Test: Class 9 History NCERT Based- 2 - UPSC MCQ

• Several different communities live in Bastar such as Maria and Muria Gonds, Dhurwas, Batras and Halbas.

• They speak different languages but share common customs and beliefs. When the colonial government proposed to reserve two-thirds of the forest in 1905 and stop shifting cultivation, hunting and collection of forest produce, the people of Bastar were very worried.

In 1871, the colonial government in India passed the Criminal Tribes Act. Under this many communities were classified as Criminal Tribes. Statement 1 is correct.
Once this Act came into force, many communities were classified as Criminal Tribes and were put into concentration camps. Statement 2 is incorrect as the act also expected these communities to live only in notified village settlements. 

• Under colonial rule, the life of pastoralists changed dramatically. First, the colonial state wanted to transform all grazing lands into cultivated farms.

• Land revenue was one of the main sources of its finance. By expanding cultivation it could increase its revenue collection. Then From the mid-nineteenth century, Waste Land Rules were enacted in various parts of the country.

• By these Rules, uncultivated lands were taken over and given to select individuals. These individuals were granted various concessions and encouraged to settle these lands.

• Some of them were made headmen of villages in the newly cleared areas. In most areas, the lands taken over were grazing tracts used regularly by pastoralists. So the expansion of cultivation inevitably meant the decline of pastures and a problem for pastoralists.

• By the mid-nineteenth century, various Forest Acts were also being enacted in different provinces.

• Through these Acts, some forests which produced commercially valuable timber like Deodar or Sal were declared ‘Reserved’.

• No pastoralist was allowed access to these forests. Other forests were classified as ‘Protected’. In these, some customary grazing rights of pastoralists were granted but their movements were severely restricted.

• Unwilling cultivators were made to produce opium through a system of advances. In the rural areas of Bengal and Bihar, there were large numbers of poor peasants. They never had enough to survive.

• It was difficult for them to pay rent to the landlord or to buy food and clothing. From the 1780s, such peasants found their village headmen (Mahato) giving them money advances to produce opium.

• Both are correct. For a variety of reasons, cultivators were unwilling to turn their fields over to poppy. First, the crop had to be grown on the best land, on fields that lay near villages and were well manured.

• On this land peasants usually produced pulses. If they planted opium on this land, then pulses could not be grown there. The price the government paid to the cultivators for the opium they produced was very low. It was unprofitable for cultivators to grow opium at that price.

• The history of opium production in India was linked up with the story of British trade with China. In the late eighteenth century, the English East India Company was buying tea and silk from China for sale in England.

• England at this time produced nothing that could be easily sold in China. They could buy tea only by paying in silver coins or bullion.

• In such a situation to finance the tea trade and balance their trade, They searched for a commodity they could sell in China, something they could persuade the Chinese to buy.

• Opium was such a commodity. When the British conquered Bengal, they made a determined effort to produce opium in the lands under their control.

• To expand its revenue income, the colonial government looked for every possible source of taxation.

• So the tax was imposed on land, on canal water, on salt, on trade goods, and even on animals.

• Pastoralists had to pay tax on every animal they grazed on the pastures. In most pastoral tracts of India, grazing tax was introduced in the mid-nineteenth century. By the 1880s the government began collecting taxes directly from the pastoralists.