ENTRANCE EXAMINATION, FEBRUARY 2013
M. A. (SOCIOLOGy)
Time: 2 Hours Max. Marks: 100
Instructions
1.
Read these instructions carefully before answering.

2.
Enter your Hall Ticket No. the OMR answer sheet.

3.
Answers are to be marked on the OMR answer sheet following the instructions provided thereupon.

4.
Hand over the OMR answer sheet at the end of the examination. The question paper booklet may be retained by the candidate.

5.
Use of calculators of any kind is not permitted.

6.
The Question Paper has Four Parts: Part Part Part C and Part D. Part A consists of 30 questions testing the students' comprehension of a sociological passage (30 marks). Part B consists of 25 questions testing general arithmetic and reasoning (25 marks). Part C has 20 questions testing comprehension of a literary passage (20 marks). Part D has 25 questions testing knowledge of current affairs (25 marks).

7.
Each correct answer carries one mark. Marks obtained in Part A will determine the meritrank incase ofatie inthetotal number ofmarks obtained.

8.
There is negative marking. Each wrong answer carries -0.33 marks.

9.
This question paper contains 31 pages including cover page. There is a blank page provided at the end of the question paper marked 'ROUGH WORK'. Candidates are allowed to do rough work only on this page.



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Part-A
Comprehension (30 Marks)
Religion as a Subject for Sociology
Religion has been a subject of study and reflection for a very long time. The sociology of religion is, by contrast, a very young subject; or, if one prefers, a young branch of an old subject. It is 'necessary to stress the diversity of approaches to the study of religion in order to highlight the distinctive features of the sociological approach to it.
The oldest branch of study devoted to religion, and at least in the Christian tradition by far the most important one for many centuries, is theology. Divinity schools occupied a prominent place in medieval European universities such as Paris, Oxford and Cambridge, and continued to do so until recent times. Theological studies have occupied an important place also in the. Judaic and Islamic intellectual traditions. The theological approach has undergone important changes in the twentieth century, particularly in the west, but it still retains a certain identity, and, in its pure form, it presents the sharpest possible contrast to the sociological approach to the study of religion.
Then there is the philosophy of religion which now occupies some of the ground held previously by theology. The philosophy of religion looks to theology on one side and the psychology of religion on the other. We have also the very broad and body of work that carries the label of the history of religions. We come finally to the anthropological and sociological approaches to the study of the subject; although they are treated separately by some, I will in what follows treat the two together.
In drawing attention to the varieties of approaches to the study of religion, it is not my intention to argue that there are or should be rigid boundaries between disciplines. Such boundaries do not exist and are neither necessary nor desirable. David Bume, who wrote incisively on religion, was not only a celebrated philosopher but also an historian. His contemporary and friend Edward Gibbon \-Tote about religion mainly as an historian, but what he wrote is permeated by philosophical and, indeed, sociological insight. The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James is a landmark both in the philosophy and in the psychology of religion. Such examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely.
It is easy enough to arrange the various approaches on a continuum in such a way that one can pass from one approach to the next without any clear or noticeable break. But it is necessary also to make distinctions. I would like to begin with the distinction between normative and empirical if one prefers, judgmental and non-judgmental-approaches to religious phenomena. The theologian is concerned primarily with questions of truth and rectitude in religious beliefs and practices. Such questions do not concern the sociologist in the same way; his primary concern is to observe, describe, interpret and explain the manner in which religious beliefs and practices operate. An important question from the viewpoint of method, to which I will return later, is how deeply it is necessary to be concerned with questions of truth and rectitude if one is interested in the description and analysis of religious
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beliefs and practices. The same question arises with regard to other systems of belief and practice, and the answers that we give to it must be consistent from one domain to another.
The distinction between the normative and the empirical orientations comes out most clearly in the contrast between the theological and the sociological approaches to the study of religion. It is no accident that, historically, the sociological approach came into its own with the decline of the theological approach. So long as the study of religion was governed by religious faith, there could be little room in it for sociology. The sociology of religion may in this sense be regarded as the offspring of religious scepticism and agnosticism, if not of atheism.
The atmosphere of religious discussion, particularly in the Christian world, has altered enormously between the end of the nineteenth century and the present, so that theologians and social theorists are more prepared to learn from, or at least to listen to, each other. But this should not lead us to obliterate the distinction between an orientation to the subject that is grounded in religious scepticism and one that is grounded in religious faith.
There are two important features of the sociological approach-both common to sociology and social anthropology-on which I would like to make a few observations. The first is the extensive use of the comparative method, and the second is the investigation of religious beliefs, practices and institutions in relation to other aspects of society and culture.
The comparative method is central to the discipline of sociology and, as such, to the sociology of religion. As Emile Durkheim, one of the key figures in the subject, wrote, 'Comparative sociology is not a special branch of sociology; it is sociology itself. Radcliffe­Brown, who was a follower of Durkheim, spoke of social anthropology as comparative sociology. This of course does not mean that sociologists devote themselves only to comparisons between different religious systems. In fact, most sociologists and social anthropologists spend most of their time in making detailed studies of particular religions, and both Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown are best known for their case studies, of the Australian Aborigines by the first and the Andaman Islanders by the second. But the case studies do not stand by themselves; they derive their significance from the comparative perspective that is characteristic ofthe discipline as a whole.
Both Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown believed that the application of the comparative method would enable them to discover general laws about society and its institutions, including its religious institutions. They believed that sociology and social anthropology could be developed in the manner of the natural sciences. Their strategy was to proceed in a systematic way through observation, description and comparison to generalization. We now have, as a result, a large body ofdataonreligious beliefs and practices from all parts ofthe world.
