BSOG-171 Solved Question Paper

Question 1: How Different Factors Hold India Together as One Country

Major binding forces in Indian society

India is marked by many languages, religions and regions, yet people still experience it as one country. This sense of belonging to a common nation does not come from any single factor; it is created by several social, cultural and political forces working together.

• Shared civilizational heritage: Over centuries, people living in different parts of the subcontinent have drawn upon a common pool of ideas and practices – such as notions of dharma, karma, rebirth, respect for learning, pilgrimage to sacred centres and the authority of classical texts and traditions. These ideas travelled through trade routes, pilgrim paths, story-telling and religious movements and created a civilizational “family resemblance” across diverse communities.
• Historical experiences and the national movement: Foreign invasions and, later, British colonial rule brought together people from different regions under a single political power. Modern institutions like the colonial bureaucracy, railways, postal services and English education connected distant areas. At the same time, the anti-colonial freedom struggle encouraged people to think of themselves as “Indians” fighting a common oppressor. Political organisations, mass movements and national symbols (flag, anthem, leaders) strengthened this shared identity.
• The Indian Constitution and democratic state: After independence, the Constitution provided a common framework of rights and duties for all citizens. Parliamentary democracy, universal adult franchise, an independent judiciary and all-India services link people to the same political system, even when they belong to different regions or communities. The Constitution also stresses equality, secularism and social justice, values that appeal across social groups.
• Recognition of diversity within a federal structure: Instead of forcing uniformity, the Indian state accepts diversity by organising itself as a federation of states. Many states are based on language or regional identities, so people can feel pride in their state and still see themselves as part of India. This balance between regional autonomy and national integration is another unifying force.
• Economic and administrative integration: A common currency, nationwide markets, planning institutions, labour migration and extensive transport and communication networks tie local economies to the national economy. All-India services and national-level examinations mean that people from any region can work anywhere in the country, creating inter-regional linkages in everyday life.
• Media, education and everyday culture: School textbooks, national media, cinema, sports and popular culture constantly circulate images and stories of India as one nation. Hindi and English often function as link languages alongside regional languages. National festivals, celebrations of sports victories or mourning during disasters also create a sense of shared emotion and belonging that cuts across local differences.

Taken together, these historical, cultural, political and economic processes help people imagine themselves as members of a single Indian nation, even while they continue to identify strongly with their region, religion, caste or language.

Question 2: Gandhi’s Idea of Village Life and Local Self-Rule

Gandhi’s imagination of the village community

Village life occupied a central place in Mahatma Gandhi’s thinking about India’s past and future. He saw the village not just as a settlement, but as a moral and cultural ideal that could guide independent India.

• Village as the “soul” of India: Gandhi often said that the “real India” lives in its villages. For him, the village represented the authentic everyday life of ordinary people – close to nature, rooted in local customs and less corrupted by greed and competition. He felt that if villages were neglected, India’s moral foundation would be weakened.
• Gram Swaraj – self-sufficient village republics: Gandhi imagined each village as a small republic or Gram Swaraj, capable of managing its own affairs through a locally elected panchayat. Such a village would produce most of what it needs, reduce dependence on distant markets and states, and take collective decisions about development, justice and welfare.
• Simplicity, truth and non-violence: Gandhi linked village life with the practice of truth (satya) and non-violence (ahimsa). He believed that simple living, manual work and close-knit social relations in the village offered better conditions for these values than anonymous, competitive city life. In a famous letter to Nehru, he wrote that vast populations living in crowded cities would be pushed towards violence and falsehood, whereas the “simplicity of village life” encouraged moral discipline.
• Critical awareness of inequalities: At the same time, Gandhi was not romantic about the actually existing village under British rule. He recognised the reality of poverty, caste oppression and patriarchy. His constructive programmes – removal of untouchability, promotion of basic education, village sanitation and spinning – were attempts to reform village society from within.
• Different visions within the national movement: Other leaders did not always share Gandhi’s idealisation of the village. Jawaharlal Nehru, for instance, saw villages as socially backward and argued that progress required industrialisation and scientific temper. This debate within the national movement shows that Gandhi’s village vision was one powerful strand among several competing ideas of India’s development.

