NCERT Solutions Exploring Society: India and Beyond Chapter 9 –84End of chapter — Questions and activities

Book page 81 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

True or False. Find out whether the following statements are true or false: 1. Right from its inception, the Indian National Congress called for India’s independence. 2. Bal Gangadhar Tilak turned a Shivaji festival into a popular event. 3. The Ghadar Movement of 1914–15 aimed to start a mutiny within the British Indian Army while British troops were busy with World War I. 4. Vallabhbhai Patel earned the title ‘Sardar’ for his leadership during the Satyagraha agitation in Gujarat. 5. The Kakori train robbery of 1925 was carried out to fund the activities of the Hindustan Republican Association. 6. The ‘Do or Die’ call was given by Mahatma Gandhi during the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920. 7. B.R. Ambedkar and Gandhi were in total agreement regarding the issue of ‘separate electorates’ for Dalits. 8. Sir Stafford Cripps was sent to India in 1942 because Winston Churchill supported immediate independence for India. 9. Subhas Chandra Bose raised an army during his stay in Germany. 10. The Radcliffe Line, which divided India and Pakistan, was announced a few weeks before Independence Day.

Answer

#	Answer	Why
1	False	The Congress of 1885 expressed “full faith in the ‘providential character’ of British rule in India” and “unswerving allegiance to the British Crown”. It asked for greater Indian participation in governance, civil rights and reforms. Independence became the Congress’s formal demand only at Lahore in December 1929, forty-four years later
2	True	Tilak “turned the traditional Ganesh Chaturthi… and the Shivaji festival into popular events, using religious and patriotic symbols” to tell people to stand up and resist. Festivals could gather crowds that a political meeting could not
3	True	It was “a daring attempt by Indian revolutionaries to trigger a pan-Indian mutiny within the British Indian Army during World War I”. The Ghadar Party was founded by Indian migrants in North America; British intelligence uncovered the plot, and Kartar Singh Sarabha (19) and Vishnu Ganesh Pingle were among those executed
4	True	The agitation was the Bardoli movement of 1928 in Gujarat, a satyagraha for peasant rights and “one of the most successful grassroots movements in the freedom struggle”. It was for this that Mahatma Gandhi gave him the title ‘Sardar’. (Be precise in an exam: not the earlier Kheda satyagraha, but Bardoli)
5	True	Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqulla Khan and Chandrashekhar Azad robbed a train carrying government money at Kakori, near Lucknow, “to fund their revolutionary activities”. The crackdown that followed led to the execution of Bismil, Khan and others
6	False	“Do or Die” was Gandhi’s call in August 1942, at the launch of the Quit India Movement. The Non-Cooperation Movement of 1920 was launched with a very different promise — Swaraj within a year if people kept strictly to nonviolence
7	False	They shared the goal of ending untouchability but disagreed sharply on the means. Ambedkar, who had suffered the discrimination himself, believed separate electorates were “the only way to ensure their political voice”; Gandhi feared this would permanently divide Hindu society and began a ‘fast unto death’. The Poona Pact was the compromise: no separate electorates, but an increased number of reserved seats in the legislatures
8	False	Cripps was sent because Churchill was “under pressure to seek India’s support” in the middle of the war — not because he favoured independence. The offer was only dominion status after the war, and even that with a clause allowing provinces to opt out. Most leaders, including Gandhi, found the assurances insufficient and rejected it
9	False	Bose spent almost two years in Germany seeking support, then judged that his chances were better with Japan. The Indian National Army was formed in Singapore in 1943, from Indian prisoners of war and volunteers, along with the Azad Hind government
10	False	Mountbatten appointed Radcliffe in July 1947 and gave him five weeks — which runs past 15 August. The boundary award was published only after Independence Day (on 17 August 1947). That is exactly why the chapter says the line split Punjab and Bengal “almost overnight” and that “millions suddenly found themselves on the ‘wrong’ side”

A note on statement 10: some students mark it True because the decision to partition was announced in June 1947, weeks before Independence. But the statement is about the Radcliffe Line itself, and that line was not known to anyone — not even to the people it divided — until after 15 August. Say which you mean, and give the reason; that is what the question is testing.

Q2.