The accumulation of such a large body of systematic data has certainly advanced our knowledge and understanding of religion, but it has not led to the discovery of the kind of general laws that Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown had hoped to discover. What then is left of the comparative method? The comparative method remains of great value because it forces a certain discipline that does not come naturally to us when we examine the varieties of social life. It forces us to give equal consideration, at least in certain respects and for certain purposes,
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to all societies irrespective ofour personal engagements. In that sense, the comparative method brings all societies on a level with each other; it does not admit of any privileged exception. This goes against our ingrained habits of mind when we are dealing with human societies, and particularly when our subject of study is religion. If fair-mindedness is a virtue in the study of society and culture, then the comparative method is an indispensable aid in the cultivation of that virtue.
We have to distinguish ber-ween the aspirations of the comparative method and its achievements. Where individual or collective biases were thrown out by the front door, they sometimes crept in through the backdoor. For Durkheim and his generation, the comparative method 'Nent ha.'ld in hand with a belief in the theory • of evolution, Hence, while all relil!ions ....
J
might be investigated by the same method, some were regarded as more evolved or more elevated than others. Weber too differentiated among religions according to their degree of rationalization, placing primitive magical practices at on end and protestant Christianity at the other. Evolutionary theories are no longer as popular as in the past, but this does not mean that personal or ethnocentric bias has been completely eliminated from the sociological study of religion.
Theology stands at the opposite end of sociology in its orientation to the plurality of religions. At least in its classical form, its concern was with a particular religion which it singled out for special attention. There was thus Christian theology-and within it Protestant theology and Catholic theology-or Judaic theology or Islamic theology. Theology will defeat its original purpose if it places all religions on the same plane, for that purpose was to establish the truth of one religion and expose the errors of others. The theologian writes about religion from within; it is difficult to think of a Christian who is an Islamic theologian or of a Hindu who is a Christian theologian. The sociologist, on the other hand, approaches religions from the outside even when he seeks to understand their inner meaning.
A second important feature of the sociological approach is that it studies the facts of religion in association with other social facts. The sociological approach, as I understand it, not only does not privilege one's own religion as against other religions, it also does not privilege the religious domain among the various domains of social life. In the sociological perspective, no matter how important the religious life may be in itself, it cannot be made fully intelligible without being brought into relationship with domestic life, economic life and political life. The interconnection among the different institutional domains is at the centre of sociological attention.
The position is different for the t.h.eologian. For him, the religious domain is pre­eminent, in a way the only one that has real significance. He is concerned, above all, with the inner meaning of religion rather than its external or institutional manifestation, which is what engages the attention of the sociologist. This does not mean that there can be no collaboration between the theologian and the sociologist. In fact, there has been such collaboration, with very fruitful results, as in the case ofErnst Troeltsch the theologian and Max Weber the sociologist. That collaboration deserves attention, for it brings to light not only the differences of perspective, but also the possibility of a reciprocity of perspectives.
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Although their intellectual interests overlapped, Weber stressed the differences in orientation between himself and Troeltsch. Despite his considerable erudition in matters relating to Christian doctrine, he spoke ofhimselfas a non-expertworking at second-hand, and of Troeltsch as the expert best equipped to provide an authoritative view. But he obviously believed that. the 'non-expert' had an important part to play in clarifying the relationship of religion to economy and society, and in examining that relationship comparatively. He probably felt that, as a sociologist, he could deal better with non-Christian religions than Troeltsch whose expertise lay in the field of Christian theology.
Weher also took an interest in the practical side ofreligion through his association with the Evangelical-Social Congress. He gave his time and counsel freely to Pastor Naumann who believed that in Germany the retorm of religion could not succeed without the reform of politics and, in particular, the incorporation ofthe working class to full citizenship. What these relationships bring out is that there are not only many kinds of sociologists but also many kinds of theologians. Not all sociologists are militant atheists or ostentatiously irreligious, and Weber certainly was neither. Nor are all theologians intransigent dogmatists, concerned only with the letter ofthe creed, and, indeed, Troeltsch, who was a liberal from the beginning, moved in mid­career and on his own choice from a chair in theology to one in philosophy. The point is not that no sociologist can be a religious believer and no theologian a religious sceptic, but that there are characteristic differences of orientation between sociology and theology as disciplines.
Sociological studies of religious beliefs, practices and institutions vary enormously in scope and emphasis. Some are based on the analysis of literary material relating to large populations over long stretches of time; others are based on direct observation of life in small communities. Some deal mainly with religious phenomena; others deal with them only in so far as they bear upon some other aspect of life which is the primary object of attention. There are studies of the religious life of natural communities such as the village or the tribe, and studies ofspecifically religious associations such as the church or the sect.
A good example ofthe sociological approachis the study ofreligion and societyamong the Coorgs of South India by M.N. Srinivas. The principal objective of the book is to give a coherent account of a system of religious beliefs and practices in its social context. As such, it begins with an outline of social structure and then proceeds to give an account of the ritual idiom of the Coorgs. The central part of the book deals with cults of the various social units, such as household, village and region, which constitute the principal components of Coorg social structure. The book concludes with some general observations on the relationship between religion and society.
Srinivas later elaborated the distinction between the 'book-view' and the 'field-view' of society. Interms ofthatdistinction,hisworkontheCoorgsgivesusafield-view ofHinduism. There are innumerable accounts in the ancient, medieval and modem literature of Hinduism that tell us how religious institutions ought to work. Srinivas was less interested in discussing how they ought to work than in showing how they actually worked. Such an account might be of considerable interest to a theologian, but it is not one that the typical theologian would himself write. In studying religion, the sociologist or social anthropologist tries to observe and describe how people act as well as to understand and interpret the meanings they assign to their
6


