Students compare census tables for a district in the Gangetic plain over several decades of British rule. In each count the handloom weavers and brass-workers are fewer, while those recorded as cultivators and farm labourers rise. In the provincial capital nearby, the same tables record occupations that earlier counts did not show at all: mill managers, clerks in trading firms, English-trained schoolteachers, lawyers and factory hands living in rented rooms near the mills.
Sociological writings in India would treat the district's pattern, set against Britain's experience, as an example of which of the following?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 2
The correct answer is Option (2) → The contradictory and unintended consequences of colonialism
Option (1) A deliberate colonial plan to turn artisans into cultivators — Incorrect. There was no colonial plan to turn artisans into cultivators. Cheap British factory goods ruined local crafts, and many artisans fell back on farming as an outcome no one had aimed at. Sociological writings call such outcomes unintended.
Option (2) The contradictory and unintended consequences of colonialism — Correct. In Britain industrialisation moved people into towns. In India its initial impact moved more people into agriculture. Sociological writings discuss such outcomes as the contradictory and unintended consequences of colonialism.
Option (3) Sanskritisation of artisan castes taking up cultivation — Incorrect. Sanskritisation is the process by which a caste takes up the customs, rituals and way of life of a higher caste. Moving into cultivation to earn a living is an economic shift. It involves no change in caste customs.
Option (4) The spread of factory production into the district's villages — Incorrect. The district shows fewer weavers and more cultivators. The new mill jobs appear only in the provincial capital, so the district's villages show no spread of factory production.
NCERT (2026-27): “The Colonial Experience … “Unlike Britain where the impact of industrialisation led to more people moving into urban areas, in India the initial impact of the same British industrialisation led to more people moving into agriculture. The Census of India Report shows this clearly. Sociological writings in India have often discussed both the contradictory and unintended consequences of colonialism.” |