Passage 1
Read the following passage and answer the questions 1–5.
Each day at Shantiniketan, the school starts with Saraswati Vandana. When painting competitions are held in the school, images of Hindu gods and goddesses are the most common. Sanskrit is the favourite subject of many students. Nothing is new about it except that the 1200 odd students studying in the Hindu-run school are Muslims. In 1983, when Ranchodbhai Kiri started Shantiniketan in the all-Muslim Juhapura area of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, only 20% of the students were Muslims, but when riots involving the Muslims of Juhapura and the Hindus of nearby Jivraj Park, Vejalpur, affected the locality, Hindus started migrating. Today, all the students are Muslims and the school is an unparalleled example of harmony. In 2002, when a section of inflamed Muslims wanted the school closed, the parents of the students stood like a wall behind it. Shantiniketan’s principal said, ‘We never thought of moving the school out of the area because of the love and affection of the local Muslims. Indeed, they value the high standard of education which we have set’. Such is the reputation of the school that some of the local Muslim strongmen accused of involvement in communal riots are willing to protect the school during riots. The parents of Shantiniketan’s students believe that it is the best school when it comes to quality of teaching. A large number of students have gone for both graduation and post-graduation studies. Significantly, the only Muslim teacher in the 40-member teaching staff named Husena Mansuri teaches Sanskrit. In fact, she is so happy with the school that she recently declined the Principalship of another Muslim-run school. Some of the students’ entries in a recent inter-school painting competition were truly moving. One drew a picture of Bharat Mata with a mosque and temple, while another portrayed a boy tying rakhi to his sister. Truly, Shantiniketan is a beacon of hope that despite the provocations from both communities, Hindus and Muslims, can live side by side with mutual respect.
Passage 2
Read the following passage and answer the questions 6–10.
Some religious leaders have taught that man is made up of a body and a soul, but they have been silent about intellect. Their followers try to feed the body to earth and save the soul from perdition after death—but they neglected the claims of the mind. Bread for the body and virtue for the soul, these are regarded as indispensable requisites of human welfare. Nothing is said about knowledge and education. Thus, Jesus Christ spoke of feeding the hungry, healing the sick and converting the sinners, but he never taught the duty of teaching an ignorant and increasing scientific knowledge. He himself was not a well-educated man and intellectual pursuits were beyond his horizon. Gautama Buddha also laid stress on morality, meditation and asceticism, but he did not attach great importance to history, science, art or literature. St. Ambrose deprecated scientific studies and wrote, ‘To discuss the nature and position of the earth does not help us in our hope for life to come’. St. Basil said very frankly and foolishly, ‘It is not a matter of interest to us whether the earth is a sphere, a cylinder or a disc’. Thomas Carlyle also followed the Christian tradition and declared that he honoured only two kinds of men and no third, i.e., the manual labourer and the religious teacher. He forgot the scientist, the scholar and the artist. The cynics of Greece despised education at last.
Passage 3 [December 2000]
Read the following passage and answer the questions 11–15.
The previous decade has reversed the presumptions about development and more than anything else, it has made it difficult to decide what is in store during the next decade. However, there are some things about which one can make claims with some confidence.
Firstly, education, health and productive employment are the decisive factors for development and impartiality. We believe that all these are the results of rapid economic development and to achieve these ends, development only can generate resources. In the present form, it will be best to view it as a better reason than as a result of development. In fact, in every case of successful development, the evaluation of previous reforms in education, technical skills, health, existence and productive tasks are included.
Secondly, technical ability is a vital resource and explains the high ratio of development in production and trade as compared to ratios of development in more traditional factors, such as natural resources or capital formation. There is no requisite capability in research. In fact, industrial momentum in a factory or farm is more important than the presence of a research organization.
Thirdly, essentially required environment also cannot be ignored for a long time period, which is next only to the issue of disarmament in the list of international issues. At the national level, there has been a definite rise in ignorance towards the environment due to development.