acts. There are important differences of emphasis here. Durkheim, for instance, believed. in attending first and foremost to the external, observable characteristics of social facts before attending to their inner meanings. In much the same vein, Radcliffe-Brown Wrote in his Foreword to the book by Srinivas, 'Social anthropology is behaviouristic in the sense that we seek to observe how people act as a necessary preliminary to trying to understand how they think and feel' .
Others have placed their emphasis elsewhere. For Weber, it was always important to enquire into the meaning the actor assigned to his action in every sphere of society: what did it mean for the priest or the prophet to choose and pursue a particular way of life? And, beyond that, what meaning did the world itself have from the viewpoint of a given religion? At the same time, Weber never neglected to compare and contrast, with the maximum possible detachment, the answers given to these questions in different religious traditions. He also examined systematically and with the greatest possible care the material and other external conditions associated with various religious beliefs and practices.
Collaboration between sociologists and theologians has never been free from problems since it is never very easy to reconcile the committed and the detached points of view. Among radical social theorists, Durkheim has been represented as a conservative who assigned too much importance to religion. It is true that Durkheim assigned great importance to religion in social life and rebuked his empiricist colleagues, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon world, for treating it lightly. But for Durkheim, religion is important not because it is true but because it is useful, whereas for the theologian, the importance of religion lies in its truth and not in its utility.
The Catholic Church in France viewed Durkheim's work quite differently from the way in which it has come to be viewed among sociologists. His book was attacked in a long review article by Gaston Richard, entitled 'Dogmatic Atheism in the Sociology of Religion'. Richard maintained, the end, it is incontrovertible that this sociology of religion (sociologie religieuse), as it is called, is incompatible not only with Christian faith, but even with philosophical theism, and indeed with any belief that recognizes, hypothetically at least, a divine personality'. Gaston Richard was not a theologian, but had begun his career as a member of Durkheim's Annee sociologique circle. He was, however, a believing Christian who, though born in a Catholic family, had converted to the Protestant faith. Many years later, a similar attack against Durkheim's sociology of religion was launched by another former admirer, E.E. Evans-Pritchard. Evans-Pritchard had in his religious life travelled the same road as Gaston Richard, but in the opposite direction; his father was a minister of the Protestant church, but he had found his faith by embracing Catholicism.
One of the arguments of both Richard and Evans-Pritchard was that Durkheim had overreached himself, in that he was claiming too much for his sociology of religion. Evans­Pritchard, himself the author of one of the finest anthropological monographs on religion, addressed himself to this very difficult question at the end of his book. After describing what the social anthropologist is able to observe and how far he is able to proceed towards an understanding of the inner meaning of what he observes, he concluded, this point the theologian takes over from the anthropologist'.
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But Evans-Pritchard did not rest content for very long with the division of labour that he seemed to be proposing between anthropology and theology at the end of his book on Nuer religion. With the passage of time, he became increasingly sceptical about the contribution that social anthropology and sociology could make to the understanding of religion. In his Aquinas lecture, delivered before a Catholic audience, he launched an attack on anthropological studies of religion, accusing their authors of bad faith. A little later, he repeated the same attack on sociological theories of religion, accusing Durkheim of having roughly the same perspective on religion as Marx and Engels.
Evans-Pritchard's later writings on religion reveal a very great anthropologist in a very poor light. I allude to them not out of ill will, but in order to suggest that there might be a possible connection between his increasing attachment to the Catholic faith and his growing disaffection with the sociology of religion. His own early essay, 'Zande Theology', of 1936 was a masterly demonstration of how such a meticulous observer as the Dominican priest Mgr. Lagae had arranged his ethnographic facts to fit a theologically convenient argument, creating a religious doctrine where none existed. He had begun from the position that social anthropologists and sociologists must not claim that they can tell us everything about religion; in course of time, he found such claims as they were making to be increasingly intolerable; in the end, he came very close to the position that they can tell us nothing about religion in the true sense of the term, or at least nothing of any real value.
The sociology of religion always, and perhaps necessarily, comes to grief when it moves beyond its proper empirical concerns under the urge to decide on the truth or otherwise of a religious doctrine. Whether or not Ram was the ideal man; whether Mohammed was a true or a false prophet; and whether Christ died in vain or for the redemption of mankind are questions that are beyond the purview of the sociology of religion in the sense given to it here. But that does not mean that it has nothing of interest to say about the place of religion in man's social life.
Answer the following questions from the above passage:
1. Religion has been a subject of study for
philosophers and theologians
historians
sociologists
all ofthe above
2. Theology is the discipline that studied
Christian, Judaic and Islamic Intellectual traditions sociological approaches to religion the philosophy of Marxism folk religion
3. Boundaries between approaches to the study ofreligion
are important to be maintained
are non-existent
are neither necessary nor desirable

None of the above
4.
A direct counterpoint to the sociological approach to religion is

the theological approach
the philosophy ofreiigion approach
the history ofreligion approach
None ofthe above


5.
The sociological approach to religious studies became prominent with the decline of the

historical approach
theological approach
anthropological approach
psychological approach


6.
The sociology ofreligion may be seen as

a response to the decline ofthe theological approach
ungoverned by religious faith
a by-product ofreligious scepticism
All ofthe above


7.
The author considers


the philosophy of religion to be the same as theology the anthropological and sociological approaches to the study ofreligion are
similar that there should be only one approach in the divinity school psychological and philosophical approaches to religion as antithetical
8. The author attempts to place various approaches to the study of religion
as opposed to intellectual pursuits as discouraging description and analysis ofreligious beliefs and practices as following the David Hume model in terms of a continuum ranging from normative to empirical
9. What is the basis ofthe distinction betweenjudgmental and non approaches to religious phenomena?
Boundaries between approaches to the study ofreligion are permeable One is concerned with truth and veracity and the other is concerned with
description and analysis
Historical versus sociological orientation
The work of David Hume and Edward Gibbon

10.
The normative approach to religious phenomena is used by

social anthropologists
philosophers
theologians
historians


11.
The sociologists are interested in the study of


operation of religious beliefs and practices truth and rectitude in religious beliefs and practices normative and empirical approaches to religious phenomena evolution ofreligions
12. The question oftruth and rectitude in religious beliefs and practices is the concern of
social anthropologists
theologians
philosophers
psychologists

13. As long as the study of religion was governed by faith
the theological approach flourished
there was no room for the empiricist
religious scepticism dominated
agnosticism and atheism also survived

14. The extensive use ofthe comparative method is a feature ofthe
psychological approach
theological approach
philosophical approach
sociological approach