In contemporary India, policies such as decentralisation, Panchayati Raj institutions and promotion of village-level self-help groups can be seen as attempts, in a modern setting, to recover some elements of Gandhi’s Gram Swaraj while also addressing the inequalities that he himself acknowledged.

Question 3: Urban Growth and Changing Towns Under British Rule

Features of colonial urban growth

Urbanisation in India did not begin with the British; there were important cities in ancient and medieval times. But colonial rule brought a new pattern of urban development linked closely to the needs of the colonial economy and administration.

• Rise of port and presidency towns: The British developed port cities such as Calcutta (Kolkata), Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai) as centres of trade, administration and military power. These “presidency towns” became gateways through which raw materials from the interior were exported and manufactured goods imported. They also housed the main colonial offices, courts and financial institutions, concentrating power and wealth in a few coastal cities.
• Specialised colonial towns: Alongside the presidencies, the British created cantonment towns (for army camps), hill stations (as summer retreats and sanatoria) and railway and mining towns. Each type of town served a specific colonial purpose – military control, health of European officials, extraction of minerals or movement of goods. Their layout often separated “civil lines” where Europeans lived from “native” quarters, reflecting racial and class divisions.
• Railways and integration of markets: The introduction of railways and telegraph linked distant regions to these cities. Agricultural produce from rural areas and raw materials like cotton, jute, coal and iron ore were drawn into urban centres, processed or exported, and finished goods were distributed back. This strengthened a pattern in which cities became command centres of a colonial economy integrated into global markets.
• New social groups and inequalities: Colonial cities saw the emergence of a modern working class employed in mills, docks, railways and construction. There was also a growing middle class of professionals, clerks and traders who worked in government offices, banks, colleges and courts. Yet this growth was highly unequal. While some neighbourhoods had wide roads, clubs and bungalows for Europeans and Indian elites, large sections of migrants from villages lived in overcrowded and unsanitary settlements and slums.
• Impact on older urban centres: Some pre-colonial towns lost their earlier importance because trade routes shifted and princely courts declined. New colonial centres overshadowed many traditional religious and craft cities, changing the geography of urban life in India.

Thus, colonial urbanisation did not simply mean more people living in towns. It involved a restructuring of urban space and economy in ways that served imperial interests and produced new forms of class and regional inequality that continued to influence Indian cities after independence.

Question 4: How the Indian Constitution Protects Social and Cultural Diversity

Constitutional protection of diversity

India is home to multiple religions, languages, regions and cultural traditions. The Constitution tries to hold this diversity together within a single political framework. It neither imposes a single culture nor leaves groups unprotected. Instead, it combines common citizenship with special safeguards.

• Fundamental rights and equality: The Constitution guarantees equality before law and prohibits discrimination by the state on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. These provisions seek to ensure that no community is treated as second-class in public life and that individuals from any background can claim basic civil and political rights.
• Religious freedom and secularism: Articles 25–30 of the Constitution give all persons the freedom of conscience and the right to profess, practise and propagate religion. Religious groups can manage their own religious affairs and establish charitable institutions. At the same time, the state is not supposed to favour any one religion and must treat all faiths equally. Cultural and educational rights protect the ability of religious and linguistic minorities to run their own institutions.
• Linguistic diversity and federalism: India has 22 scheduled languages and many more non-scheduled languages. Instead of imposing a single national language, the Constitution allows states to adopt their own official languages and recognises Hindi and English as link languages at the Union level. After independence, states were reorganised largely on linguistic lines so that speakers of a language could have a state where their language dominates administration and education.
• Representation and affirmative measures: The Constitution provides for reservation of seats in legislatures and public employment for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Over time, similar measures have been extended to Other Backward Classes. These provisions attempt to correct historical disadvantages faced by particular communities and to give them a voice in decision-making structures.
• Democratic processes and dispute resolution: Regular elections, an independent judiciary and mechanisms like the Finance Commission and Inter-State Council allow different regions and groups to negotiate their interests peacefully within the constitutional framework. When conflicts arise over language, religion or regional demands, the Constitution provides procedures for dialogue, legislation and, if needed, reorganisation of states, rather than violent confrontation.