In the context of India, at least two immediate factors increase the ratio mentioned above. The first one of these is the rise in population level. By giving momentum to expansion of population and the workforce, human resource development has achieved synergistic importance. An increase in population is also a factor but is not the most important one, which delineated environmental decay in rural and urban areas. Second, as a large country, we cannot make an independent place for ourselves in the global system without developing appropriate ability for the development of our self-respect. In order to achieve this objective, the achievement of technical skills is a decisive step.
So far, we have taken human resource development, technical and environmental issues as supporting factors of the main part of the plan. Along with the expansion of quality of basic infrastructure and targets of production (tonnes of steel and kilowatt hours of electricity), other targets of capacity (kilometres) and other targets (number of schools and students, number of electrified villages), known techniques, full use of natural resources and maximum possible use of available financial resources have been emphasized upon.
Passage 4 [June 2001]
Read the following passage and answer the questions 16–20.
The great Acharyas have said that everything discovered has a great goal; surrender yourself to that goal and act towards it by drawing your inspiration from that goal whereby you will get a new column of energy. Do not allow this energy to be dissipated in the futile memory of past regrets or failures, or excitement of the present and bring that entire energy focused into activity, i.e., the highest creative action in the world outside, whereby the individual who is till now considered the most inefficient finds his way to the highest achievement and success.
This can be said very easily in a second. In order to train our mind to this attitude, considerable training is needed because we have already trained our mind wrongly to such an extent that we have become perfect in imperfections. Not knowing the art of action, we have mastered artists in doing wrong things and the totality of activity will bring the country to a wrong end indeed.
If each one is given a car to achieve an ideal socialistic pattern and nobody knows driving, but starts driving, what would be the condition on road? Everybody has equal rights on the public road. Then, each car will necessarily dash against the other and there is bound to be a jumble.
There seems to be a very apt pattern of life that we are heading to. Every one of us is a vehicle. We know how to go forward. The point intellect is very powerful and everybody is driving but nobody knows how to control the mental energy and direct it properly or guide it to the proper destination.
Passage 5
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions 21–25.
The phrase ‘What is it like?’ stands for a fundamental thought process. How does one go about observing and reporting on things and events that occupy the segments of earth space? Of all the infinite varieties of phenomena on the face of the earth, how does one decide what phenomena to observe? There is no such thing as a complete description of the earth or any part of it, for every microscopic point on the earth’s surface differs from every other such point. Experience shows that the things observed are already familiar because they are like phenomena that occur at home or because they resemble the abstract images and models developed in the human mind.
How are abstract images formed? Humans alone, among all other animals on the earth, possess language and their words symbolize not only specific things but also mental images of classes of things. People can remember what they have seen or experienced because they attach a word symbol to them.
During the long record of our efforts to gain more and more knowledge about the face of the earth as the human habitat, there has been a continuing interplay between things and events. The direct observation through the senses is described as a percept and the mental image is described as a concept. Percepts are what some people describe as reality, in contrast to mental images, which are theoretical, implying that they are not real.
The relation of percept to concept is not as simple as the definition implies. It is now quite clear that people of different cultures or even individuals in the same culture develop different mental images of reality and what they perceive is a reflection of these preconceptions. The direct observation of things and events on the face of the earth is so clearly a function of the mental images of the mind of the observer that the whole idea of reality must be reconsidered.
Concepts determine what the observer perceives, yet concepts are derived from the generalizations of previous percepts. What happens is that the educated observer is taught to accept a set of concepts and then sharpens or changes these concepts during a professional career. In any one field of scholarship, professional opinion at one time determines what concepts and procedures are acceptable and these form a kind of model of scholarly behaviour.
Passage 6
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions 26–30.
It should be remembered that the Nationalist Movement in India, like all nationalist movements was essentially a bourgeois movement. It represented the natural historical stage of development and to consider it or to criticise it, as a Working Class Movement is wrong. Gandhi represented that movement and the Indian masses in relation to that movement to a supreme degree and he became the voice of Indian people to that extent. The main contribution of Gandhi to India and the Indian masses has been through the powerful movements that he launched through the National Congress. Through nation-wide action, he sought to mould the millions and largely succeeded in doing so. He changed them from a demoralized, timid and hopeless mass, bullied and crushed by every dominant interest and incapable of resistance into a people with self-respect and self-reliance, resisting tyranny, and capable of united action and sacrifice for a larger cause. Gandhi made people think of political and economic issues and every village and every bazaar hummed with argument and debate on the new ideas and hopes that filled the people.