15.
The comparative method is valuable because

it enables the discovery ofgeneral laws
it is close to the natural sciences
it is sociology itself
it equalizes societies on the same level


16.
Has the comparative method yielded the kind of laws that sociologists talked about?

Yes
Not sure
No
None ofthe above


17.
The comparative method in the study ofreligions

is integral to the discipline of sociology was made popular by Emile Durkheim was used by Radcliffe Brown in his study of Andaman Islanders all ofthe above

18.
The ethnocentric bias in the sociological study ofreligion has consisted primarily in

the inability to discover general laws the absence offair mindedness in the study of society an evolutionary emphasis that some religions area better equipped than others the use ofthe comparative method

19.
For the sociologist placing

all religions on the same plane was crucial Protestants above Catholics was crucial ethnocentric bias at the centre of analysis is necessary Weberian principles of rationalization above others is needed

20.
The sociologist approaches a religion


as a believer
as a non-believer
as an insider
as an outsider

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21. An insider perspective on religion has been most developed in
Theology
Christianity
Judaism
Hinduism

22. For the sociologist
religion must be studied from within it is crucial to internalize norms ofthe religious tradition that is being studied interconnections between different institutional domains are important all of the above
23. Max Weber
was a pastor at the Evangelical Social Congress
was a theologian in Germany
was a militant atheist

took an interest in the practical side ofreligion
24. Apart from the comparative method, what other feature characterizes the sociological
approach to religion?

Privileging the religious domain The interconnection between various domains of social life,
religion
The work of Durkheim and Weber
Approaching religion from the outside

25. M.N. Srinivas wrote a book on the Coorgs
which gives a book-view of society concluding that the household was less significant in the Coorg social
structure
which gives a field view of Hinduism
with a focus on how best religious practices can work

26. The collaboration between theologians and sociologists is interesting because
their domains and objects of expertise are different
it can entail a reciprocity ofperspectives
it breaks the binary ofreligious believer and sceptic
all of the above


27.
The following was a follower ofthe Durkheimian school ofthought

Radcliffe-Brown
Gaston Richard
Marx and Engels
Max Weber


28.
Durkheim assigned great importance to religion in social life because

it is true
he was a believer
it is useful
sociology ofreligion was his specialization


29.
Evans-Pritchard sought to emphasize


the continuity ofconcerns between the sociologists and theologians that it is not enough to observe and analyze but also to grasp the inner meaning ofwhat is observed that ultimately anthropological and sociological studies cannot understand religion All ofthe above
30. The author criticizes Evans-Pritchard's later writings for the following reason
For his lack ofobservational skills Out ofpersonal ill-will For his increasing disaffection with the Catholic Faith His attachment to the religious faith and disengagement with sociology of
religion
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PART-B Arithmetic and Reasoning (25 Marks)
31. A man sells oranges in the market. First day he sells 1236 oranges, second day he sells twice the number he sold on the first day. Third day he sells half the number of oranges he sold on the first day. Fourth day he sells one third of the oranges he sold on the second day. Calculate the number oforanges he sold in all in four days.
5452 5150 5750 5252 221 88 C)8 40
33.
If we write down all the numbers from 1 to 100, then how many times do we write A)20 B)17 C)21 D)19

34.
Rashmi started from house in West direction. She has to go to her friend's house which is in the South direction. What sequence of directions should she follow to reach her friend's house?

right, right, left left, right, left right, right, right left, right, right

35.
A girl wanted to purchase a toy priced at Rs. 720. She was offered four discount options by the shop keeper. Which option should she choose to gain maximum advantage of the discounts offered?


A)A single discount of45%
B)2 successive discounts of20% each
C)2 successive discounts of 30% and 10%
D)3 Successive discounts of 10% each

36.
LUX, NRY, POZ, RNB QNA RMD D)RLA

37.
Nasreen is twice as old as her daughter Shama. 20 years back she was twelve times as old as her daughter. What are their present ages?


24, 12 48, 24 40, 20 44, 22
38. If a square plot is to be fenced, 24 poles are required for one side. How many poles are required to fence the entire plot?
A)90 B)96 C)98 D)92
14
39.
Flowers in a basket double after every minute. Ifthe basket is full in 60 minutes, how many minutes back was the basket half-filled?

30 B)l 20 D)15

40.
In a class of 60 students 22 take table tennis, 32 take karate, and 4 take both. How many students in the class have not emolled in any ofthese two?

10 15 C)12 D)8

41.
Should Students' Unions in Universities be abolished? Argument Yes, students can pay full attention to their career development Argument II: No, all great leaders have been student leaders A)Ifonly argumentI is strong

Ifonly argument II is strong Ifboth the arguments are strong D)Ifboth the arguments are not strong

42.
There are 2264 students in a university who have to choose a president from among four contestants. What should be the minimum number ofvotes the winning candidate should get?

544 567 1132 inadequate data

43.
Two numbers are in the ratio of 7:8. If 3 is added to each of them their ratio becomes


8:9. The numbers are 14, 16 42, 48 21, 24 24,32
44. Rohan deposited Rs.50000 for three years in a fixed deposit scheme which gives 10% per annum compound interest. What amount will he receive at the end ofthree years?
Rs.66550 Rs. 60150 Rs. 65100 Rs. 61500
45. 999x99x9 9x99x3
333 111 199 none ofthese
46.6, 143,221
81 93 78 77

47. A survey on the use of computers, cell phones and credit cards from a sample of 100 persons found that 36 persons had cell phones, 56 had computers and 33 had credit cards. If 14 had none of the three and 28 had more than one, how many persons had all the three?
12 B)10 C)11 D)14
15
48.
In a clock the time is 9:00 PM. If the hour hand is pointing towards East, then the minutes hand is pointing towards

South North South East West

49.
Village Rampur has a population of 7200 which is decreasing by 180 per year. Sonepur village has a population of 4400 which is increasing by 90 per year. In how many years the population oftwo villages will be equal?

