Chapter 2: Nationalism in India Application Questions | history Class 10 CBSE

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Chapter 2: Nationalism in India Application Questions | history Class 10 CBSE | ByteNotes.in

Application Question

Medium difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Medium

Question 1

Applied Concept

A historian studying 1919 India notices that the Rowlatt Act triggered more unified opposition than most previous colonial policies. With reference to the provisions of the Act and Gandhi's response, explain what made it such an effective rallying point for the national movement.

The Rowlatt Act allowed detention of political prisoners without trial for two years and gave the government sweeping powers to repress political activity, threatening the fundamental civil liberties of all educated Indians regardless of class or region, making opposition broad-based.
Gandhi organised a nationwide satyagraha with a hartal on 6 April 1919; rallies were held in cities, workers struck in railway workshops, and shops closed — a response that connected urban professionals, workers, and traders in a common act of resistance.
The brutal response — firing on a peaceful procession on 10 April, the Jallianwalla Bagh massacre on 13 April, crawling orders and village bombings — transformed resentment into outrage across India, turning the Rowlatt Act into a symbol of colonial tyranny and accelerating the radicalisation of nationalist opinion.

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Application Question

Medium difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Medium

Question 2

Applied Concept

Imagine you are a peasant in Awadh in 1921. Your village panchayat has organised a nai-dhobi bandh to support the Non-Cooperation Movement. What are the specific grievances that have brought your community to this point, and how does the idea of swaraj resonate with your everyday life?

As an Awadh peasant, your community faces exorbitantly high rents and numerous cesses demanded by talukdars and landlords; you are also forced to do begar — unpaid labour on landlords' farms — and have no security of tenure, being regularly evicted to prevent you from acquiring rights over the land you farm.
The nai-dhobi bandh — organised by panchayats to deprive landlords of barbers and washermen — is a direct social boycott to make landlords feel the pressure of mass solidarity; it represents a community asserting its collective power against those who have oppressed it for generations.
For you, swaraj means abolition of begar, reduction of revenue demands, and an end to the landlord's unchecked power over tenants — not an abstract political concept but the daily freedom to farm your land without fear of eviction or exploitation. Jawaharlal Nehru and Baba Ramchandra linking the Oudh Kisan Sabha to the wider national movement gives your local grievance a national voice.

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Application Question

Medium difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Medium

Question 3

Applied Concept

With reference to the Civil Disobedience Movement, explain why Gandhi's march to Dandi was more than just a protest against the salt tax. What made it an effective symbol of resistance against colonialism?

Salt was consumed by every Indian regardless of class — rich and poor alike — making the salt tax a universal grievance that cut across regional, caste, and economic divisions; by targeting it, Gandhi found a symbol that could unite the entire nation rather than just one section.
The 240-mile march from Sabarmati to Dandi, completed over 24 days with 78 volunteers, was a carefully staged public spectacle; thousands gathered at every stop, and the international press covered it extensively, turning a local act of law-breaking into a global demonstration of the injustice of colonial rule.
By manufacturing salt at Dandi on 6 April 1930, Gandhi committed a deliberate, public breach of a colonial law — asserting that Indians would no longer passively accept unjust authority. This act of defiance unleashed a nationwide chain reaction: thousands broke the salt law, peasants refused revenue, village officials resigned, and forest communities violated forest laws, demonstrating that colonial law could be mass-disobeyed.

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Application Question

Medium difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Medium

Question 4

Applied Concept

You are a journalist covering the arrival of the Simon Commission in India in 1928. Write a brief analysis of why the commission was unanimously opposed by all political parties, including both the Congress and the Muslim League.

The Simon Commission was set up by the British Tory government in 1927 to examine India's constitutional system and suggest changes, but it did not include a single Indian member — all seven members were British — which Indians across the political spectrum regarded as a fundamental insult to Indian political maturity and a denial of their right to shape their own governance.
The slogan 'Go back Simon' resonated because even parties with different agendas on communal representation — the Congress advocating joint electorates and the Muslim League preferring separate ones — were united in their rejection of being excluded from a commission that would decide their political future.
The unanimous opposition demonstrated that despite deep divisions on communal questions, Indians of all parties shared a basic demand for self-determination; the commission's all-British composition made it a concrete symbol of colonial condescension that cut through political differences and temporarily united rival groups.

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Application Question

Medium difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Medium

Question 5

Applied Concept

With reference to the Non-Cooperation Movement, explain how plantation workers in Assam interpreted the movement in a way that was both connected to and different from the Congress programme.

Plantation workers in Assam were legally confined to tea gardens under the Inland Emigration Act of 1859, which prohibited them from leaving without employer permission; their deep desire to return to their villages and their hope of receiving land gave the Non-Cooperation Movement an intensely personal meaning.
When they heard of the movement, thousands defied authorities, abandoned the plantations, and set off for home, believing that Gandhi Raj was imminent and would distribute land — a vision very different from the Congress's political goal of constitutional independence.
Although their action was not part of the Congress programme, they emotionally identified with the national movement by invoking Gandhi's name and linking their escape from indentured conditions to the broader struggle for swaraj — demonstrating that nationalism spread through emotional resonance even when people's immediate goals diverged sharply from the Congress agenda.

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Application Question

Medium difficulty • Concept in a practical situation

Medium

Question 6

Applied Concept

Imagine you are a woman from a high-caste family in an Indian city who joins the Civil Disobedience Movement. Describe what your participation involved and reflect on whether the movement changed your social and political status.

Your participation would involve coming out of your home for the first time to join protest marches, picketing foreign cloth and liquor shops alongside other women, manufacturing salt in public, listening to Gandhi's speeches, and possibly going to jail — all activities that placed you in a public, political role that women of your class had never previously occupied.
Gandhi framed your participation in terms of sacred national duty — service to the motherland — which gave it a moral legitimacy acceptable within conservative social norms; this made it possible for families to allow women to participate without it being seen as transgressive.
However, despite the scale and courage of women's participation, Gandhi's own view was that women's primary duty was to be good mothers and wives, and the Congress was reluctant to give women positions of authority within the organisation — restricting itself to wanting women's symbolic presence; your participation thus opened new public space without fundamentally restructuring women's political authority.

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Chapter 2: Nationalism in India | Application Questions

A historian studying 1919 India notices that the Rowlatt Act triggered more unified opposition than most previous colonial policies. With reference to the provisions of the Act and Gandhi's response, explain what made it such an effective rallying point for the national movement.

Imagine you are a peasant in Awadh in 1921. Your village panchayat has organised a nai-dhobi bandh to support the Non-Cooperation Movement. What are the specific grievances that have brought your community to this point, and how does the idea of swaraj resonate with your everyday life?

With reference to the Civil Disobedience Movement, explain why Gandhi's march to Dandi was more than just a protest against the salt tax. What made it an effective symbol of resistance against colonialism?

You are a journalist covering the arrival of the Simon Commission in India in 1928. Write a brief analysis of why the commission was unanimously opposed by all political parties, including both the Congress and the Muslim League.

With reference to the Non-Cooperation Movement, explain how plantation workers in Assam interpreted the movement in a way that was both connected to and different from the Congress programme.

Imagine you are a woman from a high-caste family in an Indian city who joins the Civil Disobedience Movement. Describe what your participation involved and reflect on whether the movement changed your social and political status.

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