Who Am I? Can you identify these figures? 1. Known as the ‘Lion of Punjab’, I was severely injured during a brutal lathi charge while protesting against the Simon Commission. 2. I famously declared, ‘Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!’ I used the Kesari newspaper and festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi to unite people against British rule. 3. I was a leader of the Nationalist faction of the Congress. In the daily Bande Mataram, I wrote on the need for India to attain absolute autonomy. 4. I earned my nickname ‘Bagha’ after wrestling a tiger with my bare hands. I was a revolutionary leader who died in a gunfight at while waiting for a shipment of German arms to start an uprising. 5. I organised the daring attempt to throw a bomb at the Viceroy in 1912. I later escaped to Japan, where I spent years working to organise a movement from there. 6. I was martyred at a young age after an attempt on the life of a British judge. 7. I was martyred at a young age after throwing non-lethal bombs in Delhi’s Central Legislative Assembly. 8. I turned the freedom struggle into a mass movement through the principles of ahimsa and satyagraha, leading campaigns such as the Dandi March. 9. I sought help from the Axis powers during World War II to organise the Indian National Army. 10. A British lawyer, I was given just five weeks to draw the boundary line that would partition the Indian subcontinent into two separate nations.

Answer

#	Who	The clue that proves it
1	Lala Lajpat Rai	Called the ‘Lion of Punjab’ for his forceful speeches and writings; lathi-charged at Lahore in October 1928 while leading a nonviolent anti-Simon march, and died two weeks later. Founding director of the Punjab National Bank and publisher of Vande Mataram; one of ‘Lal–Bal–Pal’
2	Bal Gangadhar Tilak	‘Lokmanya’; wrote in the Marathi Kesari, used Ganesh Chaturthi and the Shivaji festival, jailed for sedition in 1897 and 1908, wrote The Gita Rahasya
3	Aurobindo Ghose (later Sri Aurobindo)	Joined Bipin Chandra Pal on the Bande Mataram daily in 1906 and soon took charge of it; first principal of the Bengal National College; tried in the Alipore Bomb Case and acquitted; the government called him “the most dangerous man we have to deal with at present”
4	Jatin Mukherjee — ‘Bagha Jatin’	‘Bagha’ means ‘tiger’; an Anushilan Samiti leader who worked with Rash Behari Bose on the ‘German Plot’. He fought a 75-minute gunbattle from behind an anthill in the jungles of Balasore (in present-day Odisha) on 9 September 1915 and died the next day. The printed clue reads “died in a gunfight at while waiting…” — the place name has been dropped in the book; it is Balasore
5	Rash Behari Bose	Behind the 1912 bomb thrown at Viceroy Hardinge during his ceremonial entry into Delhi; later escaped to Japan, where “years later, he would lay the foundation of the Indian National Army”
6	Khudiram Bose	With Prafulla Chaki, threw bombs at a carriage they believed carried Judge Douglas Kingsford in April 1908. Prafulla shot himself before capture; Khudiram, just 18, was tried and hanged, “calm and smiling in his last moments”
7	Bhagat Singh	He and an associate dropped two low-intensity bombs in the Central Legislative Assembly in Delhi with no victims — the intention was only “to make the deaf hear”. He was hanged in 1931, aged 22–23, along with Sukhdev Thapar and Shivaram Rajguru. Strictly, he was tried and hanged for the earlier assassination of a British officer, not for the Assembly bombs
8	Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi)	Developed satyagraha in South Africa; applied it at Champaran, Ahmedabad and Kheda; led the 380-km march to Dandi in March–April 1930
9	Subhas Chandra Bose	Escaped house arrest in early 1941, travelled through Afghanistan and Russia to Germany, then to Japan and Singapore, where he formed the INA in 1943 and proclaimed the Azad Hind government
10	Cyril Radcliffe	“A British lawyer unfamiliar with India”, chosen by Mountbatten in July 1947 and given five weeks to draw the boundary — the Radcliffe Line, which split Punjab and Bengal

Q3.

What kinds of sacrifices are needed to achieve freedom? Think about the lives of Indian soldiers during wars, families suffering during famines, leaders and ordinary people who were arrested, and countless others who lost their homes and safety while participating in protests. If you were living during India’s freedom struggle, would you have chosen to participate in it? What comforts, opportunities, or personal goals might you have been willing to give up for a cause you strongly believed in?

Answer

First part — the kinds of sacrifice, from this chapter. They were not all the same kind, and it helps to separate them.