11 years 8 years 10 years 12 years

50.
Pick the odd number from below: 361 531 169 289

51.
What fraction of an hour is a second? 1/3600 1/1600 1/60 1/120

52.
In a family of six members ABC D E A and B are the married couple. A is a male member, D is the only son of C who is brother of E is the sister of D and B is the daughter-in-law of F whose husband has died. Then how many male members are there in the family?


A)2 B)4 C)3 1
53.
The rank of Amulya is 15th from beginning and 21 st from last in a class. How many students are there in the class?

36 B)35 34 D)37

54.
A welding worker has to cut a 10 meters rod into ten pieces of equal size. If it takes 2 minutes to cut each piece, how many minutes does he spend in making 10 pieces?

10 B)18 C)20 D)24

55.
If T stands for U stands 'for and V stands for what is the value of


A)44 B)50 C)60 D)4

PART-C
Literary Passage (20 Marks)
As a child I spent my holidays in my grandfather's house in Calcutta, and it was there that I began to read. My grandfather's house was a chaotic and noisy place, populated by a large number of uncles, aunts, cousins, and dependants, some of them bizarre, some merely eccentric, but almost all excitable in the extreme. Yet I learned much more about reading in this house than I ever did in school.
The walls of my grandfather's house were lined with rows of books, neatly stacked in glass-fronted bookcases. The book cases were prominently displayed in a large hall that served, among innumerable other funciions, also those of playground, sitting room, and hallway. The bookcases towered above us, looking down, eavesdropping on every conversation, keeping track of family gossip, glowering upon quarrelling children. Very rarely were the bookcases stirred out of their silent vigil. I was perhaps the only person in the house who raided them regularly, and I was in Calcutta for no more than a couple of months every year. When the bookcases were disturbed in my absence, it was usually not for their contents but because some special occasion required their cleaning. If the impending event happened to concern a weighty matter like a delicate marital negotiation, the bookcases got a very thorough scrubbing indeed. And well they deserved it, for at such times they were important props in the little plays that were enacted in their presence. They let the visitor know that this was a house in which books were valued; in other words that we were cultivated people. This is always important in Calcutta, for Calcutta is an oddly bookish city.
Were we indeed cultivated people? I wonder. On the whole I don't think so. In my memory my grandfather's house is always full-of aunts, uncles, cousins. I am astonished sometimes when I think of how many people it housed, fed, entertained, educated. But my uncles were busy, practical, and, on the whole, successful professionals, with little time to spend on books.
Only one of my uncles was a real reader. He was a shy and rather retiring man, not the kind of person who takes it upon himself to educate his siblings or improve his relatives' taste. The books in the bookcases were almost all his. He was too quiet a man to carry much weight in family matters, and his views never counted for much when the elders sought each other's counsel. Yet despite the fullness of the house and the fierce competition for space, it was taken for granted that his bookcases would occupy the place ofhonour in the hall. Eventually tiring of his noisy relatives, my book-loving uncle decided to move to a house ofhis own in a distant and uncharacteristically quiet part of the city. But oddly enough the bookcases stayed; by this time the family was so attached to them that they were less dispensable than my uncle.
In the years that followed, the house passed into the hands of a branch ofthe family that was definitely very far from bookish. Yet their attachment to the bookcases seemed to increase inversely to their love of reading. I had been engaged in a secret pillaging of the bookcases for a very long time. Under the new regime my depredations came to a sudden halt; at the slightest squeak of a hinge, hordes of cousins would materialize suddenly around my ankles, snapping dire threats.
It served no purpose to tell them that the books were being consumed by maggots and mildew, that books rotted when they were not read. Arguments such as these interested them not at all: as far as they were concerned the bookcases and their contents were a species of
.....+ +1. ...............__ 11"'10 ......

plUjJt::lLy i:1UU LV Ul< W.VY",
This attitude made me impatient, even contemptuous at the time. Books were meant to be read, I thought, by people who valued and understood them: I felt not the slightest remorse for my long years of thievery. It seemed to me a terrible waste that non-readers should succeed in appropriating my uncle's library. Today, I am not so sure. Perhaps those cousins were teaching me a lesson that was important on its own terms: they were teaching me to value the printed word. Would anyone who had not learned these lessons well be foolhardy enough to imagine that a living could be made from words? I doubt it.
In another way they were also teaching me what a book is, a proper book, that is, not just printed paper gathered between covers. However much I may have chafed against the regime that stood between me and the bookcases, I have not forgotten those lessons. For me, to this day, a book, a proper book, and always will be the kind of book that was on the bookshelves. And what exactly was this kind ofbook?
Although, so far as I know, no one had ever articulated any guidelines about them, there were in fact some fairly strict rules about the books that were allowed on to those shelves. Textbooks and schoolbooks were never allowed; nor were books of a technical or professional nature-nothing to do with engineering, or medicine, or law, or indeed any of the callings that afforded my uncles their livings. In fact, the great majority of the books were of a single kind; they were novels. There were a few works of anthropology al1d psychology, books that had in some way filtered into the literary consciousness of the time: The Golden Bough, for example, as well as the Collected Works ofSigmund Freud, Marx and Engels's Manifesto, Havelock Ellis and Malinowski on sexual behaviour, and so on.
But without a doubt it was the novel that weighed most heavily on the floors of my grandfather's house. To this day I am unable to place a textbook or a computer manual upon a bookshelf without a twinge of embarrassment.
This is how Nirad Chaudhuri, that erstwhile Calcuttan, accounts for the position that novels occupy in Bengali cultural life. About a quarter of the novels in my uncle's bookcases were in Bengali representative selection of the mainstream tradition of Bengali fiction in the
18


