Hi people!
Time to get back. This is my second article based on class 12 political science examination. Here, I’ll be dealing with questions based on the Indian politics book.
1- First and foremost, you can’t skip any section. But I suggest you to prepare in a particular order:
You could club chapters 1,2,5,6 and 9 together (the reason being that all these chapters take forward the story of Congress).
Other chapters can be prepared in their individual capacity.
Once again, don’t forget to imagine your own questions from each subtopic, and then try to answer them in points.
2- This book is highly graphic and illustrative. Make sure that you extract all the information present in the images. For example, you’ll find portraits and group photographs of many Congressmen. You must be able to identify a few renowned personalities like Nehru, Jinnah, Jagjivan Ram, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, Maulana Azad, C. Rajgopalachari etc. This helps because all these people will also find their representation in cartoons and caricatures.
3- Please prepare all the information given in the boxes. You’ll find direct questions from the boxes, in the examination. Throughout the book, you’ll see bio-data of different personalities given in boxes. I know that it’s virtually impossible to memorize everything. But you must pick out snippets that seem relevant (very often, they are asked in match the following questions). Stuff like first education minister, first labour minister, first health minister, movements started by Periyar etc. IS IMPORTANT. Also, please do have a look at the excerpts from partition literature provided in chapter 1. It’s good to have a fair understanding of the works of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Amrita Pritam etc.
NOTE- for all the literature enthusiasts out there, try reading the original version of Subah-e-azadi. Trust me, it’s beautiful!
4- As you guys might have figured out by now, there are a lot of years and dates in this book. That’s why I’ll recommend you to compile timelines as far as possible. You must have handy timelines for elections in India, Kashmir issue, Tamil Nadu politics (to highlight the origins of Dravid movement), Punjab issue, North-eastern insurgencies etc.
5- There’s a lot of interesting material on the web, please do check it out. There’s a particular video series on YouTube that goes by the name of “Pradhanmantri”. It beautifully and realistically explains everything ranging from partition to emergency to Operation Blue Star. Whenever you feel bored, do watch it out. Additionally, you’ll find movie recommendations in every chapter. Some of these will give you a great insight into what the situations on ground, really were. I particularly liked Garam Hawa (chapter 1) and Haqeeqat (chapter 4).
NOTE- You can (and in fact, should) incorporate all the extra stuff that you learn, in your answers.
6- Keeping yourself updated is of utmost importance. Remember that it’s a paper in political science – you must write about the current scenario wherever possible. Do read up the news updates on Indian foreign policy, Kashmir issue, Khalistan issue (Justin Trudeau’s visit to India had sparked this issue all over again), Assam Accord (National Citizens Register has brought the issue into limelight), insurgency in North-east, etc. In particular, you’ll find a lot of news updates for chapter 8 and 9, because the topics provided herein are barely a few decades old.
7- Once again, you can expect a few open-ended questions from this book. You must pen down your own opinions in such questions. Very often, they ask students stuff like – whether the Congress system was conducive for Indian politics or not, whether the Emergency Period was good overall or not, your views on regionalism etc.
Thus, in the second case, you could begin like – In my opinion, the emergency period is a blotch on the history of Indian politics. I articulate the following points to support my stance- 1) Repression of political freedom in form of increased preventive detentions, imprisonment, press censorship etc.; 2) forced sterilization campaigns; 3) Amendments in constitution made with the aim of securing wide-ranging powers; 4) Judiciary deprived of its powers; and so forth.
This is it for this article. I’ll deal with cartoons and maps in a separate article.
All the best for your exams!
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