Class 8 History Chapter 1 Question Answers - Our Pasts III (Part - I)

Q1: What do you understand by history?
Ans: History is certainly about changes that occur over time. It is about finding out how things were in the past and how things have changed.

Q2: What evil practices, according to James Mill, dominated the Indian social life before the British came to India?
Ans: Religious intolerance, caste taboos and superstitious practices dominated social life.

Q3: What official records do not tell?
Ans: Official records do not always help us understand what other people in the country felt, and what lay behind their actions.

Q4: Why do many historians refer to modern period as colonial?
Ans: Under British rule people did not have equality, freedom or liberty. Nor was the period one of economic growth and progress. Many historians therefore refer to this period as ‘colonial’.

Q5: Mention one important source used by historians in writing about the last 250 years of Indian history.
Ans: One important source is the official records of the British administration. Other sources include diaries of people, accounts of pilgrims and travellers, autobiographies of important personalities, and popular booklets that were sold in the local bazaars.

Q6: Why did the British preserve official documents?
Ans: The British believed that the act of writing was important. Every instruction, plan, policy decision, agreement, investigation had to be clearly written up. Once this was done, things could be properly studied and debated. This conviction produced an administrative culture of memos, notices and reports.

Q7: Why do we try and divide history into different periods?
Ans: We do so in an attempt to capture the characteristics of a time, its central features as they appear to us. So the terms through which we periodise – that is, demarcate the difference between periods – become important. They reflect our ideas about the past. They show how we see the significance of the change from one period to the next.

Q8: With what did the British historians associate the modern period?
Ans: The British modern period was associated with the growth of all the forces of modernity – science, reason, democracy, liberty and equality.

Q9: What was an important aspect of the histories written by the British historians in India?
Ans: In the histories written by British historians in India, the rule of each Governor- General was important.

Q10: Mention the events for which specific dates can be determined.
Ans: The year a king was crowned, the year he married, the year he had a child, the year he fought a particular war, the year he died, and the year the next ruler succeeded to the throne.

Q11: Who are calligraphists? How were they important in the early nineteenth century?
Ans: Calligraphists are those who are specialized in the art of beautiful handwriting. In the early years of the nineteenth century documents were carefully copied out and beautifully written by calligraphists.

Q12: What do official records not tell? How do we come to know about them?
Ans: Official records do not always help us understand what other people in the country felt, and what lay behind their actions. For that we have diaries of people, accounts of pilgrims and travellers, autobiographies of important personalities, and popular booklets that were sold in the local bazaars.

Q13: By what criteria do we choose a set of dates as important?
Ans: The dates we select, the dates around which we compose our story of the past, are not important on their own. They become vital because we focus on a particular set of events as important. If our focus of study changes, if we begin to look at new issues, a new set of dates will appear significant.

Q14: How did the British conquer India and establish their rule?
Ans: British came to conquer the country and establish their rule, subjugating local nawabs and rajas. For this, they established control over the economy and society, collected revenue to meet all their expenses, bought the goods they wanted at low prices, produced crops they needed for export. They also brought changes about in values and tastes, customs and practices.