Kind of sacrifice	Evidence in the chapter
Life, deliberately given	Khudiram Bose hanged at 18; Kartar Singh Sarabha executed at 19; Anant Kanhere hanged at 18; Bhagat Singh, Rajguru and Sukhdev hanged at 22–23; Kanaklata Barua shot at 17; Birsa Munda dead in jail at 24; Bagha Jatin at Balasore
Life, taken without choice	Nearly 400 (official) to over 1,000 (Indian estimates) killed at Jallianwala Bagh; hundreds at Qissa Khwani Bazaar; 65 Kukas blown from cannons without trial in 1872; nearly 10,000 killed during Quit India
Liberty	Over two lakh jailed across four movements; Tilak six years in Mandalay; Bina Das nine years’ rigorous imprisonment; the Cellular Jail, where prisoners extracted oil by hand and “many of them died and some lost their sanity”
Career, status and comfort	Gandhi, a London-trained lawyer, choosing khadi and jail; Aurobindo Ghose leaving a secure post in Baroda; Tagore returning his knighthood; Chandra Singh Garhwali and two platoons of the Royal Garhwal Rifles refusing to fire and “choosing jail over hurting their fellow Indians”
Family and home	Baba Ram Singh exiled to Burma, never to return; Aruna Asaf Ali underground for nearly four years with a bounty on her head; women stepping “from the seclusion of their homes… actually from purdah” into processions; and, in 1947, the millions who lost home, neighbours and sacred places to the Radcliffe Line
Sacrifice nobody chose at all	At least 87,000 Indian soldiers killed in World War II; millions dead in the Bengal famine of 1943, worsened because Indian grain was shipped to the war front

Second part — your own answer. This is a personal question, so it has no single right answer; but a good answer must (i) give a clear position, (ii) name what specifically you would give up, and (iii) be honest about what would be hard. Do not write that you would cheerfully die; write what you can actually defend.

Sample answer: “I think I would have joined, but in the way most people did — not by carrying a bomb. I would have taken part in the boycott, worn khadi even though it was rougher and dearer than mill cloth, and joined processions. What I would have found hardest to give up is school. Thousands of students left government schools and colleges during the boycott, and the chapter is honest that this hurt them, because India’s own institutions ‘were not ready enough to offer a transition’ — many of them lost years of study for a cause whose victory they might never see. I would like to think I would have accepted arrest at a salt march, because the risk there is jail rather than being shot. I am not sure I would have had Khudiram Bose’s courage at 18, and I would rather say so than pretend.”

The idea behind the question: Freedom was not won by a small number of extraordinary sacrifices but by a very large number of ordinary ones. That is why the chapter asks about comforts and opportunities rather than about heroism.

Q4.

What values does Tilak’s statement, “Swaraj is my birthright and I shall have it,” reflect? Can these values be meaningful for young people today?

Answer

Four values, and each is visible in a specific word of the sentence.

Value	Where it shows	What it meant in 1900s India
Self-respect	“birthright”	Freedom is not a reward for good behaviour, and not something a ruler bestows. It rejects the whole colonial argument that Indians must first prove themselves ‘fit’ for self-government
Equality	“my birthright”	If it is a birthright, then it belongs to every Indian equally — not only to the educated, the wealthy or the high-born
Determination	“I shall have it”	Not a request, not a hope. Tilak had been to prison for sedition twice and still said it
Personal responsibility	“I shall have it”	He does not say ‘someone will win it for us’. Each person is answerable for the outcome — which is why anyone could repeat the sentence about themselves

Yes, they are meaningful today — but the meaning has to be transferred carefully. ‘Swaraj’ literally meant getting the British out; that job is done. What survives is the structure of the sentence: this belongs to me by right, and I will do what it takes to have it.

Rights as birthrights. Education, equality before the law, the vote at 18, freedom of speech — the Constitution states these as things you already have, not favours to be requested. Tilak’s sentence is the attitude that a citizen should take towards them.
Responsibility, not just claim. The second half is the harder half. Rights that nobody exercises — a vote not cast, a wrong not reported — quietly stop being real.
Self-respect without contempt. Tilak refused to accept that his people were inferior. The same refusal is useful against every version of ‘people like you don’t do this subject / this sport / this job’.

