PYQ Vault · Paper 1 · Caste, Religion & Ethnicity
Ethnicity is the underlying cause which poses a great challenge in the resolution of the problems in the North- East region of India. Comment.
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
R1 NE = India’s most ethnically diverse region → Weber: ethnicity asa subjective belief in common descent → the claim is partly right, but ethnicity is the language of conflict, not its root R2 the statement overstates ethnicity as “the underlying cause” → ethnic assertion is visible on the surface, deprivation + neglect lie beneath
Body flow
four forms: autonomy / secession / insurgency / identity riots → NE cases: Nagaland (sovereignty, Greater Nagalim), Assam (Bodo, migrant), Manipur (Meitei-Kuki-Naga) → overlapping, zero-sum claims → resolution hard → but ethnicity rarely erupts alone → instrumentalist view: elites activate identity → Muni: creation of vested political interests → deeper cause = deprivation + neglect → Gurr: relative deprivation (‘ought vs ‘is, “disposes men to violence”); NE insurgencies = neglect + weak development → federation-building (Baruah): central neglect + lost autonomy, not ethnicity → shift from nation-state building to genuine federation-building → India’s record: managed better than many post-colonial states (Sixth Schedule, Article 371, statehood, accords) → Kohli: accommodation best in a multicultural democracy
Counter-view
primordial reading (ethnicity as given root; overlapping identities make conflict intractable) → instrumentalist + relative-deprivation reading (ethnicity as a mobilised symptom of neglect and denied autonomy)
Conclusion routes
Rr! ethnicity is a real challenge, but a demand for recognition, not a fixed cause → remedy: more democracy, not less R2 conflict deepens only when accommodation is delayed and coercion replaces it → genuine federation-building achieves what coercion cannot
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