That was an amazing psychological change. The time was ripe for it, of course, and circumstances and world conditions worked for this change. However, a great leader was necessary to take the advantage of those circumstances and conditions. Gandhi was that leader and he released many bonds that imprisoned and disabled our minds and none of us who experienced it can ever forget that great feeling of release and exhilaration that came over the Indian people.
Gandhi has played a revolutionary role of greatest importance in India because he knew how to make the most of the objective conditions and could reach the heart of the masses, whereas groups with a more advanced ideology functioned largely in air because they did not fit in with those conditions and could, therefore, not evoke any substantial response from the masses.
It is perfectly true that Gandhi, functioning in nationalist plane, did not think in terms of the conflict of classes, trying to compose their differences. However, the actions he indulged in and taught the people have inevitably raised mass consciousness tremendously and made social issues vital. Gandhi and the Congress must be judged by the policies they pursued and the action they indulged in. But behind this, personality counts and colours those policies and activities. In case of very exceptional people like Gandhi, the question of personality becomes especially important in order to understand and appraise him. To us, he represented the spirit and honour of India, the yearning of her sorrowing millions to be rid of their innumerable burdens and an insult to him by the British Government or others was an insult to India and her people.
Passage 7
Read the following passage and answer the questions 31–35.
Modern biotechnology, especially, the creation of genetically modified (GM) crops is often presented as a magical solution or universal panacea for the problems of poverty, inadequate nutrition and even environmental degradation across the world. Conversely, there are people who present the picture of tech-generated monsters and major human health hazards being created by science. Many of the technological changes currently being utilized in agriculture can have unforeseen consequences, and their safety and future viability are far from secure.
The reality, as always, is far more complex than either of these two extremes. Even today, the total food production in the world is adequate to feed the hungry of the world. The problem is rather one of unequal distribution, a large part of the population of developing countries engaged in agriculture, face many problems, such as lack of infrastructure, poor or unstable market access, volatile input and output prices, etc. These issues cannot be addressed by biotechnology as their solution is a far cry.
It is true that transgenic plants can offer a range of benefits (more effective pest resistance of seeds and crops through genetically controlled methods and leads to improved yield), which are above and beyond those that emerged from more traditional innovations. A basic question, of course, is whether the new GM technology is safe, and whether this is absolutely crucial since the effects may only be known much later. The jury is still very much out on this matter and the controversy does not appear to resolve quickly.
The trouble is that most governments in developing countries have relatively low food and beverage regulatory standards and public systems for monitoring and surveillance of such standards are either poor or non-existent. This leaves them open for entry and even dumping of a range of agricultural products of new technology, which may not pass the regulatory standards in more developed countries.
Passage 8
Read the following passage and answer the questions 36–40.
Though top leaders of the nationalist movement were the policymakers, the immediate day-to-day leadership was provided by the middle-class intellectuals. The rural origin of the industrial labour force together with rampant illiteracy and their simplistic docility attracted social workers, mainly drawn from the middle-class intellectuals. They had an obvious advantage. Not being employees, the leaders were free from fear of victimization and immune towards the risks of leadership. Being generally well educated, they had a better perspective and sense of organization. They could see the issue in a broader context. They belonged to a higher social plane than the workers and with good education intellectual development comparable to the best among the employers they could meet the employers on their own plane and carry on negotiations on an equal footing. According to Royal Commission on Labour in India, ‘the effect of this surge was enhanced by the political turmoil which added to the prevailing feelings of unrest and assured to provide willing leaders of a trade union movement’. But outside leadership had led to the politicization of the movement.
