NIOS Class 12 History Chapter 32 Colonial State

NIOS Class 12 History Chapter 32 Colonial State, Solutions to each chapter is provided in the list so that you can easily browse throughout different chapters NIOS Class 12 History Chapter 32 Colonial State and select need one. NIOS Class 12 History Chapter 32 Colonial State Question Answers Download PDF. NIOS Study Material of Class 12 History Notes Paper 315.

NIOS Class 12 History Chapter 32 Colonial State

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Also, you can read the NIOS book online in these sections Solutions by Expert Teachers as per National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) Book guidelines. These solutions are part of NIOS All Subject Solutions. Here we have given NIOS Class 12 History Chapter 32 Colonial State, NIOS Senior Secondary Course History Solutions for All Chapter, You can practice these here.

Colonial State

Chapter: 32

HISTORY

TEXT BOOK QUESTIONS AND THEIR ANSWERS

INTEXT QUESTIONS 32.1

Q. Fill in the blanks:

1. The Mughal Empire declined in the first half of the _______ century.

Ans: eighteenth.

2. During the 1st stage of British rule in India till _______ British interests lay mainly in the East India Company’s monopoly of trade with India.

Ans: 1813

3. The British economy and society were going through a major transformation, caused mainly by the ______ revolution.

Ans: Industrial.

4. The interests of the British industrialist lay in using India as a market for their _______ goods.

Ans: manufactured.

INTEXT QUESTIONS 32.2

Q. Tick out (✓) whichever is correct:

1. By ______ Persian remained the official symbol of the Mughal dynasty. (1831, 1833, 1835) 

Ans: 1835

2. What was visible in the capital city, say, in Bombay was exactly what the provincial town lacked in the second half of the _______ century. (17th, 18th, 

Ans: 19th.

3. James Mill became a senior Company official in ______ after writing a monumental history of India.(1719, , 1919) 

Ans: 1819

4. Sir William Jones, had translated a great mass of Sanskrit literature and had founded the Asiatic society in ______. (1785, 1835, 1855)

Ans: 1785 

INTEXT QUESTIONS 32.3

Q. Fill in the blanks:

1. All high level posts were reserved for the British and Indians were _____.

Ans: excluded.

2. As the civil service was ultimately subject to the control of the British ______, and the British community in India was subject to close mutual surveillance, the administration was ______.

Ans: Parliament, non-corrupt.

3. The British army was very much _______ than those of Mughal India, but had better training and ______.

Ans: smaller, equipment.

4. The ______ took over direct responsibility and the East India Company was _______.

Ans: Crown, disbanded.

TERMINAL EXERCISE

Q. 1. Describe the meaning and nature. of the colonial state.

Ans: 1. Meaning of the colonial state:

(i) The colonial state means the assumption of sovereignty (largely independent power to govern and control) of a country by a foreign political entity.

(ii) The colonial state had to design a theory of sovereignty in the special context of the imperial-colonial relationship.

2. Nature of the colonial state:

(i) The British consolidated their colonial regime in India according to their ideas of what a colonial state could be and a modern state with some modern characteristics emerged.

(ii) As in modern state, the colonial government had a monopoly of force, a centralised administration for tax collection, a centralised legal system, a professional staff of administrators and bureaucrats, and clearly defined territorial boundaries.

(iii) British colonial administrators aimed for a rule based on law, administered according to regulations. At the lowest level, however, where policy implementation took place, the ties of caste, clan and kinship and patron-client reltions played major roles in how the colonial state affected local society.

Q. 2. What was the ideology and ideologue of colonialism?

Ans: (i) There was a strong streak of Benthamite radicalism in the East India Company administration. James Mill became a senior Company official in 1819 after writing a monumental history of India which showed a strong contempt for Indian institutions. From 1831 to 1836 he was the Chief Executive Officer of the East India Company and his son John Stuart Mill worked for the Company from 1823 to 1858.

(ii) Malthus was professor of economics at Haileybury, and the teaching there for future Company official was strongly influenced by utilitarianism.

(iii) The utilitarians deliberating used India to try out experiments and ideas which they would have liked to apply in England. The utilitarians were strong supporters of laissez-faire and hated any kind of state interference to promote economic development. Thus, they tended to rely on market forces to deal with famine problems, they did nothing to stimulate agriculture or protect industry.

