St. Joseph’s College of Commerce(Autonomous)
End Semester Examination – Sept/Oct. 2015
B.COM(T.T.)- I Semester
C2 15 1GE:GENERAL ENGLISH
Duration: 3 Hours Max. Marks: 100
Section -A
- Write short notes on the following in about 100 words. (4×5= 20)
- The setting of Moulmein in Shooting an Elephant .
- Paul Theroux’s two ambitions on his way to Ceylon.
- Herodotus and Megesthenes’s portrayal of India
- Fei Xiaotong, Mao Zedong and Communism
- Answer the following questions in about 250 words. (5×10 =50)
- India in Mind by Pankaj Mishra portrays India from the perspective of historians, travelers and writers. Discuss any one of the writer’s portrayal of India which you feel is real and true. You can use contemporary incidents to elaborate your answer.
- Imagine yourself to be a travel writer, and rewrite any one part of the journey that you would like to change from the narration of Paul Theroux’s travelogue The Great Railway Bazaar?
- “As I stood with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.” What is the irony that Orwell poses being a representative of the Colonial power?
- The text The Legacy of the Looming Tower, talks about how a proposed Islamic centre becomes a testing ground for religious tolerance and freedom. Keeping the text as a backdrop write about any other event or incident that has posed a challenge to inter-faith cooperation and religious integration in a society.
- “Supporters say the Cordoba House project will be a venue for reconciliation between Islam and the West…….”. What is the Project that has been highlighted in the text by Bashrat Peer in The legacy of the Looming Tower? Discuss your stance on the project? Suggest an alternative way that could have promoted interfaith relations.
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Section – B
Read the passage and answer the following questions.
India & China
Amartya Sen
‘Is there anyone in any part of India who does not admire China?’ asked Yi Jing in the seventh century, on returning from India to China. Yi Jing may have fallen a little for exaggerated rhetoric, but there was certainly much intellectual interest about China in India at that time, as there was about India in China. Yi Jing had just spent ten years at the institute of higher learning, Nalanda, which attracted many scholars from outside India, in addition to domestic students.
Yi Jing, who studied medicine in Nalanda, in addition to Buddhist philosophy and practice, was one of many Chinese scholars who visited India in the first millennium to study Buddhism and other subjects (and also to collect Sanskrit documents), and many of them spent a decade or more in India. In the other direction, hundreds of Indian scholars went to China and worked there between the first century and the eleventh. They were engaged in a variety of work, which included translating Sanskrit documents into Chinese (mostly Buddhist writings) , but also other activities, such as the pursuit of mathematics and science. Several Indian mathematician and astronomers held high position in China’s scientific establishment, and an Indian scientist called Gautama Siddartha even became the president of the official Board of Astronomy in China in the eighth century.
Intellectual links between China and India, stretching over much of the first Millennium and beyond, were important in the history of the two countries. And yet they are hardly remembered today. What little notice they do get tends to come from those interested in religious history, particularly Buddhism. But religion is only one part of a much bigger story of Sino –Indian connections over the first millennium, and there is a need for a broader understanding of the reach of these relations. This is important for a fuller appreciation not only of the history of a third of the world’s population, but also for the continuing relevance of these connections, linked as they are with contemporary political and social concerns.
The extensive contacts that were generated between India and China through Buddhist connections were not confined to the subject matter of Buddhism only. As it happens, Buddhism was not only a vehicle of Sino- Indian relations, which began almost certainly with trade. Indian traders were engaged in importing goods from China for re- export to Central Asia more than two thousand years ago. Indian intermediation in trade between China and West continued over the centuries, though the commodity pattern went on changing. Silk was important initially, but by the eleventh century … porcelain had already replaced silk as the leading Chinese commodity transshipped through India.
Answer all the questions in about three paragraphs each. Do not copy sentences or paragraphs form the passage. (3×10=30)
- Discuss the reasons highlighted in the above passage that helped to create a strong link between India and China? Elaborate on the key ideas that different nations and civilizations can incorporate to transcend religious and ethnic barrier in the contemporary scenario.
- Compare and contrast the approach of Ramchandra Guha in Nehruvian in China and Amartya Sen in the above passage. Discuss the role of Nehruvian ideology in the context of China from the text A Nehruvian in China.
- Compare the present situation of minorities in India and China using references from the text A Nehruvian in China as well as from your personal readings. Based on your understanding of the above Passage and the text A Nehruvian in China, discuss the challenges that a society faces to maintain the ethnic, linguistic and religious diversity.
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