twentieth century. Prominent among these were the works of Bankim Chandra, Sarat Chandra, Tagore, Bibhuti Bhushan, and so on. The rest were in English. But of these only a small proportion consisted of books that had been originally written in English. The others were translations from a number of other languages, most of them European: Russian had pride of place, followed by French, Italian, German, and Danish. The great masterpieces of the nineteenth century were dutifully represented: the novels of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Turgenev, of Victor Hugo, Flaubert, Stendhal, Maupassant, and others. But these were the dustiest books of all, placed on shelves that were lofty but remote.
The books that were prominently displayed were an oddly disparate lot--or so they seem today. Some of those titles can still be seen on bookshelves everywhere: Joyce, Faulkner, and soon. But many others have long since been forgotten: Marie Corelli and Grazia Deledda, for instance, names that are so little known today, even in Italy, that they have become a kind of secret incantation for me, a password that allows entry into the brotherhood of remembered book cases. Knut Hamsun, too, was once a pan of this incantation, but unlike the others his reputation has since had an immense revival--and with good reason.
Other names from those shelves have become, in this age of resurgent capitalism, symbols of a certain kind of embarrassment or unease--the social realists, for example. But on my uncle's shelves they stood tall and proud, Russians and Americans alike: Maxim Gorky, Mikhail Sholokhov, John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair. There were many others, too, whose places next to each other seem hard to account for at first glance: Sienkiewicz, Maurice Maeterlinck, Bergson. Recently, looking through the mildewed remnants of those shelves, I came upon what must have been the last addition to that collection. It was Ivo Andriae's Bridge on the Drina, published in the sixties.
For a long time I was at a loss to accounts for my uncle's odd assignment of books. I knew their eclecticism couldn't really be ascribed to personal idiosyncrasies of taste. My uncle was a keen reader, but he was not, I suspect, the kind of person who allows his own taste to steer him through libraries and bookshops. On the contrary, he was a reader of the kind whose taste is guided largely by prevalent opinion. This uncle, I might add, was a writer himself, in a modest way. He wrote plays in an epic vein with characters borrowed from the Sanskrit classics. He never left India and, indeed, rarely ventured out of his home state of West Bengal.
The principles that guided my uncle's taste would have been much clearer to me had I ever had an interest in trivia. To the quiz-show adept, the link between Grazia Deledda, Gorky, Hamsun, Sholokhov, Sienkiewicz, and Andriae's will be clear at once: it is the Nobel Prize for Literature.
But of course the Nobel Prize was itself both symptom and catalyst of a wider condition: the emergency of a notion of a universal 'literature', a form of artistic expression that embodies differences in places and culture, emotion and aspiration, but in such a way as to
19


render them communicable. This idea may well have had its birth in Europe, but I suspect it met with a much more enthusiastic reception outsides. I spent a couple of years studying in England in the late seventies and early eighties. I don't remember ever having come across a bookshelf like my uncle's: one that had been largely formed by this vision of literature, by a deliberate search for books from a wide array of other countries.
I have, however, come across many such elsewhere, most memorably in Burma in the house of the late Mya Than Tint, one of the most important Burmese writers of the twentieth century.
Mya Than Tint was an amazing man. He spent more than a decade as a political prisoner. For part of that time he has incarcerated in the British founded penal colony of Cocos Island, an infamous outcrop of rock where prisoners had to forage to survive. On his release he began to publish sketches and stories that won him a wide readership and great popular esteem in Burma. These wonderfully warm and vivid pieces have recently been translated and published under the title Tales ofEveryday People.
I met Mya Than Tint in 1995, at his home in Rangoon. The first thing he has said to me was, have seen your name somewhere'. I was taken aback. Such is the ferocity of Burma's censorship regime that it seemed hardly possible that he could have come across my books or articles in Rangoon. 'Wait a minute', Mya Than Tint said. He went to his study, fetched a tattered old copy of Granta, and pointed to my name on the content page.
'Where did you get I asked, open-mouthed. He explained, smiling, that he had kept his library going by befriending the rag pickers and paper traders who picked through the rubbish discarded by diplomats.
Looking through Mya Than Tint's bookshelves, I soon discovered that this determined refusal to be beaten into parochialism had its genesis in a bookcase that was startlingly similar to my uncle's. Knut Hamsun, Maxim Gorky, Sholokhov, all those once familiar names came echoing back to me, from Calcutta, as we sat talking in that bright, cool room in Rangoon.
I also once had occasion to meet the Indonesian novelist Pramoedya Ananata Toer, another writer of astonishing fortitude and courage. Of the same generation as Mya Than Tint, Pramodeya has lived through similar experiences of imprisonment and persecution. Unlike Mya Than Tint, Pramoedya works in a language that has only recently become a vehicle of literary expression, Bahasa Indonesia. Pramoedya is thus widely thought of as the founding figure in a national literary tradition.
At some point I asked what his principal literary influences were. I do not know what I had expected to hear, but it was not the answer I got. I should not have been surprised, however; the names were familiar ones --Maxim Gorky and John Steinbeck.



