IAS Mains History Papers 1985

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IAS Mains History 1985

Paper I

Section A

  1. Mark any fifteen of the following places on the map supplied to you and give brief descriptive notes on them:
    1. Ajanta
    2. Atranjikhera
    3. Ayodhya
    4. Bharhut
    5. Dhauli
    6. Ganjam
    7. Gaya
    8. Gwalior
    9. Harappa
    10. Junagadh
    11. Kalibangan
    12. Kapilavastu
    13. Kanyakubja
    14. Khajuraho
    15. Lothal
    16. Manyakheta
    17. Mathura
    18. Multan
    19. Nagarjunikonda
    20. Prayaga
    21. Rameshwaram
    22. Sakala
    23. Sravana Belgola
    24. Surparaka
    25. Tanjore
    26. Taxila
    27. Ujjain
    28. Vaisali
    29. Vengi
    30. Vikramsila
  2. Discuss the geographical area known to the Rigvedic people. Were they familiar with the sea?
  3. ‘The Gupta period stands at the centre of Indian history.’ Discuss the development of arts and literature in that Gupta period in the light of this statement.
  4. Trace briefly the history of the struggle between the Chalukyas and the Pailavas. Analyse its causes and bring out its importance.

Section B

  1. Write short answers of not more than 200 words on any three of the following:
    1. What were the salient features of the bureaucratic machinery of the Cholas?
    2. Examine the responsibility of Firoz Tughluq for the fall of his dynasty
    3. Where, when and how did Urdu originate?
    4. Was Shivaji a nationalist leader?
  2. What were the problems Balban faced? How far did he succeed in solving them? Was he a trendsetter in his theory of kingship?
  3. Discuss briefly the causes that contributed to the religious movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Analyse their approach to the realities of contemporary life.
  4. Analyse the religious policy of the Mughal emperors from Akbar to Aurangzeb. How did it affect the stability of the Mughal empire?

Paper II

Section A

  1. Comment an any three of the following statements in about 200 words each:
    1. Thus ended the famous battle of Buxar, on which depended the fate of India and which was as gallantly disputed as was important in its results.
    2. Our system acts very much like a sponge, drawing. Up all the good things from the banks of the Ganges, and squeezing them down on the banks of the Thames.
    3. On the whole, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the so-called First National War of Independence. Was neither First, nor National, nor a war of Independence.
    4. These religion-reform movements were national in content but religious in form. It was in the later stages of our national existence, that nationalism found exclusively or predominantly secular forms.
  2. What changes did the British attitude undergo towards the Princely states after 1858? Was the Government of India Act of 1858 intended to introduce direct relations between the Princes and the Crown?
  3. Identify the main strands in the Civil Disobedience Movement with particular reference to the changing role of ‘business pressures’ in the country
  4. Show how British rule led to the spread of land-lordism in certain parts of India, and how the, peasant was progressively impoverished under this rule.

Section B

  1. Comment on any three of the following statements in about 200 words each:
    1. What mattered in 1789 and what made men revolutionary almost in spite of themselveswas the whole revolutionary situation; and in producing that situation the work of the philosophers played no very important role.
    2. They have stopped me from making Italy by diplomacy from the North, 1 will make it by revolution from the South.
    3. Mohammad Mi combined ambition with perspicacity to a greater degree than any other Oriental ruler of the nineteenth century.
    4. The turn of the tide against the Kuomintang, consequently, was due as much to its weakness as to consequently, was due as much to its weakness as
  2. Trace the growth of capitalism in Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Why was France, as compared to Britain, late in developing the capitalist spirit and the institutional framework of capitalism?
  3. Analyse the causes of the Russian Revolutions of 1917. Why was the second Revolution significant in more that one way?
  4. Critically examine the culture system in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) during the nineteenth century. Why was it dismantled?