Politicization of the labour movement in India contributed both to its strength and weakness. While economic hardship was present all along as a latent force, the major impetus for growth of unionism was primarily provided by major political currents, particularly the movement for national independence. For the zeal and the organizing ability, which the leaders of the nationalist movement brought to bear upon the Indian Trade Union Movement, it would not have gained the dimensions and the position it had by 1909 within a decade of its formal start.
Passage 9
Read the following passage and answer the questions 41–45.
It is no longer enough for us to talk about providing for universal access to education. Making available schooling facilities is an essential prerequisite, but it is insufficient to ensure that all children attend school and participate in the learning process. The school may be there, but children may not attend or they may drop out after a few months. Through school and social mapping, we must address the entire gamut of social, economic, cultural and indeed linguistic and pedagogic issues, factors that prevent children from weaker sections and disadvantaged groups, as also girls, from regularly attending and complementing elementary education. The focus must be on the poorest and most vulnerable since these groups are the most disempowered and at the greatest risk of violation or denial of their right to education.
The right to education goes beyond free and compulsory education to include quality education for all. Quality is an integral part of the right to education. If the education process lacks quality, children are being denied their right. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act lays down that the curriculum should provide for learning through activities, exploration and discovery. This places an obligation on us to change our perception of children as passive receivers of knowledge and to move beyond the convention of using textbooks as the basis of examinations. The teaching-learning process must become stress-free and a massive programme for curricular reform should be initiated to provide for a child-friendly learning system, that is more relevant and empowering. Teacher accountability systems and processes must ensure that children are learning and that their right to learn in a child-friendly environment is not violated. Testing and assessment systems must be reexamined and redesigned to ensure that these do not force children to struggle between school and tuition centres, and bypass childhood.
Passage 10
Read the following passage and answer the questions 46–50.
‘Desertification’ is a term used to explain a process of decline in the biological productivity of an ecosystem, leading to total loss of productivity. While this phenomenon is often linked to the arid, semi-arid and sub-humid ecosystems, even in the humid tropics, the impact could be most dramatic. Impoverishment of human-impacted terrestrial ecosystems may exhibit itself in a variety of ways, such as accelerated erosion as in the mountain regions of the country, salinization of land as in the semi-arid and arid ‘green revolution’ areas of the country, for example, in Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh, and site quality decline—a common phenomenon due to general decline in tree cover and monotonous monoculture of rice/wheat across the Indian plains. A major consequence of deforestation is that it relates to adverse alterations in the hydrology and related soil and nutrient losses. The consequences of deforestation invariably arise out of site degradation through erosive losses. Tropical Asia, Africa and South America have the highest levels of erosion. The already high rates for the tropics are increasing at an alarming rate (For example, through the major river systems, such as Ganga and Brahmaputra in the Indian context), due to deforestation and ill-suited land management practices
subsequent to forest clearing. In the mountain context, the declining moisture retention of the mountain soils, drying up of the underground springs and smaller rivers in the Himalayan region could be attributed to drastic changes in the forest cover. An indirect consequence is drastic alteration in the upland-lowland interaction, mediated through water. The current concern the tea planter of Assam has is about the damage to tea plantations due to frequent inundation along the flood-plains of Brahmaputra, and the damage to tea plantation and the consequent loss in tea productivity is due to rising level of the river bottom because of siltation and the changing course of the river system. The ultimate consequences of site desertification are soil degradation, alteration in available water and its quality, and the consequent decline in food, fodder and fuel- wood yields essential for the economic well-being of rural communities.
Passage 11
Read the following passage and answer the questions 51–55.
A sanctuary may be defined as a place where Man is passive and the rest of nature active. Till recently, nature had her own sanctuaries, whereas man either did not go at all or only as a tool-using animal in comparatively small numbers. But now, in this machinery age, there is no place left where man cannot go with overwhelming forces at his command. He can strangle to death all the nobler wildlife in the world today. Tomorrow he certainly will have done so, unless he exercises due foresight and self-control in the mean time.
There is not the slightest doubt that birds and mammals are now being killed off much faster than they can breed. And it is always the largest and noblest forms of life that suffer most. The whales and elephants, lions and eagles, go. The rats and flies, and all mean parasites remain. This is inevitable in certain cases. But it is wanton killing off that I am speaking of tonight. Civilized man begins by destroying the very forms of wild life he learns to appreciate most when he becomes still more civilized. The obvious remedy is to begin conservation at an earlier stage, when it is easier and better in every way by enforcing laws for close seasons, game preserves, the selective protection of certain species and sanctuaries.
I have just defined a sanctuary as a place where man is passive and the rest of Nature is active. But this general definition is too absolute for any special case. The mere fact that man has to protect a sanctuary does away with his purely passive attitude. Then, he can be beneficially active by destroying pests and parasites, like botflies or mosquitoes and by finding antidotes for diseases like the epidemic which periodically kills off the rabbits and thus starves many of the carnivora to death. But, except in cases, where experiment has proved his intervention to be beneficial, the less he upsets the balance of nature the better, even when he tries to be an earthly providence.
Passage 12
Read the following passage and answer the questions 56–60.
The function of education is to prepare young people to understand the whole process of life. The end of education is not merely to pass some examinations and get a job and earn one’s livelihood. If education is to make people understand life, then surely life is not merely a job or an occupation, where life is something extraordinarily wide and profound, it is a great mystery, a vast realm in which we function as human beings. If we prepare ourselves only to earn a livelihood, we shall miss the whole point of life. To understand life is much more important than to get a degree or pass an examination for a job. Life, with all its subtleties, is such a vast expanse. It has its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. It also has its hidden things of the mind, such as envies, ambitions, passions, fears, fulfilments and anxieties. The birds, the flowers, the flourishing trees, the heavens, the stars, the rivers and the fishes therein all this is life. When we are young, we must seek and find out what life is all about. Thus, we cultivate intelligence with the help of education. Intelligence is the capacity to think freely, without fear, without a formula, so that we begin to discover for ourselves what is real and what is true. Anyone who is gripped with fear will never be intelligent. Most of us have fear in one form or another. Where there is fear there is no intelligence. Thus, what education should do is help us understand the need of freedom. Unless we are free we will not understand the whole process of living. When we are free we have no fear. We do not imitate but we discover.
Passage 13
Read the following passage and answer the questions 61–65.
The Alaska pipeline starts at the frozen edge of the Arctic Ocean. It stretches southward across the largest and northernmost state in the United States, ending at a remote ice-free seaport village nearly 800 miles from where it begins. It is massive in size and extremely complicated to operate. The steel pipe crosses windswept plains and endless miles of delicate tundra that tops the frozen ground. It weaves through crooked canyons, climbs sheer mountains, plunges over rocky crags, makes its way through thick forests and passes over or under hundreds of rivers and streams. The pipe is 4 feet in diameter and up to 2 million barrels (or 84 million gallons) of crude oil can be pumped through it daily. Resting on H-shaped steel racks called ‘bents’, long sections of the pipeline follow a zigzag course high above the frozen earth. Other long sections drop out of sight beneath spongy or rocky ground and return to the surface later on. The pattern of the pipeline’s up-and-down route is determined by the often harsh demands of the arctic and subarctic climate, the tortuous lay of the land, and the varied compositions of soil, rock or permafrost (permanently frozen
ground). A little more than half of the pipeline is elevated above the ground. The remainder is buried anywhere from 3 to 12 feet, depending largely upon the type of terrain and the properties of the soil. One of the largest in the world, the pipeline cost approximately $8 billion and is by far the biggest and most expensive construction project ever undertaken by private industry. In fact, no single business could raise that much money, so 8 major oil companies formed a consortium in order to share the costs. Each company controlled oil rights to particular shares of land in the oil fields and paid into the pipeline-construction fund according to the size of its holdings. Today, despite enormous problems of climate, supply shortage, equipment breakdowns, labour disagreements, treacherous terrain, a certain amount of mismanagement and even theft, the Alaska pipeline has been completed and is operating.
Passage 14
Read the following passage and answer the questions 66–70.
Corruption is not a new phenomenon in India. It has been prevalent in society since ancient times. History reveals that it was present even in the Mauryan period. Great scholar, Kautilya, mentions the pressure of forty types of corruption in his contemporary society. It was practised even in Mughal and Sultanate period. When the East India Company took control of the country, corruption reached new height. Corruption in India has become so common that people now are averse to thinking of public life with it. Corruption has been defined variously by scholars. But the simple meaning of it is that corruption implies perversion of morality, integrity, character or duty out of mercenary motives, i.e., bribery without any regard to honour, right and justice. In other words, undue favour for any one for some monetary or other gains is corruption. Simultaneously, depriving the genuinely deserving from their right or privilege is also a corrupt practice. Shrinking from one’s duty or dereliction of duty are also forms of corruption. Besides, thefts, wastage of public property constitute varieties of corruption. Dishonesty, exploitation, malpractices, scams and scandals are various manifestations of corruption.
Passage 15
Read the following passage and answer Questions 71–75:
The decisive shift in British Policy came under mass pressure in the autumn and winter of 1945–46—the months which Penderel Moon, while editing Wavell’s Journal, has perceptively described as The Edge of a Volcano. Very foolishly, the
British initially decided to hold public trials of several hundreds of the 20,000 INA prisoners as well as dismissing them from service and detaining without trial, no less than 7000. They compounded the folly by holding the first trial in the Red Fort, Delhi, in November 1945, and putting on the dock a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Sikh (P. K. Sehgal, Shah Nawaz, and Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon). Bhulabhai Desai, Tejbahadur Sapru, and Nehru appeared for the defence (the latter putting on his barrister’s gown after 25 years), and the Muslim League also joined the countrywide protest. On November 20, the Intelligence Bureau note admitted that, ‘There has seldom been a matter which has attracted so much Indian public interest and, it is safe to say, sympathy … this particular brand of sympathy cuts across communal barriers.’ A journalist (B. Shiva Rao) visiting the Red Fort prisoners on the same day reported that, ‘There is not the slightest feeling among them of Hindu and Muslim … A majority of the men, now awaiting trial in the Red Fort, are Muslims. Some of these men are bitter that Mr. Jinnah is keeping alive a controversy about Pakistan.’ The British became extremely nervous about the INA spirit spreading to the Indian Army, and in January, the Punjab Governor reported that a Lahore reception for released INA prisoners had been attended by Indian soldiers in uniform.
Passage 16
Read the following passage and answer questions 76 to 80:
While the British rule in India was detrimental to the economic development of the country, it did help in starting the process of modernizing the Indian society and formed several progressive institutions during that process. One of the most beneficial institutions, which were initiated by the British, was democracy. Nobody can dispute that despite its many shortcomings, democracy was and is a far better alternative to the arbitrary rule of the rajas and nawabs, which prevailed in India in the pre-British days.
However, one of the harmful traditions of British democracy inherited by India was that of conflict instead of cooperation between elected members. This was its essential feature. The party, which got the support of the majority of elected members, formed the government while the others constituted a standing opposition. The existence of the opposition to those in power was and is regarded as a hallmark of democracy.
In principle, democracy consists of rule by the people; but where direct rule is not possible, it rules by persons elected by the people. It is natural that there would be some differences of opinion among the elected members as in the rest of the society.
Normally, members of any organization have differences of opinion between themselves on different issues but they manage to work on the basis of a consensus and they do not normally form a division between some who are in majority and are placed in power, while treating the others as in opposition. The members of an organization usually work on consensus. Consensus simply means that after an adequate discussion, members agree that the majority opinion may prevail for the time being. Thus, persons who form a majority on one issue and whose opinion is allowed to prevail may not be on the same side if there is a difference on some other issue. It was largely by accident that instead of this normal procedure, a two party system came to prevail in Britain and that is now being generally taken as the best method of democratic rule. Many democratically inclined persons in India regret that such a two party system was not brought about in the country. It appears that to have two parties in India – of more or less equal strength – is a virtual impossibility. Those who regret the absence of a two-party system should take the reasons into consideration. When the two party system got established in Britain, there were two groups among the rules (consisting of a limited electorate) who had the same economic interests among themselves and who therefore formed two groups within the selected members of Parliament. There were members of the British aristocracy (which landed interests and consisting of lord, barons etc) and members of the new commercial class consisting of merchants and artisans. These groups were more or less of equal strength and they were able to establish their separate rule at different times.
