NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 2 End of chapter — Questions and activities

Both were dynasties of Central Asian origin ruling from Delhi and paying for themselves out of Indian land revenue. Where they differed was in how they turned conquest into government.

Similarities

• Conquest as the basis of the state. Both expanded by campaigning. Akbar himself followed his predecessors in the view that “a monarch should be ever intent on conquest, otherwise his enemies rise in arms against him.”
• Absolute authority at the centre. The Sultanate's system was “centred on the sultan, who possessed absolute authority as the political and military head”, assisted by a council of ministers; the Mughal system was centred on the emperor, assisted by ministers.
• Land revenue paid for the army. Both taxed the peasantry to keep troops in the field, and both created a class of intermediaries — iqtadars, then jagirdars — to do it.
• Violent succession. The chapter links the two directly: “We mentioned earlier the frequent violent successions during the Sultanate period; this was repeated during the succession of Shah Jahan.”
• Religious policy could be harsh under both. Some sultans imposed the jizya and temples were destroyed; Aurangzeb reimposed the jizya and a pilgrimage tax and, in 1669, ordered governors “to demolish schools and temples of the infidels”.

Differences

Both were far from Delhi, both fought on ground that punished a large invading army, and — most important — both had a way of raising soldiers that did not bankrupt the state.

The common thread is worth stating on its own: distance and difficult terrain made an invasion expensive, and a locally-raised force made defence cheap. A power that can be defended cheaply and attacked expensively survives — for a long time.

What a good answer needs. This is an imaginative task built on real material, so it is marked on the accuracy underneath the imagination:

1. Choose one court and stay in it. Do not mix Akbar's Fatehpur Sikri with Krishnadevaraya's Hampi.
2. Cover all four things the question asks: politics, trade, culture, society.
3. Use at least six specific details from the chapter — names, places, offices, books, buildings. This is what separates a good answer from a vague one.
4. Write in a letter's voice: first person, dated, addressed to someone, ending with a sign-off.
5. Do not make your scholar a modern person in fancy dress. He should be impressed, uncertain and partial — as an eyewitness actually is.

Sample answer:

Begin by being clear that the change was real, because both ends of it are documented in the chapter.

What could have led to it — four causes, none of them sufficient alone:

1. The arithmetic of empire. An empire the size of Fig. 2.16 cannot be garrisoned. Every Rajput chief who becomes an ally is a province you do not have to occupy. Alliances are simply cheaper than armies, and Akbar had fifty years in which to learn it.
2. Contact and curiosity. He was illiterate but “keen to explore Persian and Indian texts”, invited scholars to his court, and had the Mahābhārata, Rāmāyaṇa, Bhagavad Gītā and Pañchatantra translated. A man who spends years listening to Brahmins, Jains, Sufis and Jesuits argue is unlikely to come out believing what he believed at 25.
3. Kinship. Marriage alliances with princesses of neighbouring kingdoms made rival houses into his own family. It is harder to treat as infidels the people your sons are descended from.
4. Age and reflection. His own explanation is exactly this: “As I grew in knowledge, I was overwhelmed with shame.” He then makes an argument, not just an apology — “What constancy is to be expected from proselytes on compulsion?” Forced conversion produces unreliable subjects. That is a ruler's reason as well as a moral one.

This is a ‘what if', so say so first: nobody can know. But a good answer is not a free invention — it reasons forward from what the chapter actually establishes. Here are the four facts to build on.

• Vijayanagara's opponents at Talikota were five states that normally fought each other and had come together only for this campaign.
• Vijayanagara city was, on Domingo Paes's evidence, enormous and rich — “as large as Rome”, “the best provided city in the world”.
• After the defeat “the empire got fragmented into smaller regions ruled by Nayakas, who were former military governors”, and ended in the mid-17th century.
• A century later, Aurangzeb spent 25 years fighting in the Deccan, which drained the Mughal treasury.

Politically, a coalition that lost would probably have broken apart at once — such alliances are held together by the prospect of winning. Vijayanagara might then have pushed north of the Krishna–Tungabhadra against Bijapur and Golconda one at a time. The Nayakas would have stayed what they were, military governors, instead of becoming independent successor states. And when the Mughals came south under Aurangzeb, they would have met one large southern power instead of several weak ones — which could have made the Deccan wars even longer and more ruinous for Delhi, or, if the Mughals still won, have ended southern independence in one campaign rather than many.

Culturally, the loss we can measure most clearly is the city. It was sacked over several months: “houses, shops, buildings, palaces and most of its temples were destroyed, and much of its civilian population massacred.” Had it survived, Hampi would very likely be a living city today rather than the ruins of Fig. 2.11, and the Vitthala temple's musical pillars would be part of a working temple rather than a monument. The court's patronage of Sanskrit, Telugu and Kannada together — the practice that produced Krishnadevaraya's own Āmuktamālyada — would have continued under a single roof instead of scattering among the Nayaka courts.

Economically, the Portuguese horse trade would have kept flowing to Vijayanagara rather than to its rivals, and with it the wealth that paid for cavalry — a self-reinforcing advantage.

What a good answer needs: name one value; say where it comes from in the chapter; explain what it meant then; then show — with a concrete present-day example — what it demands now. One value, argued properly, beats three mentioned in passing.

Sample answer — the value chosen: equality.

Where it comes from. Guru Nanak, in 15th-century Punjab, spread the message of “equality, compassion, and the oneness of God (Ik Onkār)”. The two ideas are one idea: if there is a single God for all, then no person stands nearer to God by birth than any other. The Guru Granth Sahib states it plainly — “there is one God for all” — and the Khalsa, founded in 1699, was “committed to justice, equality and defence of the faith”.

What it meant then. In a society organised by birth, saying that all people stand equal before God was not a comfortable sentiment; it was a challenge to how status was distributed. The langar, where everyone sits in one row and eats the same food, put the idea into a form that could be practised daily rather than merely agreed with.

Why it is still relevant.

• It is now the law, but not yet the habit. The Constitution of India guarantees equality before the law and forbids discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth. A guarantee on paper changes what a court will do; it does not by itself change who is invited home, who is served last, or whose name is mispronounced without apology.
• The test is ordinary, not dramatic. Equality is decided in classrooms, queues, hostels and workplaces — in whether the same rules and the same courtesy apply to the person who cannot make trouble for you.
• It costs something, which is why it needs a reason. Treating everyone equally means giving up an advantage you may have been getting for free. A rule is easier to keep when you know why it exists — and “one God for all” is a reason that does not depend on who is watching.

What a good answer needs: the chapter's own facts about trade, placed inside a scene. Before you write, collect these from pages 55–57:

Sample answer: