CLAT SAMPLE PAPERS 2019 1 In a letter written in January 1885 to his friend Pramatha Chaudhuri, Tagore spoke of the tension in his own mind between the contending forces of East and West. ‘I sometimes detect in myself,’ he remarked, ‘a background where two opposing forces are constantly in action, one beckoning me to peace and cessation of all strife, the other egging me on to battle. It is as though the restless energy and the will to action of the West were perpetually assaulting the citadel of my Indian placidity. Hence this swing of the pendulum between passionate pain and calm detachment, between lyrical abandon and philosophising between love of my country and mockery of patriotism, between an itch to enter the lists and a longing to remain wrapped in thought.’ Tagore’s mission to synthesise East and West was part personal, part civilizational. In time it also became political. In the early years of the twentieth century, the intelligentsia of Bengal was engulfed by the swadeshi movement, where protests against British rule were expressed by the burning of foreign cloth and the rejection of all things western. After an initial enthusiasm for the movement, Tagore turned against it. His ambivalence was expressed in his novel Ghare Baire (Home and the World) and, more succinctly, in a letter written to a friend in November 1908, which insisted that ‘patriotism cannot be our final spiritual shelter’. ‘I will not buy glass for the price of diamonds’, wrote Tagore, ‘and I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity as long as I live. I took a few steps down that road and stopped: for when I cannot retain my faith in universal humanity over and above my country, when patriotic prejudices overshadow my God, I feel inwardly starved’. [Extracted, with edits and revisions, from Ramchandra Guha’s introduction to Nationalism, by Rabindranath Tagore, Penguin Books, 2009.] 1.1 Which of the following best describes the two opposing forces that Tagore said he detected in himself? (a) A force encouraging him to write more, and a force encouraging him to paint more. (b) A force encouraging him to travel widely, and a force encouraging him to travel only to the West. (c) A force encouraging him to join the national movement, and a force encouraging him to take up arms. (d) A force encouraging him to remain calm, and a force encouraging him to fight. 1.2 What does the phrase ‘enter the lists’ as used in the passage mean? (a) To become contemplative and thoughtful. (b) To become involved in a competition or challenge. (c) To avoid interactions with other people. (d) To avoid crowded places. 1.3 Which of the following would be consistent with the author’s description of the Swadeshi movement in the given passage? (a) Rejecting Western ideas and goods. (b) Sending children to study in foreign universities. (c) Rejecting Indian ideas and goods. (d) All of the above. 1.4 Which of the following best describes Tagore’s reasons for not letting patriotism triumph over humanity? (a) Universal humanity and love for one’s God are more important than love for one’s country. (b) Western science and technology are more advanced than Indian spiritualism. (c) The West has a restless energy and will to action. (d) Indian thought is peaceful and therefore opposed to action. 1.5 The author describes Tagore’s attitude towards patriotism as an example of: (a) His love for all things Western and rejection of all things Indian. (b) His idea of the form that protests against British rule should take. (c) His efforts to synthesise East and West. (d) His love for deep and contemplative thought. 2 Ma always had a rough time in Dad’s house. He, an under-secretary in the civil service, thought he had married beneath his position and treated Ma with the contempt he felt she deserved – an opinion shared by the rest of his family as well. As year after year passed by without any sign of a child being born into the family, Ma began to lose hope of regaining any respect or status within her husband’s household. The inevitable followed. She was ordered around, overworked, underfed and often beaten. She would regularly be ill. It seemed they were waiting to see the end of her and, when she hesitantly told Dad she was expecting, no one seemed too enthusiastic or happy. The delivery was difficult. My birth was premature. When they learnt that the child was a girl, they stopped coming to the hospital. Ma died a week later. They wanted nothing to do with me; an ugly runt of a girl with shrivelled-up skin fit only to follow her no-good stubborn mother out of this world. They were only too happy to let Masi take me off their hands and away to her ancestral home in a small coastal Konkan village, Parvi, where she lived with my grandmother, her mother, Aji. The village doctor shook his head sadly on looking at me but Masi was as adamant as her sister had been. In that house I was reared purely on Masi’s grit and Aji’s determination and loving care as they nursed me with ragi extract, diluted cow’s milk, soft hand-pounded rice and coconut. Day after day they laboured. As a baby they fed me the Ragi extract mixed with diluted milk and the starch water from boiled rice. A little older and they made Ragi porridge, then Ragi bhakri (roti), laddoos, seviyan, and a miracle took place. Masi and Aji watched me grow from strength to strength. Now I am 25, a foot taller than Masi and completing my postgraduate studies in medicine. [Extracted, with edits and revisions, from Ragi-Ragini: Chronicles from Aji’s Kitchen, by Anjali Purohit, Yoda Press, 2012.] 2.1 Why, according to the author, did her father treat her mother with contempt? (a) Because she had given birth to a daughter. (b) Because she was regularly ill. (c) Because he felt he had married beneath his position. (d) Because she was not a good cook. 2.2 Which of the following can be inferred as the reason why the author’s father’s family was happy to let Masi take the author away? (a) Because the child was a girl, ugly, small, and weak. (b) Because the child was noisy and troublesome. (c) Because the child was born at an inauspicious time. (d) Because the child was undernourished and weak. 2.3 What does the word ‘adamant’ as used in the passage mean? (a) Easily swayed by others’ opinions. (b) Frightened and scared. (c) Hardworking and tough. (d) Refusing to be persuaded to change one’s mind. 2.4 Based on the information set out in the passage, which of the following is most accurate? (a) Masi and Aji were careless and neglectful in bringing up the author. (b) Masi and Aji put a lot of pressure on the author to study medicine. (c) Masi and Aji put in a lot of effort and love in raising the author. (d) Masi and Aji were forced to take care of the author against their wishes. 2.5 Which of the following best sums up the author’s main point in the given passage? (a) Women should not marry above their position in life as their husband would neglect them. (b) Masi and Aji brought up the author with love and determination against all odds, and despite her father’s family rejecting her. (c) Masi and Aji were experts in bringing up children, and were medically qualified to treat children’s illnesses. (d) The author is taller than Masi because of the genes she inherited from her father. Each set of questions in this section is based on a single passage. Please answer each question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the corresponding passage. In some instances, more than one option may be the answer to the question; in such a case, please choose the option that most accurately and comprehensively answers the question. 3 Implicit in this fixation with time is the thesis that the opportunity cost of regular shopping, as compared to online shopping, is too high – that the hours spent driving to the better bookstore in the next town can be spent doing something more valuable. But as our urban lives have grown more pressed for time, we have diced our opportunity costs finer and finer; from budgeting days or slabs of hours, we have come to rationing minutes. Delivery schedules have shrunk in parallel. You might now reason that even a 12-minute walk to the store to buy a can of beans is too great an expenditure of time, and that the fee paid for one-hour delivery is a fair price to snatch those minutes back into your life. Of course, the principle of opportunity cost assumes that we will earn the value of that fee back in some way in those 12 minutes – whereas the truth is that we are most likely to squander them on Instagram. The internet promises us time, then takes it right back. Beyond the fees we pay, our orders have costs – some that we have recognised, and some that are slowly starting to come to light. A lot of attention has rightly been paid to the toll that fulfilling our orders takes upon workers in warehouses or drivers in delivery vans. But additionally, as our purchases hurtle towards us in ever-higher volumes and at ever-faster rates, they exert an unseen, transformative pressure – on infrastructure, on cities, on the companies themselves.