Discuss honestly: a slogan is a starting point, not an argument. Tilak’s method — mass mobilisation through festivals and newspapers — was itself criticised by other freedom fighters, and Gandhi later chose a different one. Believing you have a right does not by itself tell you how to secure it; that was the whole debate of the movement.

Q5.

How did peasants, workers, tribals, and students contribute to the national movement in ways different from political leaders?

Answer

Leaders supplied demands, organisation and negotiation. These four groups supplied the pressure that made the demands impossible to ignore — and they did it out of grievances of their own, not out of loyalty to a party.

Group	What they actually did	How it differed from leadership work
Peasants	Champaran indigo farmers, Kheda peasants facing excessive land revenue, and the Bardoli movement of 1928 for peasant rights — “one of the most successful grassroots movements in the freedom struggle”. During Civil Disobedience they refused to pay taxes	They struck at the state’s revenue, which was the whole point of the colony. A resolution can be ignored; an unpaid land tax cannot. They also gave the movement its numbers and its rural reach
Workers	Ahmedabad mill workers on “extremely low wages” took up satyagraha in 1918; during Quit India “workers went on strike”; naval ratings of the Royal Indian Navy mutinied in Bombay in February 1946 against ill-treatment, and the mutiny “quickly spread across India”	They could stop production and transport, and — in 1946 — they showed that the empire’s own armed services were no longer reliable. That did more to end British rule than any petition
Tribals	Birsa Munda’s Ulgulaan of 1899–1900 in Chota Nagpur; the Singpho rebellion in Assam; Rani Gaidinliu’s refusal of taxes and of work for the colonial state in Manipur	They resisted earliest and most directly, over land, forest and faith, often before an all-India movement existed at all. Their fight was for their own land and dignity, and it kept whole regions ungovernable
Students	They joined the Calcutta processions of 1905; they left government schools and colleges during boycott and Non-Cooperation; the Bengal National College was founded to receive them; schoolgirls Suniti Chowdhury and Shanti Ghosh (1931) and the university student Bina Das (1932) took up arms; in 1942 “students left schools”	They paid with their own futures, giving up degrees and careers, and they were the fastest to act because they had least to lose in property and most to lose in time. They also produced the young martyrs whose deaths moved the country

The deeper difference — and why it cut both ways. Leaders could start a movement, but they could not control it. Gandhi called off the entire Non-Cooperation Movement after protesters at Chauri Chaura burnt a police station in February 1922 — a decision Motilal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru, C.R. Das and Subhas Chandra Bose disapproved of. During Quit India the whole Congress leadership was arrested in August 1942 and the movement continued anyway, kept alive underground by figures like Ram Manohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan. A movement of ordinary people is far more powerful than one of leaders alone, and far harder to steer. Viceroy Linlithgow called what it produced “by far the most serious rebellion since 1857”.

Note: These groups were not simply following a national call. Their grievances — rent, wages, land, forests, fees — were local and real. The national movement grew strong exactly where it managed to connect those local grievances to the demand for Swaraj.

Q6.

Discuss in class this extract from Nehru’s speech on 15 August 1947: “Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance…” What is meant by “redeem our pledge”? How would you define the ‘soul of a nation’?

Answer

“Redeem our pledge” means: keep the promise we made — pay back what we swore we would deliver. To ‘redeem’ is to make good on a debt or a vow. The pledge Nehru is speaking of is a real, dated one: the Purna Swaraj resolution of the Lahore session, December 1929, whose declaration of independence Congress workers read out publicly on 26 January 1930 and on that date every year afterwards. For eighteen years the Congress had promised the country complete independence. On 15 August 1947 that promise came due, and Nehru is saying, in effect: we said we would; here it is.

Read the qualification too — it is the most honest phrase in the sentence. “Not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially.” On the night he spoke, Punjab and Bengal were burning, millions were on the roads, and the country he had promised was arriving divided. He is admitting on the first night that the pledge has been only partly kept. And ‘pledge’ carries a second meaning beyond 1929 — the promise made to the poor: freedom “to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life”. That part of the pledge was, and remains, unfinished work.

“The soul of a nation” — how to define it. A nation is not only a territory with a government. Nehru is naming the thing that survived even when the territory was ruled by someone else. A workable definition:

The soul of a nation is what a people share that a government cannot create and an occupier cannot destroy — its languages, memories, arts, faiths and ways of living, and the values it holds itself to. It is why India remained India through nearly two centuries of foreign rule.