In this way the Constitution does not eliminate plurality; instead, it tries to provide a common political roof under which diverse identities can survive, negotiate and evolve.

Question 5: What Caste Means in India and How It Operates

Understanding caste as a system of social stratification

Caste is a distinctive form of social stratification found most clearly in Hindu society, though its influence extends to other communities as well. The term usually refers to jati, a birth-based social group into which a person is born and from which it is difficult to exit.

In simple terms, caste may be described as a hereditary, endogamous group, ranked within a larger hierarchy and often linked with a traditional occupation. Some important features of the caste system are:

• Hierarchy: Castes are arranged in a ranked order from “high” to “low”, based largely on ideas of ritual purity and pollution. Traditionally, castes associated with priestly and learning roles have been considered highest, and those linked with “impure” or manual work lowest.
• Endogamy: Members are expected to marry within their own caste or even within a smaller sub-caste. This rule of endogamy keeps caste boundaries intact and makes caste a closed status group, since birth determines membership.
• Hereditary occupation: Traditionally, each caste was associated with a specific occupation (for example priests, cultivators, weavers, leather workers). The jajmani system in many villages gave castes a near-monopoly over their customary work and tied them into networks of economic exchange.
• Restrictions on food and social interaction: Rules exist about sharing food, water and close physical contact across castes. In earlier times, people from castes considered “untouchable” were excluded from wells, temples, houses and sometimes even from walking on certain streets.
• Distinct customs, dress and speech: Many castes have their own rituals, festivals, styles of dress and ways of speaking. These cultural markers make caste identity visible in daily life and help people recognise each other’s social position.
• Civil and religious privileges and disabilities: High-ranking castes historically enjoyed greater access to land, education and positions of authority, while lower castes faced various disabilities, including denial of temple entry, residential segregation and limited access to resources.

Although many of these features have been weakened by law, social reform and economic change, caste continues to shape social relationships, marriage patterns and access to opportunities in contemporary India.

Question 6: How Caste and Economic Class Interact in Indian Society

How caste and class intersect

Caste and class are both ways of organising inequality, but they do not operate in exactly the same manner. Caste is primarily a birth-based, hereditary status group, whereas class is usually defined in terms of economic position such as ownership of property, occupation, income and education. In India the two are deeply intertwined.

• Caste and class are not simple opposites: Early writings often contrasted a “rigid” caste system with a “flexible” class system and predicted that modernisation would replace caste with class. The course material points out that this opposition is misleading. In practice, both caste and class are real, empirical phenomena and both involve hierarchies, competition and mobility.
• Overlap between high caste and high class: Historically, upper castes controlled land, education and administrative positions. As a result, many members of these castes also occupied upper-class locations as landlords, professionals, big traders or senior officials. Their ritual status and economic power reinforced each other, giving them dominance in local as well as national arenas.
• Divergences and cross-cutting patterns: Over time, processes like land reforms, migration, reservation policies and education have created situations where some individuals from lower or intermediate castes have entered the middle and upper classes, while segments of some higher castes have become economically poor. Studies such as Beteille’s work on a Tanjore village show that caste, class and power often overlap but also cross-cut each other, producing complex stratification patterns.
• Caste–class nexus: Instead of thinking in terms of “caste versus class”, sociologists speak of a caste–class nexus. Caste shapes access to education, jobs, credit and networks, which in turn influence class position. At the same time, class interests shape how caste organisations behave – for example, caste associations lobbying for reservations or economic benefits for their members. Caste conflicts are often simultaneously class conflicts because the upper castes frequently coincide with upper classes and the depressed castes with lower classes.
• Changing but persistent inequalities: Industrialisation, urbanisation and modern employment have created new middle classes and working classes cutting across caste lines. Yet caste identity still matters in politics (through caste-based parties and vote banks), in marriage markets and in everyday discrimination. So, while class has become more important, it has grown on top of, rather than replacing, the caste structure.

Thus, to understand inequality in India, we have to see how caste and class reinforce, modify and sometimes challenge each other instead of treating them as separate or mutually exclusive systems.

