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NCERT Solutions for Class 7th Social Science Chapter 17 The Kochi synagogue — LET’S EXPLORE

Book page 128 Updated on2026-09-19

Q1.
Look at the two pictures below. Is the place shown in both the photographs the same?
Answer

Yes. Fig. 5.2 is a framed painting that hangs inside the Kochi synagogue, and the room it paints is the very room photographed in Fig. 5.3. Compare the two pictures detail by detail and you can match them.

What to look forIn the painting (Fig. 5.2)In the photograph (Fig. 5.3)
The tall golden railingA rectangular enclosure of slim golden posts with rounded knobs, standing on a low platform in the middle of the hallThe same enclosure of golden posts on a low step, in the middle of the floor
The floorBlue-and-white patterned tilesBlue-and-white patterned tiles along the base of the wall and the platform
Lamps overheadHanging chandeliers with candlesA whole row of glass chandeliers hanging from the ceiling
The far wallA decorated screen with a small crowned canopy above itA red curtain in a carved and gilded frame with a crown-shaped top — the cupboard in which the Torah scrolls are kept

What the painting shows. A ruler in a turban and a long blue coat is handing something small and golden to an elder in white robes, in front of that same golden railing, while men of the community stand on both sides watching. The wooden board below the painting says what the moment is: “THE MAHARAJAH OF TRAVANCORE PRESENTING A GOLD CROWN FOR THE TORAH IN 1805.”

So the two pictures are the same place, more than two hundred years apart — one as a painter recorded it in 1805, one as a camera records it now. The building described on page 127, which “the Jews built… which enabled them to practise their faith even as they became part of the Indian society”, is still standing and still in use.

Q2.
Why is the Maharaja of Travancore (the name of the kingdom in and around Kochi at that time) giving such an expensive gift to the Jewish synagogue for the Torah (religious book of the Jews)?
Answer

Because he was honouring his own people’s holy book, not a foreigner’s. A gold crown for the Torah is not a payment and not a favour to visitors. It is the kind of gift a ruler gives to a place of worship that belongs to his kingdom.

Three things the gift says.

  • “You belong here.” By 1805 the Jews of Kochi had been settled there for centuries. The chapter records the earlier step: “The Raja of Kochi granted them land free of cost ‘as long as the world, sun, and moon endure’.” A gift for their Torah is the same message repeated in gold — this community is not on trial, it is part of the kingdom.
  • “Your faith is worth honouring.” The Torah is “the religious book of the Jews”, as the question itself explains. The Maharaja was not a Jew. He still treated their scripture as something deserving the best his treasury could make. That is respect, not mere permission.
  • “This is how a ruler behaves.” Indian kings had long endowed places of worship — building them, gifting to them, protecting them. Doing the same for a synagogue simply extended a familiar duty to one more community of the realm.
Why this matters to the chapter’s argument: the book is trying to show that acceptance in India was a practice, not a slogan. Land “as long as the world, sun, and moon endure”, and then a gold crown — these are acts, dated and recorded, and the plaque is the evidence. This is what Swami Vivekananda meant in Chicago when he said India “has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the Earth.”
Read carefully: the chapter does not record the Maharaja’s own words about why he gave the crown, so we are reading the act itself and the inscription under it. That is a normal way for historians to work — when a person’s reasons are not written down, you look at what they did and at what else was happening around them.
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