Class 10 cbse previous year board paper question
Answer the following
1)What did the spread of print culture in the 19th century mean to the reformers?
2)Describe the political conditions in the mid 18th century Europe
Answers
1)(i) Reformers used newspapers, journals and books to highlight the social evils prevailing in society. Raja Ram Mohan Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi to highlight the plight of widows.
(ii) From the 1860s, many Bengali women writers like Kailashbashini Debi wrote books highlighting the experiences of women, about how women were imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance, forced to do hard domestic labour and treated unjustly by the menfolk they served. In the 1880s, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote with passionate anger about the miserable lives of the upper-caste Hindu women, especially the widows. The poor status of women was also expressed by Tamil writers.
(iii) Jyotiba Phule wrote about the poor condition of the ‘low caste people.’ In his book Gulamgiri (1871), he wrote about the injustices of the caste system. In the 20th century, BR Ambedkar also wrote powerfully against the caste system. He also wrote against untouchability, EV Ramaswamy Naicker, also known as Periyar, wrote about the caste system prevailing in Madras.
2)The political conditions of Europe as follows : (i) The first half of the nineteenth century saw an enormous increase in population all over Europe.
(ii) In most countries, there were more job seekers than employment. Population from rural areas migrated to the cities to live in overcrowded slums.
(iii) Small producers in towns were often faced with stiff competition from imports of cheap machine made goods from England, where industrialisation was more advanced than on the continent.
(iv) In these regions of Europe where the aristocracy still enjoyed power, peasants struggled under the burden of feudal dues and obligations.
(v) The rise of food prices or a year of bad harvest led to widespread pauperism in town and country.