The evidence for it is in this chapter. ‘Long suppressed’ is precise: the Vernacular Press Act censored Indian-language newspapers; public singing of Vande Mataram was banned; English education was described by the Nationalists as ‘denationalising’, which is why they added National Education to Swadeshi and boycott. And the ‘utterance’ is exactly what the movement kept finding — a song by Bankim, a painting by Abanindranath Tagore, a Tamil magazine cover, a Marathi newspaper, a khadi thread. The soul had been speaking all along; in 1947 it could finally speak as a state.

For the class discussion: ask what belongs in a nation’s soul and what does not. Is it a single language or many? A single faith or many? The 1946–47 violence is a warning here — a definition of the soul of a nation that excludes some of its people is exactly what turned into Partition. The Constitution’s answer, written the very next year, was to define India by shared rights rather than by shared identity.

Q7.

Imagine you are a freedom fighter. a) Explain the method you support to achieve freedom. b) Discuss with your classmates any other method they would support. Be respectful in your debate. c) What does this debate teach us about unity and disagreement?

Answer

a) Choose one of the four methods the chapter actually describes, and argue it from evidence. Do not invent a method — the strength of your answer comes from using the chapter’s own record.

Method	Its case	Its cost
Moderate — petitions, resolutions, constitutional pressure	Keeps the movement legal and its leaders free; builds Indian representation step by step; won the 1935 provincial autonomy	“The colonial government largely ignored the Congress’s resolutions, granting only minor concessions”
Nationalist — Swaraj, Swadeshi, boycott, National Education	Hits the economy, builds Indian industry and schools, and awakens ordinary people; produced Swadeshi Mills, Punjab National Bank, Bengal Chemicals, the Bengal National College	The boycott of institutions had “limited” impact because Indian ones “were not ready enough to offer a transition”; leaders were jailed for sedition
Revolutionary — armed action	Puts real fear into the government; the attacks “invariably met with strong popular approval” and created heroes who inspired thousands	“Hardened its resolve to rule with an iron hand”; the Alipore, Ghadar and Kakori crackdowns destroyed whole networks; innocent people died, as when two British ladies were killed instead of Judge Kingsford
Gandhian — satyagraha, ahimsa, mass non-cooperation	Anyone can take part — no weapons, no education needed; makes repression politically costly for the ruler; produced the largest movements in the whole struggle	Slow; depends on total discipline (one incident at Chauri Chaura stopped everything); “younger Congress leaders” criticised the Gandhi–Irwin Pact for not guaranteeing Purna Swaraj

Structure for your speech: (i) I support ____; (ii) because of what it achieved — one concrete example; (iii) I accept that its weakness is ____; (iv) and here is why I still think it is right.

Sample answer (a): “I would have been a satyagrahi. My reason is the Salt March. The salt law was small enough that any villager could break it, and unjust enough that breaking it looked obviously right — so over 60,000 people could be arrested in a single year, and the government looked worse with every arrest. A bomb makes one official afraid; a hundred thousand people quietly breaking one law makes the whole system unworkable. I accept the weakness — it was slow, and Gandhi himself had to call off Non-Cooperation in 1922 after Chauri Chaura. But I would rather have a slow method that a whole country can join than a fast one that only a few dozen very brave people can.”

b) In the debate: let each side state the other’s position fairly before attacking it. A useful rule — you may not argue against a method until you can state its strongest point in one sentence.

c) What the debate teaches. Three things:

Agreeing on the goal does not settle the method. Tilak, Gandhi, Bhagat Singh and Bose all wanted the British out and disagreed sharply about how — and the disagreements were between patriots, not between patriots and traitors.
Disagreement made the movement stronger, not weaker. Different methods reached different people: festivals reached Poona, satyagraha reached the villages, revolutionary heroism reached the young, the Congress reached the negotiating table. Historians now credit Britain’s exit to many of these at once.
But it has a limit. The Surat split of 1907 cost the Congress years, and the disagreement that could not be settled — over separateness — ended in Partition. Unity survives disagreement about means far better than disagreement about who belongs.

Q8.

