Read the ‘value-based’ passage given below and answer the questions that follow:

Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was dethroned and exiled to Calcutta on the plea that the region was being misgoverned. The British government also wrongly assumed that Wajid Ali Shah was an unpopular ruler. On the contrary, he was widely loved, and when he left his beloved Lucknow, there were many who followed him all the way to Kanpur singing songs of lament. The widespread sense of grief and loss at the Nawab’s exile was recorded by many contemporary observers. One of them wrote: “The life was gone out of the body, and the body of this town had been left lifeless … there was no street or market and house which did not wail out the cry of agony in separation of Jan-i-Alam.” One folk song bemoaned that “the honourable English came and took the country’’

(Angrez Bahadur ain, mulk lai linho).

Questions:

(a) Why did people bemoan and show an emotional upheaval at? Explain.

(b) What human values are revealed in the above passage?

Discuss the ways in which the Alvars, Nayanars and Virashaivas expressed critiques of the caste system.

Describe the major teachings of either Kabir or Baba Guru Nanak, and the ways in which these have been transmitted.

Discuss the major beliefs and practices that characterised Sufism.

Examine how and why rulers tried to establish connections with the traditions of the Nayanars and the Sufis.

Analyse, with illustrations, why Bhaktland Sufi thinkers adopted a variety of languages in which to express their opinions.

Read any five of the sources included in this chapter and discuss the social and religious ideas that are expressed in them.

On an outline map of India, plot three major sufi shrines, and three places associated with temples (one each of a form of Vishnu, Shiva and the goddess).

Choose any two of the religious teachers/thinkers/saints mentioned in this chapter, and find out more about their lives and teachings. Prepare a report
about the area and the times in which they lived their major ideas, how we know about them, and why you think they are important.

Find out more about practices of pilgrimage associated with the shrines mentioned in this chapter. Are these pilgrimages still undertaken? When are these shrines visited? Who visits these shrines? Why do they do so? What are the activities associated with these pilgrimages?

Mention the two earliest Bhakti Movements of Tamil Nadu, giving the main difference between them.