Passage 17
Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions from 81 to 85:
The phrase ‘What is it like?’ stands for a fundamental thought process. How does one go about observing and reporting on things and events that occupy the segments of earth space? Of all the infinite varieties of phenomena on the face of the
earth, how does one decide what phenomena to observe? There is no such thing as a complete description of the earth or any part of it, for every microscopic point on the earth’s surface differs from every other such point. Experience shows that the things observed are already familiar because they are like phenomena that occur at home or because they resemble the abstract images and models developed in the human mind.
How are abstract images formed? Humans alone, among all other animals on the earth, possess language; their words symbolize not only specific things but also mental images of classes of things. People can remember what they have seen or experienced because they attach a word symbol to them.
During the long record of our efforts to gain more and more knowledge about the face of the earth as the human habitat, there has been a continuing interplay between things and events. The direct observation through the senses is described as a percept; the mental image is described as a concept. Percepts are what some people describe as reality, in contrast to mental images, which are theoretical, implying that they are not real.
The relation of percept to concept is not as simple as the definition implies. It is now quite clear that people of different cultures or even individuals in the same culture develop different mental images of reality and what they perceive is a reflection of these preconceptions. The direct observation of things and events on the face of the earth is so clearly a function of the mental images of the mind of the observer that the whole idea of reality must be reconsidered.
Concepts determine what the observer perceives, yet concepts are derived from the generalizations of previous percepts. What happens is that the educated observer is taught to accept a set of concepts and then sharpens or changes these concepts during a professional career. In any one field of scholarship, professional opinion at one time determines what concepts and procedures are acceptable, and these form a kind of model of scholarly behaviour.
Passage 18
Read the following passage carefully and answer questions 86 to 90.
It should be remembered that the nationalist movement in India, like all nationalist movements, was essentially a bourgeois movement. It represented the natural historical stage of development and to consider it, or to criticise it, as a working-class movement is wrong. Gandhi represented that movement and the Indian masses in relation to that movement to a supreme degree, and he became the voice of Indian people to that extent. The main contribution of Gandhi to India and the Indian masses has been through the powerful movements that he launched through the National Congress.
Through nationwide action, he sought to mould the millions and largely succeeded in doing so. He changed them from a demoralized, timid, and hopeless mass, bullied and crushed by every dominant interest and incapable of resistance, into a people with self-respect and self-reliance, resisting tyranny, and capable of united action and sacrifice for a larger cause. Gandhi made people think of political and economic issues, and every village and every bazaar hummed with argument and debate on the new ideas and hopes that filled the people.
That was an amazing psychological change. The time was ripe for it, of course, and circumstances and world conditions worked for this change. But a great leader was necessary to take the advantage of those circumstances and conditions. Gandhi was that leader, and he released many bonds that imprisoned and disabled our minds, and none of us who experienced it can ever forget that great feeling of release and exhilaration that came over the Indian people.
Gandhi has played a revolutionary role of greatest importance in India because he knew how to make the most of the objective conditions and could reach the heart of the masses, whereas groups with a more advanced ideology functioned largely in air because they did not fit in with those conditions and could, therefore, not evoke any substantial response from the masses.
It is perfectly true that Gandhi, functioning in nationalist plane, did not think in terms of the conflict of classes, trying to compose their differences. But the actions he indulged in and taught the people has inevitably raised mass consciousness tremendously and made social issues vital. Gandhi and the Congress must be judged by the policies they pursued and the action they indulged in. But behind this, personality counts and colours those policies and activities. In case of very exceptional persons like Gandhi, the question of personality becomes especially important in order to understand and appraise him. To us, he represented the spirit and honour of India, the yearning of her sorrowing millions to be rid of their innumerable burdens, and an insult to him by the British Government or others was an insult to India and her people.