20

Over the last few years, unbeknown to itself, the world has caught up with Mya Than Tin and Pramoedya Ananta Toer. Today, the habits of reading that they and others like them pioneered are mandatory among readers everywhere. Wherever I go today, the names that I see on serious bookshelves are always the same, no matter the script in which they are spelled; Garcia Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Nadine Gordimer, Michael Ondaatje, Margauerite Yourcenar, Gunter Grass, Salman Rushdie. That this is ever more true is self-evident: literary currents are now instantly transmitted around the world and instantly absorbed, like everything else. To mention this is to cite a jaded common place.
But the truth is that fiction had been thoroughly international for more than a century. in india, Burma, Egypt, Imlunesia, and elsewhere frJis has long been self-evident. Yet curiously, this truth has nowhere been more stoutly denied than in those places where the novel has its deepest roots; indeed it could be said that this denial is the condition that made the novel possible.
The novel as a fonn had been vigorously international from the start; we know that Spanish, English, French, and Russian novelists have read each other's work avidly since the eighteenth century. And yet, the paradox of the novel as a fonn is that it is founded upon a myth of parochiality, in the exact sense of a parish-a place named and charted, a definite location. A novel, in other words, must always be set somewhere: it must have its setting, and within the evolution of the narrative this setting must, classically, play a part almost as important as those ofthe characters themselves. Location is thus intrinsic to a novel: we are at a loss to imagine its absence no matter whether that place be Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford or Joyce's Dublin. A poem can create its setting and atmosphere out of verbal texture alone; not so a novel.
We carry these assumptions with us much the same that we assume the presence of actors and lights in a play. They are both so commonplace and so deeply rooted that they pre­empt us from reflecting on how very strange they actually are. Consider that the conceptions of location that made the novel possible came into being at exactly the time when the world was beginning to experience the greatest dislocation it has ever known. When we read Middlemarch or Madame Bouary we have not the faintest inkling that the lives depicted in them are made possible by global empires (consider the contrast with that seminal work of Portuguese literature, De Camoens' Lusiads). Consider that when we read Hawthorne we have to look very carefully between the lines to see that the New England ports he writes about are sustained by a far-flung network of trade. Consider that nowhere are the literary conventions of location more powerful than in the literature of the United States, itself the product of several epic dislocations.
How sharply this contrasts with traditions of fiction that predate the novel! It is true, for example, that the city of Baghdad provides a notional location for the One Thousand and One
21 B-21
Nights. But the Baghdad of Scheherazade is more a talisman, an incantation, than a setting. The stories could happen anywhere so long as our minds have room for an enchanted city.
Or think of that amazing collection of stories known as the Panchatantra or Five Chapters. These stories too have no settings to speak of, except the notion of a forest. Yet the Panchatantra is reckoned by some to be second only to the Bible in the extent of its global diffusion. Compiled in India early in the first millennium, the Panchatantra passed into Arabic through a sixth-century Persian translation, engendering some of the best known of Middle Eastern fables, including parts of the One Thousand and One Nights. The stories were handed on to the Slavic languages through Greek, then from Hebrew to Latin, aversion in the latter appearing in 1270. Through Latin they passed into German and Italian. From the Italian version came the famous Elizabethan rendition of Sir Henry North, The Moral Philosophy of Doni. These stories left their mark on collections as different as those of La Fontaine and the Grimm brothers, and today they are inseparably part of a global heritage.
Equally, the stories called the jatakas, originally compiled in India, came to be diffused throughout southern and eastern Asia and even further with the spread of Buddhism. The story, both in its epic form as well as its shorter version, was vital in the creation of the remarkable cultural authority that India enjoyed in the Asia of the Middle Ages; not until the advent of Hollywood was narrative again to play so important a part in the diffusion ofa civilization.
Everywhere these stories went they were freely and fluently adapted to local circumstances. Indeed, in a sense the whole point of the stories was their translatability-the dispensable and inessential nature of their locations. What held them together and gave them their appeal was not where they happened but how narrative, in other words. Or, to take another example, consider that European narrative tradition that was perhaps the immediate precursor of the novel: the story of Tristan and Isolde. By the late Middle Ages this Celtic narrative, which appears to have had its origins in Cornwall and Brittany, had been translated and adapted into several major European languages. Everywhere it went the story of Tristan and Isolde was immediately adapted to new locations and new settings. The questions of its origins and its original locations are at best matters of pedantic interest.
In these ways of storytelling, it is the story that gives places their meaning. That is why Homer leaps at us from signs on the New York turnpike, from exits marked Ithaca and Troy; that is why the Ayodhya of the Ramayana lends its name equally to a street in Banaras and a town in Thailand.
This style of fictional narrative is not extinct: far from it. It lives very vividly in the spirit that animates popular cinema in India and many other places. In a Hindi film, as in a kung fu movie, the details that constitute the setting are profoundly unimportant, incidental almost. In Hindi films, the setting of a single song can take us through a number of changes of costume, each in a different location. These films, I need hardly point out, command huge
22


audiences on several continents and may well be the most widely circulated cultural artefacts the world has ever known. When Indonesian streets and villages suddenly empty.at four in the afternoon, it is not because of Maxim Gorky or John Steinbeck: it is because of the timing of a daily broadcast of a Hindi film.
Such is the continued vitality of this style of narrative that it eventually succeeded in weaning my uncle from his bookcases. Towards the end of his life my book-loving uncle abandoned all of his old friends, Gorky and Sholokhov and Hamsun, and became a complete devotee of Bombay films. He would see dozens of Hindi films; sometimes we went together, on lazy afternoons. On the way home he would stop to buy fan magazines. Through much of his life he'd been a forbidding, distant man, an intellectual in the classic, Western sense; in his last years he was utterly transformed, warm, loving, thoughtful. His brothers and sisters scarcely recognized him.
Once, when we were watching a film together, he whispered in my ear that the star, then Bombay's reigning female deity, had recently contracted a severe infestation of lice. 'How do you I asked.' I read an interview with her hairdresser,' he said. Stardust.' This was the man who'd handed me a copy ofAnd Quiet Flows the Don when I was not quite twelve.
Answer the following questions on the above passage:
56.
The author began to enjoy reading

in his school in his grandfather's house in Calcutta because of his excitable relatives in the public library close to his grandfather's house

57.
What is the site of learning invoked in the passage?


Home
City
School
All ofthe above

58. Books are seen as a sign of
special occasions
marital alliances
cultured people
enacted dramas

23
59. The books that were allowed on the bookshelves were
Bengali novels anthropology and psychology books novels in English and translations from other European languages All of the above
60. Books on anthropology and psychology figured in along with the fiction in the
bookshelves because

A) these two subjects are the only ones that are highly valued in society these two subjects were read by the grandfather's generation rigorously other than these two disciplines, subjects such as sociology and history
were considered as non-fiction books on these two subjects were filtered into the consciousness ofthe time
61. The collection of books in the author's family bookshelves
symbolized the eclectic nature of Bengali cultural life
were all recommended by Nirad Chaudhri
presented a critique of social realism
were inspired by the Italian mafia

62. What is the attitude that made the author impatient at a time?
Love of reading
The stealing of books
Being bookish
Books as property, to be retained but hardly read

63.
What is the lesson that the author comes to learn over time?

That bookcases are to be preserved
Respecting the printed word
Pilfering books
That books had to be read by the discerning


