati, Jorhat, Benares, Delhi, Kanpur and Mumbai.

In what way did Mahatma Gandhi transform the nature of the national movement?

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