Reading Comprehension: CBSE English Class 12

Introductory Note: CBSE has revised its assessment pattern for Class 12 English by reducing the comprehension passages from 3 to 2. Instead of 2 passages of 12 marks and 10 marks each, now it will be one passage of 20 marks. The note making passage will continue without any substantial change. Since new sample question papers are not yet available easily, I’m presenting below one comprehension passage in the new pattern. The passage is extracted from Shashi Tharoor’s latest book: The Paradoxical Prime Minister [slightly edited].

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow.

1.      Secularism in India did not mean separation of religion from state. Instead, secularism in India means a state that is equally indulgent of all religious groups, and favours none. There is no established state religion; the adherent of every faith is a stakeholder in the Indian state. Nor does it mean secularity in the French sense. The French concept keeps religion out of governmental institutions like schools and government out of religious institutions in turn, whereas Indian secularism cheerfully refuses to forbid such religious interpenetration. Whereas it is impermissible to sport any visible sign of religious affiliation in a French government school or office (a Catholic may not wear a crucifix, a Muslim sport a hijab, or a Sikh don a turban), all these are permitted in the equivalent Indian institutions. Conversely, the Government of India embraces the practice of providing financial support to religious schools and the persistence of ‘personal law’ for different religious communities.

2.      Until fairly recently, an Indian’s sense of nationhood lay in the slogan, ‘unity in diversity’. In rejecting the case for Pakistan, Indian nationalism also rejected the very idea that religion should be a determinant of nationhood. We never fell into the insidious trap of agreeing that, since Partition had established a state for Muslims, what remained was a state for Hindus. To accept the idea of India you had to spurn the logic that had divided the country.

3.      In some ways, this kind of Indian secularism has ancient roots in our history. Admired monarchs from Ashoka, in the 3^rd century BCE, to Harsh, in the 6^th century BCE, gave their recognition and patronage to different religions. Ashoka’s Rock Edict XII forbade people from honouring their own sects at the expense of others, and condemning the beliefs of others. Citizenship and political status in his state were never linked to one’s religion. The coexistence of religions is evident from the fact that the Ellora Cave Temples, some Jain, some Hindu and some Buddhist, were carved next to each other between the 5^th and 6^th centuries. Even Muslim rulers later accommodated prominent Hindus in government and the military. The Mughal Emperor Akbar went so far as to create his own syncretic religion, Din-e-Ilahi, to meld the best features of Islam, Hinduism and the other faiths of which he knew into a new ‘national faith’. It did not outlast his reign, but the attempt was extraordinary. And Akbar’s contemporary, Ibrahim Adil Shah II of Bijapu, was a Sunni Muslim who saw no contradiction in also styling himself ‘son of Guru Ganapati and the pure Saraswati’ and wearing rudraksha beads.

4.      The concept of sarva dharma sambhava – accepting the equality of all religions – was propounded by great Hindu sages like Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and upheld by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian nationalist movement. While it was an accepted principle of independent India, sarva dharma sambhava has been increasingly rejected by some proponents of Hidutva who spurn the notion of religious universalism in favour of a more robust assertion of Hindu cultural identity and Hindus’ political rights. They are unembarrassed about rejecting ‘unity in diversity’; the farthest the Sangh Parivar is prepared to go is to accept ‘diversity in unity’, or variations of practice within an all-enveloping Hindu identity.

5.      Yet the lived reality of Indian syncretism is difficult to deny. Indians of all religious communities have long lived intertwined lives, and even religious practices were rarely exclusionary: thus Muslim musicians played and sang Hindu devotional songs, Hindus thronged Sufi shrines and worshipped Muslim saints there. Northern India celebrated ‘Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb’, a syncretic culture that melded the cultural practices of both Hinduism and Islam.  Muslim artisans create the masks for the major Hindu festival of Dussehra in the holy city of Varanasi; the Ram Leela could not be performed without their work. Muslim Patachitra painters sing and paint pats (scrolls) about Hindu divinities. And among the most famous exponents of Hindu devotional music are the Muslim Dagar brothers – not to mention Baul singers, a legacy of the Bhakti tradition, who sing Sufi-inspired folk songs in praise of a universal God. Islam in rural India is more Indian than Islamic, in the sense that the faith as practiced by the ordinary Muslim villagers reflects the considerable degree of cultural assimilation that has occurred between Hindus and Muslims in their daily lives.

6.      The idea of India is of one land embracing many. It is the idea that a nation may endure differences of caste, creed, colour, culture, cuisine, conviction, costume and custom, and still rally around a consensus. That consensus is around the simple principle that in a diverse democracy you don’t really need to agree – except on the ground rules of how you will disagree. The reason India has survived all the stresses and strains that have beset it for over seventy years, and that led so many to predict its imminent disintegration, is that it maintained consensus on how to manage without consensus.

1.1       Choose the most appropriate option: (1x5)

a) Secularism in India implies:

                                i.            respect for all religions

                              ii.            no established state religion

                            iii.            every Indian irrespective of religion is a stakeholder in the state

                             iv.            all of the above

b) Which of the following statements is TRUE?

                                i.            Akbar’s Din-e-Ilahi was an Islamic sect.

                              ii.            Ibrahim Adil Shah II demolished Hindu temples.

                            iii.            Christians are not allowed to wear a crucifix in a French government school.

                             iv.            Hindutva abides by the sarva dharma smabhava concept.

c) Sufi shrines:

                                i.            venerate Msulim saints only.

                              ii.            are irreverent of Hindu deities.

                            iii.            are examples of syncretism.

                             iv.            None of the above.

d) What helped India survive after Independence is:

                                i.            Secularism

                              ii.            The principle of ‘agree to disagree’

                            iii.            Democracy

                             iv.            The idea of unity in diversity

e) The consensus sought by the author is:

                                i.            Agree to disagree

                              ii.            Disagree to agree

                            iii.            Unity in diversity

                             iv.            A single national religion

1.2       Answer in brief: (1x6)

a)      How did India choose to be different from Pakistan at the time of Independence?

b)      How is secularism visible in the Ellora Cave Temples?

c)      What does the author mean by ‘diversity in unity’?

d)      How did the Baul singers exemplify secularism?

e)      Why may we say that Islam in rural India is more Indian than Islamic?

f)       Why is consensus not necessary in a diverse democracy?

1.3       Answer in 30-40 words each: (2x3)

a)      How does the French concept of secularity differ from Indian secularism? (any 2 factors)

b)      Show that Emperor Akbar was secular.

c)      Mention any 2 examples of how religious syncretism is practised in India.

1.4       Find words in the passage that mean: (1x3)

a)      Tolerant  [para 1]

b)      Treacherous [para 2]

c)      Tough [para 4]