PYQ Vault · Paper 1 · Indian Political Thought
Examine Gandhi’s critique of ‘Modernisation’
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Flow snapshot — how the answer moves
Intro routes
rR! not West-as-place but West-as-type → Hind Swaraj (1909) → ‘Satanic’ R2 progress mismeasured as multiplying wants, not mastering them → restraint = true civilisation
Body flow
mime artha/kama over dharma, comfort over moral welfare, “how much to forego” → Wellock (greed, materialism, violence, loss of spirituality) → machinery: “craze for machinery, not machinery as such… supreme consideration is man” → industrialism’s costs (unemployment, alienated labour, centralisation, ruined crafts) → Kumarappa (“no industrialization without predation’) → power gathers in state + capital → citizens as passive subjects → Swaraj = decentralisation + moral autonomy
Counter-view
Tagore: medieval, economically limiting, isolating → Gandhi’s reply: all cultures free about the house, but no cultural slavery
Conclusion routes
Conclusion R1 not backwardness but moral reconstruction → Swaraj, routes Swadeshi, Sarvodaya, trusteeship R2 critique still alive in sustainability / simple-living debates
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
