NCERT Solutions for Class 7th Social Science Chapter 17 End-of-chapter exercise — Questions and activities

Book page 142 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.

On the outline of a world map, try to trace the routes that the communities mentioned in this chapter may have used to reach India. What types of physical geographies did they have to negotiate?

Answer

How to draw it. Take a blank outline map of the world. Mark India in the centre-right. Mark the nine starting points — Israel, Syria/Iraq (West Asia), Persia (Iran), the Arabian peninsula, East Africa, Armenia, Poland and Tibet. Then draw each route in a different colour: blue for sea, brown for land. Add a legend, and mark the seas and mountain ranges each line crosses. Use an atlas beside you — do not draw from memory.

Community	From	Likely route	Physical geography to negotiate
Bene Israel Jews	Ancient Kingdom of Israel (eastern Mediterranean)	By sea — the chapter says “their ship was caught in a storm and shipwrecked near the coast”, so they came by water to the Konkan coast	Ocean sailing, and the storms of the Arabian Sea. Their voyage ended in a wreck
Cochin Jews	West Asia and other countries	Sea routes to the Malabar coast, near Cochin	The Arabian Sea; monsoon winds, which decide when a sailing ship can cross and when it cannot
Syriac Christians	West Asia — the Roman and Persian empires	The chapter says they “travelled eastward along trade routes and reached the Malabar coast”	Overland: the dry plateaus and deserts of West Asia and Iran, and mountain country. Then, for the last stretch, the sea
Parsis	Persia (modern-day Iran)	Overland to the coast, then “sail across the Arabian Sea” to Gujarat	Desert and mountain inside Persia; then open sea. They landed on the Gujarat coast, at Sanjān
Arab merchants	The Arabian peninsula	Across the Arabian Sea to Kerala, Gujarat and Karnataka	The Arabian Sea, sailed with the monsoon winds — out with one season, home with the other
Siddis	East Africa	Across the Indian Ocean, in the ships of Arab, Portuguese and British traders. They did not choose this journey — they were brought as slaves	A long ocean crossing, in conditions they had no control over
Armenians	Armenia — “between Turkey and Azerbaijan, just north of Iran”	Two ways: by sea to the Malabar coast (the 8th-century settlement), and overland from Persia in Mughal times, to Agra and later Surat, Kolkata and Madras	High mountain country in and around Armenia; the Iranian plateau, its deserts and passes; then the plains of north India
Baha’is	Persia (modern-day Iran)	The same overland and sea routes from Iran, in the late 19th century	Deserts and mountains of Iran; the Arabian Sea
Polish children	Poland, during the Second World War	A long journey to Jamnagar on the Gujarat coast. The chapter says the Maharaja “mobilised the Red Cross and other organisations to help him rescue the children”, but does not give the route	Wartime Europe and Asia; the last stretch by sea to the Gujarat coast
Tibetans	Tibet — “located on the other side of the Himalayan range”	Overland: the 14th Dalai Lama “was advised to flee across the Himalaya and take refuge in India”	The Himalaya — the highest mountains on Earth. High passes, snow, thin air and cold. Also, earlier, the monks who “left for Tibet” with Sanskrit manuscripts crossed the same range the other way

So what types of physical geography, in short?

Seas and oceans — the Arabian Sea and the wider Indian Ocean above all, plus the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf on the way out of West Asia.
Monsoon winds and storms — the wind decided the sailing season, and a storm decided the Bene Israel’s landing place.
Deserts and dry plateaus — the Arabian peninsula and the Iranian plateau.
Mountain ranges — the highlands of Armenia and Iran, and, for the Tibetans, the Himalaya itself.
Coasts and river plains at the end of the journey — the Konkan and Malabar coasts, the Gujarat coast, and the Ganga plains for those who went inland to Agra and Kolkata.

