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(Paper) IAS Mains Previous Year Paper History (1984)
Paper: IAS Mains Previous Year Paper History (1984)
Paper -I- History-1984 (Mains)
Section A
1. Write short answers of not more than 200 words each on any three of the following:
(a) How do you account for the decline of the major cities of the Indus Valley Civilization?
(b) What was the position of Varuna in the Vedic system of Gods?
(c) What were the causes of the origin of the heterodox sects in the sixth century BC?
(d) What was the contribution of the Chalukyas of Badami to Indian architecture?
2. Examine the administrative system of the Mauryas and discuss briefly the causes of disintegration of the Mauryan Empire.
3. How was overseas trade organized in South India up to 300 A. D.? Discuss this with special reference to Roman trade and point out its impact on Indian economy.
4. Critically examine the sources of information for the study of Harshavardhan and discuss his religious policy.
Section B
5. Mark any fifteen of the following places on the map supplied to you and give brief descriptive notes
on them:
(i) Ahmedabad
(ii) Ajmer
(iii) Aurangabad
(iv) Bikaner
(v) Baroda
(vi) Calicut
(vii) Cutch
(viii) Deogiri
(ix) Fatehpur Sikri
(x) Gulbarga
(xi) Halebid
(xii) Hospet
(xiii) Indore
(xiv) Jaisalmer
(xv) Jodhpur
(xvi) Kalyan
(xvii) Kanyakumari
(xviii) Kucknow
(xix) Meerut
(xx) Murshidabad
(xxi) Nasik
(xxii) Panjim
(xxiii) Raichur
(xxiv) Rameshwaram
(xxv) Shravari Belgola
(xxvi) Sommath
(xxvii) Tirupati
(xxviii) Udaipur
(xxix) Vasar (Bassein)
(xxx) Warangal
6. Do you agree with the view that Muhammad Tughluq was transcendent failure’ ? Why did he fail to achieve the ideals he had set for himself?
7. Which were the major European Powers engaged in trade with India in the medieval period ? How did they organise their trade and what were the chief items of trade?
8. What was the contribution of the Mughals to the development of education and literature?
Paper - II- History-1984 (Mains)
Section A (Modern India)
1. Comment an any three of the following statements in about 200 words each:
(a) ‘We have no right to seize Sind, yet we shall do so and a very advantageous, useful, humane
piece of rascality it will be.’
(b) ‘ ....... if we could keep a number of Nature States without political power, but as royal
instruments, we should exist in India as long as our naval supremacy was maintained.’
(c) In British India ‘the impact of the government on the people meant essentially the impact of
government on the village.’
(d) ‘Curzon’s political obtusely created a breach between government and people which was
never wholly closed in the remaining forty-two years of British rule.’
2. Trace the course of the Anglo-Maratha relations in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Account for the ultimate defeat of the Maratha power by the British.
3. Explain the essential features of the ryotwari system of land revenue with special reference to Thomas Munro’s contribution to its evolution.
4. Review the main trends in the Social Movements in India from 1900 to 1947 with particular reference to the changing position .of women in the country.
Section B (Modern World)
5. Comment on any three of the following statements in about 200 words each:
(a) ‘If imperialism is viewed as a phase of the struggle for power between States, its result must
be judged in terms of its role in power politics.’
(b) ‘It is one of the ironies of history that Napoleon was the creator of modern Germany.’
(c) ‘The Treaty of Nanking is the basic act in the imposing but unstable structure of international
relations which governed China for a hundred years.’
(d) Hitler was ‘a creature flung to the top by the tides of revolutionary change, or the
embodiment of the collective unconsciousness of a people obsessed with violence and death.’
6. Account for the growth of Liberalism in Britain in the nineteenth century. How far did it influence the contemporary social and economic issues-in the country?
7. Identify the main strands in the Nationalist Movement in Indonesia between the two World Wars. How did Japanese occupation of land influence the course of the Movement?
8. Give a critical account of the Agricultural Revolution in Western Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. How did it affect the social and economic life of the people?