NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 10 Forts and Palaces — LET’S REMEMBER
Book page 109 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
Try to remember where earlier textbooks showed pictures of the forts of Jaisalmer, Kumbhalgarh, Raigad, and Sindhudurg. Can you point to their approximate locations on India’s map?
Answer
All four appeared in the earlier ‘Tapestry of the Past’ chapters — Jaisalmer and Kumbhalgarh with the Rajput kingdoms of western India, Raigad and Sindhudurg with Shivaji and the Marathas. Here is where they stand.
Fort
State and region
Setting
Why a fort was placed there
Jaisalmer
Western Rajasthan, deep in the Thar Desert
On Trikuta Hill, built of the local yellow sandstone; still inhabited, so it is called a ‘living fort’
It commanded the caravan route running west and north-west; whoever held it taxed and protected the desert trade
Kumbhalgarh
Southern Rajasthan, in the Aravalli range near Udaipur
A hill fort at about 1,100 m, ringed by a wall many kilometres long
It guarded a pass through the Aravallis and served as a refuge for the rulers of Mewar when the plains were lost
Raigad
Raigad district, Maharashtra, in the Sahyadri (Western Ghats)
A flat-topped hill with sheer cliffs on all sides and a single guarded approach
Shivaji made it his capital and was crowned there; the cliffs did the work of walls, so a small garrison could hold it
Sindhudurg
Konkan coast of Maharashtra, off Malvan
A sea fort built on a rocky island a short distance offshore
It watched the sea lane and gave the Maratha navy a base — a land army cannot besiege an island
The four forts on a rough outline of India. Two guard the desert and the hills of the north-west; two guard a hill capital and a sea lane in the west.
Why this pattern: the chapter says forts were ‘strategically located near important land or sea routes, and often atop a hill so as to command a view of the plains below’. These four are that sentence in four different landscapes — a desert trade route, a mountain pass, a cliff-top capital and an offshore rock. Change the terrain and the same military problem gets a different architectural answer.