Write a news report based on an important event in the Freedom Movement (Swadeshi, boycott, satyagraha, Non-Cooperation, Quit India, or Partition). a) Write a headline. b) Include one interview or public reaction. c) Explain why this event was important.

Answer

What a good news report needs. A headline of six to ten words in the present tense; a first paragraph carrying what, where, when, who; then details in falling order of importance; one quotation from someone present; and a closing paragraph on what it means. Write in the past tense in the body, keep sentences short, and do not put your own opinion in the news paragraphs — put it in the closing analysis and label it.

Sample answer — Model report

a) Headline: GANDHI PICKS UP SALT AT DANDI; SALT LAW BROKEN AFTER 380-KM MARCH

Dandi, southern Gujarat, 6 April 1930. Mahatma Gandhi this morning stooped and picked up a handful of natural salt from this coastal village, deliberately breaking the colonial government’s salt law at the end of a march of 380 kilometres begun at Sabarmati on 12 March. The government holds a monopoly on salt production and charges a high tax on it.

The march has grown at every halt. Salt marches have already begun in other parts of the country, and organisers say the boycott of foreign cloth and the refusal to pay taxes will follow. Large numbers of women are taking part — breaking the salt law, joining processions and picketing liquor shops and shops selling foreign cloth.

b) Public reaction. The poet Sarojini Naidu, who is marching with Gandhiji, said: “He has chosen the one law that touches every kitchen in India. There is no household so poor that it does not need salt, and none so grand that it is exempt. That is why they cannot answer him.” A villager who declined to be named said the police had been watching the road since dawn.

Arrests are expected. [Later: thousands were arrested, including Gandhi himself.]

c) Why this event was important. Three reasons. First, it converted the Lahore Congress’s demand for Purna Swaraj from a resolution into an action that anyone could copy. Second, it chose the perfect target: salt is needed by everyone, the tax is visibly unjust, and breaking the law requires no weapon and no education — so participation could be enormous, and it was, with over 60,000 jailed within the year. Third, it forced the government into a corner: arresting tens of thousands of unarmed people for picking up salt made the government look absurd as well as brutal, and within a year Viceroy Irwin was negotiating with Gandhi in the first formal talks between the British government and the Congress as equals.

If you choose a different event: keep the same discipline. For Partition, resist the temptation to write a headline that blames a community — the chapter is careful to speak of “disagreements between the two communities or rather small sections”, and of a boundary drawn in five weeks by a man who did not know India. A news report about a tragedy should report what happened and who suffered, and leave the accusations to the people you quote.

Q9.

Imagine you are part of a team creating a small museum exhibition on India’s freedom struggle for students of your age. a) Choose a title for your exhibit. b) Select three objects (for example: a letter, a photograph, a newspaper, a prison diary — you can add to these examples) and explain what each object represents. c) Write a short note on what visitors should learn or feel after seeing this exhibit.

Answer

How to plan it. A small exhibition should make one argument, not summarise ninety years. Choose the argument first, then pick objects that prove it, then write labels of about fifty words each: what the object is, when and where it is from, and why it is in the room.

Sample answer

a) Title: Ordinary Things, Extraordinary Choices — one argument: that freedom was won mostly through everyday objects used in an unusual way.

b) Three objects

Object	Label	What it represents
A charkha and a length of hand-spun khadi	Spinning wheel and cloth, of the kind seen in Fig. 2.21	Swadeshi turned into a daily habit. It gave work to poor villagers, replaced imported cloth, and let a person take part in the movement for an hour every evening without leaving home
The front page of the *Bande Mataram* daily (Fig. 2.12)	Calcutta, 1906–08; its masthead carries ‘Swadeshi Paper of India’ and ‘Our Policy: India for Indians’	The war of words. It also carries a column on the prosecution of its own editor — proof that printing an argument could send you to prison
A lump of salt in a small dish	Representing the salt Gandhi picked up at Dandi on 6 April 1930	The genius of choosing a law that everyone could break. Free from the sea, taxed by the state, needed in every kitchen — the smallest possible object carrying the largest possible defiance

c) Note for visitors: “Nothing in this room is rare. A spinning wheel, a newspaper, a pinch of salt — you could find all three in an ordinary house in 1930. That is the point. India’s freedom was not won only by famous people doing heroic things; it was won by very large numbers of ordinary people deciding to use ordinary things differently, and accepting what it cost them. Over two lakh went to jail in four movements alone, and the ICHR’s Dictionary of Martyrs records about 14,000 who died. Before you leave, ask yourself which everyday object of yours could carry a decision like that.”