(iv) This laissez-faire tradition was more deeply embedded in the Indian civil service than in the England itself, and persisted very strongly until the late 1920s.

(v) The administration was efficient and non- corrupt, but the state apparatus was of a watchdog character with few development spending was for the military, justice, police and jails, and less than 3 percent for agriculture.

(vi) One of the most significant things the British did to Westernise India was to introduce a modified version of English education. Macaulay’s 1835 Minute on Education had a decisive impact on British educational policy and is a classic example of a Western rationalist approach to Indian civilization.

(vii) Before the British took over, the court language of the Mughals was Persian and the Muslim population used Urdu, a mixture of Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit. Higher education was largely religious and stressed knowledge of Arabic and Sanskrit. The Company had given some financial support to a Calcutta Madrasa (1718) and a Sanskrit college at Benares (1792). Warren Hastings, as Governor General from 1782 to 1795 had himself learned Sanskrit and Persian, and several other Company officials were oriental scholars. One of them, Sir William Jones, had translated a great mass of Sanskrit literature and had founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1785.

(viii) But Macaulay was strongly opposed to this orientalism. For various reasons he had no hesitation in deciding favour of English education, but it not to be for the masses.

Q. 3. Highlight the Colonial Apparatus.

Ans: (i) In 1785, Cornwallis created a professional cadre of Company servants who had generous salaries, had no private trading or production interests in India, enjoyed the prospect of regular promotion and were entitled to pensions. All high-level posts were reserved for the British, and Indians were excluded.

(ii) Cornwallis apointed British judges, and established British officials as revenue collectors and magistrates in each district of Bengal.

(iii) From 1806 the Company trained its young recruits in Haileybury College near London. Appointments were still organised on a system of patronage, but after 1833 the Company selected amongst its nominated candidates by competitive examination.

(iv) After 1853, selection was entirely on merit and the examination was thrown open to any British candidate. The examination system was influenced by the Chinese model, which had worked well for 2,000 years and had a similar emphasis on classical learning and literary competence.

(v) In 1829 the system was strengthened by establishing districts throughout British India small enough to be effectively controlled by an individual British official who henceforth exercised a completely autocratic power, acting is revenue collector, judge and chief of police functions which had been separate under the Mughal administration). This arrangement later became the cornerstone of imperial administration throughout the British Empire.

(vi) As the civil service was ultimately subject the control of the British Parliament, and the british community in India was subject to close actual surveillance, the administration was irtually incorruptible.

(vii) The army of the Company was a local ercenary force with 20,000-30,000 British ficers and troops. It was by far the most modern d efficient army in Asia. After the Mutiny in 57, the size of the British contingent was raised a third of the total strength and all officers tre British until the 1920s when a very small number of Indians were recruited. Normally, the total strength of the army was about 200,000. This army was very much smaller than those of Mughal India, but had better training and equipment, and the railway network (which was constructed partly for military reasons) gave it greater mobility, better logistics and intelligence.

(viii) The higher ranks of the administration remained almost entirely British until the 1920s when the Indian Civil Services Examinations began to be held in India as well as England. In addition, there was a whole hierarchy of separate bureaucracies in which the higher rank were British, i.e. the revenue, justice, police, education, medical, public works, engineering, postal and railway services as well as provincial civil services, India thus offered highly-paid careers to an appreciable portion of the British middle and upper classes (particularly for its peripheral members from Scotland and Ireland).

(ix) From the 1820s to the 1850s the British demonstrated a strong urge to change Indian social institutions, and to westernise India. They stamped out infant killing and ritual burning of widows (sati), abolished slavery, eliminated dacoits (religious thugs) from the highways, legalised the remarriage of widows, allowed Hindu converts to Christianity to lay claim to their share of joint family property.

(x) They also took steps to introduce a penal code (the code was actually introduced in 1861) based in British law, which helped inculcate some ideas of equality. Under the new law, Brahmin and Sudra were liable to the same punishment for the same offence. Thus rule of law and equality before law were the new norms.

(xi) After the Mutiny of 1857, the Crown took over direct responsibility and the East India Company was disbanded. The Indian Civil Service attracted fewer people with innovating ideas than had the East India Company and was more closely controlled from London.