Be honest on your map. The chapter names some routes (“across the Arabian Sea”, “eastward along trade routes”, “across the Himalaya”) and leaves others open. Draw the named ones as solid lines and the reconstructed ones as dotted lines, and say so in your legend. That is how a historian shows the difference between evidence and a reasonable guess.

Q2.

What are the key values intrinsic to Indian culture that enable it to welcome people of different backgrounds?

Answer

The chapter names six, and quotes five of them directly.

Value	What it says	Where the chapter quotes it
vasudhaiva kutumbakam	“The whole world is family.” The full Hitopadeśha verse: “‘This is mine, that is not mine,’ so think the narrow-minded. For the noble-minded, the whole world is family”	Opening page, and the section “The Whole World is Family”
atithi devo bhava	“A guest is like God”	Page 140
sarve bhavantu sukhinah	“May all creatures be happy”	Page 140
Compassion — karuṇā — and loving-kindness	The Karaṇīya Mettā Sutta: “Even as a mother protects with her life her only child, so with a boundless heart should one cherish all living beings; radiating kindness over the entire world…”	Page 140; and karuṇā and ahimsa again in the Dalai Lama’s ‘Four Commitments’, page 139
No one is a stranger	Sri Sarada Devi’s last message: “Learn to make the whole world your own. No one is a stranger, my child; the whole world is your own”	Opening page
Peaceful coexistence of many faiths	“India developed a culture of peaceful coexistence and acceptance of various diverse faiths and schools of thought”; and “the idea of the fundamental unity of humankind is one of the core civilisational values of India”	Page 141

But values only welcome people when they are turned into rules of behaviour. Three habits follow from the list above, and it is these that actually did the welcoming:

Give the newcomer land and permission, not just kind words. Land free of cost “as long as the world, sun, and moon endure”; “a secure place to settle”; permission “to build a church and follow their Christian religious practices”; asylum, settlements and schools.
Never demand a change of faith as the price of staying. This is why every community in the chapter is still recognisably itself.
Honour what the newcomer holds sacred. A gold crown for the Torah in 1805 is the clearest single example in the chapter.

Why these particular values produce welcome: each of them widens the circle of “us”. Atithi devo bhava widens it to whoever is at the door today. Sarve bhavantu sukhinah widens it to every creature. Vasudhaiva kutumbakam removes the edge of the circle altogether. Once there is no edge, there is no outsider to keep out — which is exactly the point the Hitopadeśha verse makes about the narrow-minded and the noble-minded.

Q3.

Homi Bhabha, Sam Maneckshaw, Ratan Tata, Fali Nariman, Nani Palkivala, and Cornelia Sorabji are a few names of Parsis who excelled in their respective fields. Find out more about people from other communities that made India their home and their contributions.

Answer

This is a find-out question, so the answer is a method plus the start of a list. The chapter itself already names three people from the communities it describes, so begin with them and then go looking.

Start from the chapter.

Name	Community	Contribution, as the chapter states it
Hirabai Lobi	Siddi, settled in Gujarat	“Worked hard for the upliftment of the women of her community, connecting them with banking services, educating them on organic farming and other livelihood options.” Awarded the Padma Shri in 2023
Abdul Hai	Armenian	Chief Justice in Akbar’s court
Lady Juliana	Armenian	A doctor in the Mughal royal palace

Method — how to find more, and be sure of them.

Pick a community from the chapter — Bene Israel or Cochin Jews, Syriac Christians, Mappilas, Siddis, Armenians, Baha’is, Tibetans.
Go where that community keeps its own records. Its school, college, trust, church, synagogue or monastery usually maintains a history, and often a website. The chapter points to two by name — the Armenian College in Kolkata and Men-Tsee-Khang in Dharamshala.
Use two independent sources for every fact — a reference book or encyclopaedia in the school library, plus one more. Never a single forwarded message.
Write each person on one card: name · community · years · field · one specific achievement (not “was great”) · where you found it.
Check the dates against each other. If two sources disagree, say so on the card. Historians do this all the time.

What a good answer needs: at least four people from at least three different communities; one concrete achievement each, with a date; and the source named. Vague praise is not an answer.

Sample answer (one card, filled in from the chapter itself):

Name: Hirabai Lobi · Community: Siddi (African origin, settled in Gujarat) · Field: social work
Contribution: She organised the women of her community, linked them to banking services so they could save and borrow, and trained them in organic farming and other ways of earning a living. This matters because, as the chapter says, “the Siddis’ overall economic condition remains poor and efforts are being made to provide them with better access to education and livelihood options” — her work is one of those efforts, done from inside the community.
Recognition: Padma Shri, 2023, “for her selfless service to the community”.
Source: Exploring Society: India and Beyond, Grade 7 Part 2, page 134, Fig. 5.12 and its box.

One rule while you research: write about a person’s work, not about their community as a type. The chapter’s own way of doing this is a good model — it names what each person did.

Q4.

Take up a class project. Divide the class into groups. Each group takes up a small project to study a little more about the communities that we have been listed here. Share what you have gathered with your classmates through one of these ways — drama, posters, song, painting, etc.

Answer

Plan for the project.

Step 1 — divide the communities. The chapter gives nine, so nine groups (or fewer groups taking two each):

The Bene Israel of the Konkan coast
The Jews of Cochin
The Syriac (Syrian) Christians of the Malabar coast
The Parsis of Gujarat
The Arab merchants and the Mappila community
The Siddis of Karnataka and Gujarat
The Armenians of Agra, Surat, Kolkata and Chennai
The Baha’is
The Polish refugees at Nawanagar, and the Tibetans

Step 2 — every group answers the same five questions, so that the presentations can be compared at the end:

Where did they come from, and when?
Why did they leave?
Where in India did they settle, and who received them?
What did they keep? (language, scripture, a building, a festival, a craft, a system of medicine)
What did they give? (trade, buildings, medicine, service, art, food)

Step 3 — choose the form, and match it to what you found.

Form	What it suits	How to do it well
Drama	A single decisive moment	The milk-and-sugar scene at Jadi Rāṇā’s court needs almost no words — which is the point of it. Keep it under four minutes
Poster	Journeys and dates	One map, one timeline, four captions. Leave white space; do not fill every corner
Song	Values and feelings	Set the Hitopadeśha verse or Sri Sarada Devi’s words to a simple tune the whole class can join in
Painting	A building or a ceremony	Copy from a photograph you can name, and write the source under the painting

Step 4 — the class rules for this project. Speak about a community the way you would want your own spoken about. Use the community’s own name for itself. Quote your source when you state a date. Do not act out a community’s religious ritual on stage — show the history around it instead. And if a classmate belongs to one of these communities, invite them to check your facts before you present.

Sample answer (Group 4’s five-minute plan — the Parsis):

Form: drama, three short scenes, with two poster boards behind the actors.
Scene 1 (1 min) — Persia, 7th century. A family decides to leave. Their lines come straight from the chapter: forced conversions, the jizya tax, the fire temples destroyed. They gather the sacred fire and go.
Scene 2 (2 min) — Sanjān. Raja Jadi Rāṇā holds up a jug of milk; nobody can speak the other’s language. The Parsi wise man stirs in a spoon of sugar. The Raja smiles and points to a place on the ground. No dialogue at all — only actions.
Scene 3 (1 min) — Udvada, today. A narrator says the fire is still burning “a short distance from where the Parsis first arrived”, that India now has the largest Zoroastrian population in the world, and reads out the names in Question 3 of people who came from this small community.
Closing line: the Hitopadeśha verse from page 125 — “For the noble-minded, the whole world is family.”
Poster boards: (1) a map with the sea route from Persia to Gujarat; (2) a timeline — 7th century Persia falls · 8th–10th centuries the Parsis arrive · today, the fire at Udvada.

Was this helpful?