Why three objects and not thirty: a visitor of your age will read three labels properly and skim thirty. An exhibition is an argument with a length limit — every object you add weakens the ones already there unless it adds something the others cannot.

If you want a fourth object for a local touch, look for something from your own district — a photograph of a local memorial, a street name, a family’s ration card, a Partition-era migration document. Local evidence is what turns a national story into your story.

Q10.

As a class activity, write and stage a small play or skit based on the Freedom Movement.

Answer

Pick a scene with an argument in it, not just an event. A skit works when two people who both want the same thing disagree about how to get it — which this chapter supplies in abundance. Ten to fifteen minutes is plenty.

Five scenes that already contain their own drama:

Surat, December 1907. Tilak is prevented from speaking; the Moderates want to step back from the Calcutta resolutions; the Nationalists walk out. Two sides, both of them patriots.
Tilak’s sentencing, 1908. The judge asks if he has anything to say. Jinnah is his lawyer. The whole scene is three speeches long.
February 1922, after Chauri Chaura. Gandhi calls off Non-Cooperation; C.R. Das, Motilal Nehru and a young Subhas Chandra Bose argue against him.
The Poona Pact. Ambedkar and Gandhi on separate electorates — one arguing that without them the Depressed Classes will never have a voice, the other fasting because he fears a permanent division. Play it with respect for both.
A village during the Salt March. A family argues about whether to send a son to join, with the mother counting the cost of a jail term.

How to write it. Four to six characters, no more. Give every character one clear want and one real reason. Use the chapter’s actual quotations as your best lines — Tilak’s “higher powers that rule the destinies of men and nations”, Lala Lajpat Rai’s “the blows struck at me will be the last nails in the coffin of the British rule in India”, Bose on Bhagat Singh’s “flame which that spirit has lit up will not die”. End on the disagreement rather than resolving it neatly; the audience should leave arguing.

Two rules to set before you begin. First, do not turn any community into the villain of your play — the chapter is careful that Partition came from “disagreements between the two communities or rather small sections”, and a skit that flattens that is bad history and worse for your class. Second, do not put invented words into the mouths of real people who are quoted in the book; if you need a line they did not say, give it to an invented character — a student, a shopkeeper, a constable.

Staging: you need almost no props. A charkha, a length of white cloth, a newspaper, a lantern and a bench will carry any of these five scenes.

Q11.

India achieved freedom after great sacrifice. What responsibilities do citizens have today to protect and strengthen this freedom? Write 5 to 10 lines.

Answer

The core answer: the generation that won freedom handed over the machinery of self-rule; keeping it working is now the citizen’s job, and it is done through ordinary, repeated acts rather than dramatic ones.

What a good answer must contain: at least four specific responsibilities (not vague words like ‘be a good citizen’), a link back to what the freedom struggle actually cost, and one line on responsibilities you can carry out at your own age.

Sample answer (8 lines):

India’s freedom cost over two lakh imprisonments in four movements alone and about 14,000 recorded lives, so it is not something to be received passively. The first responsibility is to vote, and to vote informed — Purna Swaraj meant the right to choose our own government, and a right unexercised slowly stops being real. The second is to know the Constitution, because rights you cannot name are rights you cannot defend. The third is to question the government peacefully — through debate, the press, the Right to Information and lawful protest — since the whole struggle was against rulers who could not be questioned. The fourth is to protect the freedom of people we disagree with: the movement itself held Moderates, revolutionaries and satyagrahis together, and Partition showed what happens when a country decides some of its people do not belong. The fifth is to refuse discrimination of caste, religion, language or gender, which Gandhi, Ambedkar, the Phules and Vidyasagar all fought in their own ways. At my age this means voting when I turn eighteen, reading more than one source before believing a story, not spreading rumours online, and speaking up when someone in my school is excluded. Freedom was won collectively; it can only be kept the same way.

Why the chapter ends here: its last lines make the point exactly — “India’s freedom was a hard-won, collective victory. The question now confronting all was — What sort of nation will free India build?” That question was not answered once in 1947. It is answered again by every generation, including yours.

Was this helpful? Report an error