Hello sir can you provide me sample question paper of MA history of JNU university?

As per your request I am providing you some sample paper of MA history if JNU university.

Here is the sample:

SECTION-I
Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions in your own words in not more
than 100 words each. Copying from the text will be penalized :
PASSAGE
By the middle of the nineteenth century, India 's colonial society was marked by a sharp
disjunction between a small, alien ruling group, British in culture , and a quarter of a
billion Indians whom the British effectively controlled. The military superiority of these aliens
had just been successfully demonstrated in the brutal suppression of a widespread military
and civil revolt which had spread through much of Upper India in 1857 and 1858. In the
two decades that followed this military action, a theory of authority became codified, based on
ideas and assumptions about the proper ordering of groups in Indian society, and their
relationship to their British rulers. In conceptual terms, the British, who had started their rule
as 'outsiders', became `insiders' by vesting in their monarch the sovereignty of India through the
Government of India Act of 2nd August, 1858. This new relationship between the British
monarch, her Indian subjects and the native princes of India was proclaimed in all principal
centres of British rule in India on 8th November , 1858...
The proclamation was based on two main assumptions : firstly that there was an indigenous
diversity in culture , society and religion in India, and secondly that the foreign rulers had a
responsibility for the maintenance of an equitable form of government which would be directed
not only to protecting the integrity inherent in the diversity, but also to social and material
progress which would benefit the ruled.
The proclamation can be viewed as a cultural statement which encompasses two divergent or
even contradictory theories of rule : one which sought to maintain India as a feudal order, and
the other looking towards changes which would inevitably lead to the destruction of this feudal
order... If India were to be ruled in a feudal mode, then an Indian aristocracy had to be
recognized and/or created, which could play the part of 'loyal feudatories' to their British queen.
If India were to be ruled by the British in a 'modernist' mode, then principles which looked to a
new kind of civic or public order had to be developed. Those adhering to this view desired a
representational mode of government based sociologically on communities and interests with
individuals representing these entities.
British adherents of both the feudal and the representational mode of colonial government
shared a number of assumptions about the past and present of India, and the continued
necessity and desirability of monarchical rule for India. In both modes, although Indians might
become associated with their white rulers as feudatories or as representatives of communities
and interests, effective system-wide decisions would be made by the British colonial rulers. The
British rulers assumed that Indians had lost their right to self-rule through their own weakness,
which led to their subjugation by a succession of 'foreign' rulers, stretching back to the
Aryan invasions, and, in the more recent past, to the British conquest of the preceding imperial
rulers of India, the Mughals. The apparent fact of Indian incompetence for self-rule was
accepted by all the British concerned with ruling India...
Starting in 1858, as part of the re-establishment of political order , Lord Canning, the first
Viceroy of India, undertook a series of extensive tours through North India to make manifest
the new relationship proclaimed by the queen. These tours had as one of their main features
durbars, meetings, with large numbers of princes, notables and Indian and British officials, at
which honours and rewards were presented to Indians who had demonstrated their loyalty to
their foreign rulers during the uprisings of 1857-58. At these durbars Indians were granted
titles such as Raja, Nawab, Rai Sahib , Rai Bahadur, and Khan Bahadur, presented with special
clothes and emblems (khelats), granted special privileges and some exemptions from normal
administrative procedures, and given rewards in the form of pensions and land grants for
various actions such as the protection of Europeans during the uprising and the provision of
troops and supplies to the British armies. The form of these durbars was a model derived from
court rituals of the Mughal emperors and utilized by eighteenth century Indian rulers, Hindu
and Muslim, and then adapted by the British in the early nineteenth century with English
officials acting as Indian rulers.
The central ritual which took place in the Mughal's durbar was an act of incorporation. The
person to be thus honoured offered nazar, gold coins, and/or peshkash, valuables such as
elephants, horses, jewels and other precious objects... The Mughal would present a khelat,
which, narrowly construed, consisted of specific and ordered sets of clothes, including a cloak,
turban, shawls, various turban ornaments, a necklace and other jewels, arms and shields, but
could also include horses and elephants with various accoutrements as signs of authority and
lordship... Under the Mughals and other Indian rulers, these ritual presentations constituted a
relationship between the giver and receiver, and were not understood as simply an exchange of
goods and values...
The British in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tended to misconstrue these acts by
seeing them as economic in nature and function. The offering of nazar and peshkash were seen
as paying for favours, which the British then translated into `rights' relating to their trading
activities. In the case of the subordinates of Indian rulers, the rights established privileges
which were the source of wealth and status. The objects which formed the basis of the
relationship through incorporation-cloth, clothes, gold, silver, coins, animals, weapons, jewels
and jewelry, and other objects-were construed by the British to be utilitarian goods which were
part of their system of trade.
Questions :
(a) How does the author explain the context of the proclamation of 1858?
(b) What were the two assumptions on which the proclamation was based?
(c) To what extent did the two divergent theories of rule mentioned by the author
involve different strategies of implementation?
(d) How does the author establish that there were shared assumptions between
advocates of the feudal mode and the representational mode?
(e) In what ways were Canning's durbars different from the Mughal durbars?
Were nazar and peshkash understood in similar ways by the Mughal and the
British? Give reasons for your answer.
SECTION-II
Answer any one question
1. "Nationalism creates as many problems as it solves." Discuss.
2. Discuss the relationship between archaeology, history and cultural heritage.
3. Explain, in detail, why any two works of scholarship are worthy of being considered as landmarks in the study of South Asia.
4. Why do crimes against women persist in the 21st century?
5. Should historians choose to write on themes which were important then or those which are important now?
SECTION-III
Answer any two questions
1. How useful is the archaeological record for reconstructing the pasts of ordinary people
during the Harappan period?
2. With reference to either Buddhism or Jainism, discuss the extent to which they posed a
challenge to Vedic traditions.
3. To what extent can either the Maurya or the Gupta State be described as an empire?
4. What is the difference between diary, biography and autobiography? Discuss with
examples the importance of at least one of the three types of writing as a source for the
history of Mughal India.
5. How far were the Bhakti Movements used as a vehicle of dissent and protest in
medieval India?
6. Mughal patronage to art and architecture was geared towards projecting a visual
language of power. Discuss with examples.
7. What are the ways in which the telegraphs, railways and canals reveal the workings
of British rule in India?
8. What were the different forces which shaped Gandhi's ascent to nationalist leadership
between 1919 and 1922?
9. Give examples of unintended consequences in modern Indian history.
10. Examine the significance of the Renaissance and the Reformation in the emergence of
modern Europe.
11. Write a comparative account of the French and the Russian Revolutions.
12. Discuss the impact of industrialization during the nineteenth century.
For more papers please check the below attached files:
History sample paper1





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