Question 7: What We Mean by an “Ethnic Group”

Understanding ethnic groups and ethnicity

The term “ethnic” is derived from the Greek word ethnos, meaning “nation” or a people. In everyday social science usage, it does not only refer to a nation-state but to cultural groups that see themselves, and are seen by others, as distinct.

• Definition of ethnic group: An ethnic group is a cultural community whose members share, or believe they share, certain common features such as language, region of origin, religion, customs, physical traits or a sense of common ancestry. Examples mentioned in the course include Jews, Japanese, Muslims, Munda or Oraon; each of these groups is identified by a combination of cultural and sometimes physical characteristics.
• Basis of belonging: Membership of an ethnic group is usually acquired by birth. People grow up learning the group’s language, food habits, rituals and stories, which gives them a feeling of “we-ness”. This sense of belonging is central – an ethnic group is not only defined from outside but also by the way its members think of themselves. Conversion (for example, changing one’s religion) is one of the few ways by which people may move into or out of an ethnic group, and such moves often create tensions about loyalty and identity.
• Ethnicity as interaction: “Ethnicity” refers to relationships between ethnic groups living within the same wider society. It becomes especially visible when groups interact, compete for resources or assert their rights. Sociologists describe ethnicity as a process of interaction between cultural groups operating within a common social context.
• Ethnic identity and boundary: Ethnic identity combines similarity and difference: members feel similar to one another and different from outsiders. The idea of an “ethnic boundary” refers to the social line that separates “us” from “them”. This boundary may or may not coincide with physical territory; it is maintained through practices such as distinctive dress, marriage rules, language use or religious rituals.
• Majority and minority groups: In many societies one ethnic group is numerically and politically dominant, while others are minorities with less access to power and resources. Ethnic conflicts and movements often emerge when minority groups feel discriminated against or when majority groups fear losing their dominance. Movements like the Jharkhand statehood agitation are examples of ethnicity being expressed through political mobilisation.

In the Indian context, caste, tribe, language and region can all become bases for ethnic grouping, making ethnicity an important lens for understanding many contemporary social and political movements.

Question 8: New Trends in Marriage Practices in Contemporary India

Changing trends in marriage practices

Marriage in India continues to be a key social institution, but its form and practice have changed noticeably in recent decades. The course material highlights both elements of continuity and emerging patterns of change.

• Rising age at marriage and education: Legal reforms and wider access to schooling and employment, especially for girls, have contributed to an increase in the average age at marriage. Young people now spend more years in education or training before entering married life.
• Shift in family arrangements: While joint families still exist, particularly in rural areas, there is a growth of nuclear households in towns and cities. Many couples set up separate homes, sometimes with one set of parents or other kin living with them for support. Dual-earner families, where both husband and wife work outside the home, are becoming common, especially in urban middle-class settings.
• Continuity with modifications in arranged marriage: Caste and religious endogamy still play a strong role in spouse selection. Most marriages continue to be arranged by families, but the nature of “arrangement” has changed. The material notes various patterns: marriages decided by elders without consulting the girl or boy, marriages by self-choice, marriages by self-choice with parental consent, and marriages arranged by parents only after taking the couple’s opinion. This shows a gradual move towards giving young people more say while keeping family involvement intact.
• Increase in love and inter-caste marriages: Love marriages and inter-caste or inter-religious marriages are more visible today than in the past, helped by urbanisation, co-education and new spaces of interaction like colleges and workplaces. However, they still form a small proportion of total marriages, and many couples in such marriages face resistance from families or communities.
• Changing gender roles and expectations: With more women pursuing higher education and paid work, expectations from marriage have expanded beyond economic security and family alliances. Many young people now look for companionship, mutual respect and shared decision-making. Legal measures related to dowry, domestic violence and maintenance have also reshaped ideas of rights and responsibilities within marriage.

Overall, Indian marriage today shows a mix of tradition and change. Old rules of caste, religion and family involvement remain influential, but they are being negotiated in new ways as education, urbanisation and individual aspirations reshape how people think about choosing a spouse and living married life.