64.
What were the kinds of books that the bookcases majorly contained?


Novels
Textbooks
Professional books
Academic treatises

65. Is the author implying that the modem classics of Western Literature were hardly read?
Yes
No
Not sure
All ofthe above

66.
What explains the assortment of books invoked in the essay?

The keenness ofthe reader/writer
Public opinion ofthe time
A sense ofuniversality
All ofthe above


67.
Whichkind ofbookshavebecomethesymbols ofacertainkind ofembarrassment?

Books of Dostoevsky
Books of Faulkner
Books of social realists
Books ofpolitical realists


68.
Which ofthefollowingauthorslivedthroughtheexperience ofimprisonment?


Knut Hamsun and Sholokhov
Mya Than Tint and Pramoedya
Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa
Maxim Gorky and Michael Ondaatje

69. Mya Than Tint
had a book collection like the author's uncle
was the editor of Granta
did not hear of Amitav Ghosh
won the Nobel Prize for literature

70. A national literary tradition requires
a sense ofparochialism
diplomacy
a respect for diversity
remembering names of literary figures


71.
What distinguishes a novel from a poem?

Verbal expression
A sense ofplace or location
An international vision
None of the above


72.
The international novel is


deeply embedded in the local culture
always set in at least three nations

,...." l

I,.,CUll.lUL lU.:>LUl.ll,.,CU

like a poem creating its own setting
73.
What distinguishes modem stories from their pre-modem counterparts?

A sense ofenchantment An experience of dislocation An imaginary place A sense at once of location and dislocation

74.
Pre-modem stories


circulated widely were expressive ofcommunicability across space are narratively translatable All ofthe above
75. The narrative form of pre-modem stories is today enacted in
Maxim Gorky and John Steinbeck
daily broadcasts
popular films
film magazines

B-2..:1
26
PART-D Current Affairs . (25 Marks)
76.
Who is the second Indian to be conferred with the Order of Australia?

Soli Sorabjee
Ram Jethmalani
Sourav Ganguly
Sachin Tendulkar


77.
In which of the Indian cities mentioned below was the Global Convention on Biological Diversity 2012 adopted?

New Delhi
Mumbai
Kolkata
Hyderabad


78.
Where was the Earth Summit on Sustainable Development held in the year 2012?

Copenhagen
Rio de Janeiro
New York
Kyoto


79.
Social Activist Aruna Roy is closely associated with

India against Corruption
Narmada Bachao Andolan
National Campaign for Right to Information
Anti-nuclear agitation


80.
Who wrote the book The God olSmal! Things?

Arundhati Roy
Amartya Sen
Vikram Seth
Amitav Ghosh


81.
Who is the first Chairman ofthe National Innovation Commission?


Arun Maira
K. Kasturirangan
Gopalakrishnan
Sam Pitroda




t3
27
82.
In what way does Aung San Su Kyi's visit to India in October 2012 assume special significance?

It is her second trip to India after her release from the house arrest in 2010 It is her first visit to India, where she received major part of her school and college education after almost a quarter century It is her official visit to improves economic ties between the Indian and Burmese Governments It is arranged primarily for conferring on her the Jawaharlal Nehru Prize for International Understanding 2012

83.
Project Lakshya novel initiative started by the Government of India is primarily targeted at


streamlining LPG supply bringing back the black money hoarded in foreign banks by the Indian citizens reducing money circulation during the elections providing scholarships for poor students enrolled in the institutions of higher
learning
84. Which two Indian Vice Presidents have the distinction of getting elected to their office twice in succession?
Dr. Babu Rajendra Prasad and Dr. Hamid Ansari
Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishna and Shri K.R. Narayanan
Dr. Hamid Ansari and Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Shri Shankar Dayal Sharma and Shri Bhairav Singh Shekawat

85. The recognition of the "third gender" by the Indian government gets reflected in the following Census Survey
1961
1971
2001
2011

86. Who among the following political leaders championed against corruption in India?
Subhas Ghising
Nitin Gadkari
N.D. Tiwari
Jayaprakash Narayan


87. The recent cartoon controversy in the framing oftextbooks is related to
Indian Council of School Education (ICSE)
National Council ofEducational Research and Training (NCERT)
Secondary School Certificate
Missionary Schools
88. The cyclone that hit Indian Coast in October 2012 was
Katrina
Neelam

............ rt

"arlUy
Tsunami

89.
The Parliament of India has approved the Foreign Direct Investment share in retail market to the tune of

11%
41%
51%
100%


90.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act provides employment to the workers in the rural areas for


365 days
200 days
100 days
145 days

91. The Adhar Card Programme ofthe Indian Government pertains to
elimination ofpovertyamongthetribes ofNorthEast
generating employment among rural youth
preparation ofjobsprofilesofITProfessionals
Unique Identification Number to all the citizens ofIndia

92. The Right to Education (free and compulsory) Act entitles schooling for children below 14 years
of SC/ST communities only
of minority communities only
ofbackward communities only
All the children

93.
The Sachar Committee gave its report on the status of

tenants in India
divorced women in India
backwardness of Muslims in India
disabled children


94.
Decentralization is facilitated by which Constitutional Amendment?

63rd
73rd
83rd.
93rd


95.
Which among the following territories was a bone of contention in the Indo-Chinese War of 1962?

Jammu and Kashmir
Arunachal Pradesh
Assam
West Bengal


96.
Which ofthe following states in India have reported higher farmer suicides?

Gujarat and Rajasthan
Tripura and Assam
Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra
J&K and Delhi


97.
A demand for separate state has been made in the following states


Maharashtra
Andhra Pradesh
West Bengal
All the above

98. Emigration refers to the
movement ofpeople from India to all countries ofthe world
movement ofpeople from North America to South America
movement of people from a native country to any other country
movement of people only within the country

30

99.
G.M. seeds means

Government managed seeds
Genetically manufactured seeds
Seeds released by G.M. Company
Genetically modified seeds


100.
Who won the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2012?


Ying Chen
Mo Yan
lung Chang
Li Yuneji