(xii) The British forged an alliance with the remaining native princes and stopped taking over new territory. Until the end of their rule about a quarter of the Indian population remained in quasi autonomous native states. These had official British residents but were fairly free in internal policy, and the effort of westernisation came to a standstill

Q. 4. Mention the changes under Colonial State.

Ans: (i) The main changes which the British made in Indian society were at the top. They replaced the wasteful warlord nobility by a bureaucratic military establishment, carefully designed by practical technocrats, which was very efficient in maintaining law and order.

(ii) The greater efficiency of government. permitted a great reduction in the fiscal burden, and a biggest share of the national product was available for landlords, capitalists and the new professional classes. Some of this upper class income was sent off to the United Kingdom, but the bulk was spent in India.

(iii) However, the pattern of consumption changed as the new upper class no longer kept harems and palaces, nor did they wear fine muslims and well decorated swords. This caused some painful readjustments in the traditional handicraft sector.

(iv) Government itself carried out productive investment in railways and irrigation and as a result there was a growth in both agricultural and industrial output.

(v) The new elite established a western life- style using the English language and English schools. New towns and urban amenities were created with segregated suburbs and housing for them. Their habits were copied by the new professional elite of lawyers, doctors, teachers, journalists and businessmen. Within this group, old caste barriers were eased and social mobility increased.

(vi) Few significant changes were brought in the mass of the population. The British educational effort was very limited.

(vii) There were no major changes in village society, in the caste system, the position of untouchables, the joint family system, or in the production techniques in agriculture. British impact on economic and social development was, therefore, limited. Total output and population increased substantially but the gain in per capita output was small or negligible.

Multiple Choice Questions

Tick (✓) the correct answer. 

Q.1. The Mughal Empire declined in the first half of the:

(a) 16th century.

(b) 17th century.

(c) 18th century.

(d) 19th century.

Ans: (c) 18th century.

Q. 2. Which of the following state came into existence after the decline of the Mughal Empire? 

(a) Awadh.

(b) Maratha Kingdom.

(c) Punjab.

(d) All of the above.

Ans: (d) All of the above.

Q. 3. What was the main responsibilities of imperial government?

(a) Collecting land revenue.

(b) Collecting religious tax.

(c) Abolition of religious tax.

(d) None of the above.

Ans: (a) Collecting land revenue.

Q. 4. The interests of the British industrialist lay in using India as a market for their:

(a) manufactured goods.

(b) arms.

(c) agricultural product .

(d) none of the above.

Ans: (a) manufactured goods.

Q. 5. The highest gun salute was reserved for the Mughal dynasty only:

(a) 1830

(b) 1835

(c) 1837

(d) 1840

Ans: (c) 1837

Q. 6. Subsidiary Alliance was introduced  by: 

(a) Dalhousie.

(b) Wellesely.

(c) John Marshal.

(d) Chelmsford.

Ans: (b) Wellesely.

Q. 7. Indian subordination to the British sovereign was publicly enacted in:

(a) 1877

(b) 1878

(c) 1879 

(d) 1800

Ans: (a) 1877

Q. 8. Who had operated a ‘dual system’?

(a) Wellesley.

(b) Dalhousie.

(c) Morley.

(d) Clived.

Ans: (d) Clived.

Q. 9. Who showed a strong contempt for Indian institutions?

(a) Clive.

(b) Montague.

(c) James Mill.

(d) Minto.

Ans: (c) James Mill.

Q. 10. Who introduced the modified version of English education in India?

(a) Macaulay.

(b) Rutherford.

(c) Dalhousie. 

(d) Chelmsford.

Ans: (a) Macaulay.

Q. 11. The governor general who learnt Sanskrit and Persian was:

(a) James Mill. 

(b) Warren Hastings.

(c) Macaulay.

(d) Clive.

Ans: (b) Warren Hastings.

Q. 12. Who created a professional cadre of the East India Company?

(a) Cornwallis.

(b) Warren Hastings.

(c) Wellesely.

(d) Minto.

Ans: (a) Cornwallis.

Q.13. The Indian Civil Services Examinations began to be held in India in:

(a) 1918

(b) 1920

(c) 1921

(d) 123

Ans: (b) 1920

Q. 14. The University of Madras was set up in:

(a) 1855

(b) 1857

(c) 1859

(d) 1860

Ans: (b) 1857

Q. 15. Sir William Jones had founded the Asiatic society in:

(a) 1780

(b) 1783

(c) 1785

(d) 1885

Ans: (c) 1785