UPSC Essentials brings to you its initiative for the practice of Mains answer writing. It covers the essential topics of static and dynamic parts of the UPSC Civil Services syllabus covered under various GS papers. This answer-writing practice is designed to help you as a value addition to your UPSC CSE Mains. Attempt today’s answer writing on questions related to topics of GS-1 to check your progress.

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“Persian functioned as the ‘English of its era’ in medieval India, shaping administration, literature, and socio-cultural interactions.” Discuss the factors responsible for the rise of Persian in India and examine its impact on Indian society.

Discuss the key differences in ideology, methods, and objectives between the Moderates and Extremists in the Indian national movement.

👁 UPSC Mains Answer Practice GS 1 (Week 131)

QUESTION 1: “Persian functioned as the ‘English of its era’ in medieval India, shaping administration, literature, and socio-cultural interactions.” Discuss the factors responsible for the rise of Persian in India and examine its impact on Indian society.

Relevance: The topic helps understand cultural synthesis and linguistic evolution in medieval India—core GS-1 theme. It also links language with state formation, administration, and elite culture under medieval polities.

Note: This is not a model UPSC answer. It only provides you with a thought process which you may incorporate into the answers.

Introduction:

— For over two centuries, from the time of Akbar, India led the world in Persian literature, both in quality and quantity. By 1700, India was likely the world’s leading centre for the patronage of Persian literature and scholarship, “with an estimated seven times more people literate in Persian than in Iran.

— Under the Achaemenid Empire ruler Darius I (522–486 BCE), large parts of Northwestern India, including present-day Herat and Kandahar in Afghanistan, formed key territories. When Chandragupta Maurya founded the first Indian empire, Achaemenian statecraft served as a model; Persian manners permeated courtly and public life alike.

Body:

You may incorporate some of the following points in your answer:

— India was linked to the Indian Ocean and to the Iranian plateau through strategic mountain passes, the Indo-Gangetic plain and the peninsula to its south have long been crossroads of transregional exchange. Within these flows, Persian texts and speakers moved across West, Central, and South Asia from the 11th century through expanding, dense networks.

— Along the Silk Road, Persian was the language of merchants, travellers, and pilgrims. It reached as far east as China, where it was the official foreign language during the Yuan Dynasty.

— From the mid-11th century, the Ghaznavid dynasty ruled much of Punjab from Lahore, bringing with them Persianate institutions and practices. Travellers like Marco Polo in the 13th century used Persian, as did merchants and pilgrims, and this practice extended into India.

— The Persian poetry was established in India long before Amir Khosrow. When the Ghazni Turks arrived in the 11th century, they brought Persian poets with them, and Mahmud of Ghazni even created the office of Poet Laureate. The really interesting development in Persian is that the language, because of poets like Firdausi—who presented his Shahnama at Mahmud of Ghazni’s court—achieved a solidification as both a literary and cultural language.

— By the 14th century, Persian had become the principal language of governance across South Asia, used by vast revenue and judicial bureaucracies under the Delhi Sultanate, and later the Mughal Empire.

— Persian vocabulary also entered Indian religious thought. For instance, in the Sikh tradition, key terms include hukm (‘grace of God’), langar (‘communal meal’), and khalsa (‘community of sworn initiates’).

— From the early 16th century onward, the rise of the Safavid, Mughal, and Shaybanid dynasties created new opportunities for Persian-speaking secretaries, scholars, and Sufis. The decisive shift came in 1582, when Akbar made Persian the official language of the empire. In administration and education alike, Persian became dominant: state records, reports, and chronicles were all written in it.

Conclusion:

— This demand was sustained by reformed madrasas and village maktabs (elementary schools), which spread basic literacy in Persian. Scribal groups emerged among the Kayasthas of Agra and Oudh, and the Khatris of Punjab and Delhi, trained in a Persianised culture.

— Under British rule, the frontiers of Persian only expanded. In 1765, Shah Alam II granted the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa to the Company on the condition that Persian remain the court language.

(Source: From ‘kagaz’ to ‘naan’: How Persian became the ‘English of the era’ and wove itself into India’s cultural DNA)

Points to Ponder

Why did Persian emerge as the court and administrative language under the Delhi Sultanate and Mughals?

How did Persian serve as a link language across diverse regions and elites?

Related Previous Year Question

Persian literary sources of medieval India reflect the spirit of the age. Comment. (2020)

QUESTION 2: Discuss the key differences in ideology, methods, and objectives between the Moderates and Extremists in the Indian national movement.

Relevance: The topic covers ideological diversity within the freedom struggle, a recurring GS-1 theme. It helps in evaluating limitations of Moderates/Extremists and rise of radical politics. It might be useful for writing balanced answers on the role of different strands in achieving independence.

Note: This is not a model UPSC answer. It only provides you with a thought process which you may incorporate into the answers.

Introduction:

— Moderate leaders, mostly first-generation English-educated Indians, dominated the Congress since its inception. Moderate leaders were influenced by Western political ideas and practices, specifically political philosophy of Liberalism.

— The extremists became prominent after the Partition of Bengal in 1905. Their radical ideology and programme became popular during the movement against Partition of Bengal, also known as the ‘Swadeshi Movement’. The INC’s extremist leaders, including Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, and Aurobindo Ghose, expressed radical political ideals against colonialism.

Body:

You may incorporate some of the following points in your answer:

Difference between the Moderates and Extremists

— Unlike moderates, extreme leaders did not believe in the virtue of British rule or in their own sense of justice and fairness. They were aware that the British were motivated by selfishness and had come to India to exploit its resources. The extremists did not anticipate the British to sympathise with the popular demands of the Indian people because exploitation of India was their primary motivation.

— The moderate leaders made modest demands to the British overlords in a calm and peaceful manner, primarily for two reasons. To begin, the majority of moderate leaders had a long-standing loyalty to the British way of life, a belief in British fairness and fair play, and a profound appreciation for British monarchs. They believed that their contact with British authority and English education had introduced them to contemporary concepts such as liberty, equality, democracy, and individual dignity.

— The extremists’ programme of action differed significantly from that of the moderates, with the goal of raising emotive outrage against British rule and thereby encouraging active participation of the masses in the agitation.

— The moderates really believed that India had benefited from its political relationship with the British, and they frequently expressed their devotion to British rule.

— One of the main demands of the moderate leaders was proper representation of Indians in Legislative Councils, as well as increased power for these Councils. The moderate leaders also called for administrative reforms.

— Extremist leadership’s aggressive articulation of the demand for ‘Swaraj’ and employment of more radical techniques than moderates resulted in a fundamental shift in the nature of Indian nationalism. Their vision of nationalism was emotionally charged and founded on a thorough understanding of Indian religious traditions.

Conclusion:

— Shaheed Diwas is marked on March 23 annually to commemorate the execution of freedom fighters Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev Thapar, and Shivaram Rajguru at the hands of the British colonial government on this day in 1931.

(Source: Supporters in Nehru and Jinnah, staunch atheist: On Shaheed Diwas, recalling the life of Bhagat Singh, egyankosh.ac.in)

Points to Ponder

How did revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh redefine nationalism beyond political freedom?

How did revolutionary ideas challenge the constitutional and gradualist approach of Moderates?

Related Previous Year Questions

Why did the ‘Moderates’ fail to carry conviction with the nation about their proclaimed ideology and political goals by the end of the nineteenth century? (2017)

To what extent did the role of the moderates prepare a base for the wider freedom movement? Comment. (2021)

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