CBSE 10 Polity Gender, Religion and Caste Questions and Answers

Gender, Religion and Caste Question and answer

Table of Contents

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

Exercise question and answer

1. Mention different aspects of life in which women are discriminated or disadvantaged in India.

Ans: The different aspects of life in which women are discriminated or disadvantage in India:-

Women’s literacy rate is only 54 percent compared to men’s with 76 percent. Only a smaller proportion of girls go for higher studies. Girls drop out of school because parents prefer to spend their resources on their boys’ education.
Small portion of Women work under highly paid and valued jobs. On average, an Indian woman works one hour more than an average man every day but they get undervalued paid.
The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 provides equal wages to equal work. Women are paid less than men for the same work In all areas of work including sports and cinema, factories, and fields.
In many parts of India, parents prefer to have sons and find ways to have the girl child aborted before she is born.
There are reports of various kinds of harassment, exploitation, and violence against women. Urban areas have become particularly unsafe for women. They are not safe even within their own home from beating, harassment, and other forms of domestic violence.

2. State different forms of communal politics with one example each.

Ans: the different forms of communal politics:-

The most common expression of communalism is in everyday beliefs. These involve religious prejudices, stereotypes of religious communities, and belief in the superiority of one’s religion over other religions. This is so common that we believe it but fail to notice.
A communal mind often leads to own religious community for political dominance. The majority community forms majoritarian dominance and makes a desire to form a separate political unit.
Political mobilisation on religion is another frequent form of communalism. This involves the use of sacred symbols, religious leaders, emotional appeal, and plain fear to bring all followers together in the political arena. In electoral politics, this involves the interests or emotions of voters of one religion in preference to others.
Sometimes communalism takes the ugly form of communal violence, riots, and massacre.

Example of communal politics:- India and Pakistan suffered some of the worst communal riots at the time of the Partition.

3. State how caste inequalities are still continuing in India.

Ans: The Constitution of India prohibited any caste-based discrimination and laid the foundations of policies to reverse the injustices of the caste system. If a person who lived a century ago returned to India, she would be greatly surprised to see the change in the country.

Yet caste has not disappeared but older aspects persist in contemporary India. Even now most people marry within their caste or tribe. Untouchability has not ended completely, despite constitutional prohibition.

The caste groups that had access to education under the old system have done very well in acquiring modern education as well. Those groups that did not have access to education or were prohibited from acquiring it have naturally lagged. That is why there is a disproportionately large presence of ‘upper caste’ among the urban middle classes in our country. Caste continues to be closely linked to economic status.

4. State two reasons to say that caste alone cannot determine election results in India.

Ans: two reasons to say that caste alone cannot determine election results in India:-

No parliamentary constituency in the country has a clear majority of one single caste. So, every candidate and party needs to win the confidence of more than one caste and community to win elections.
No party wins the votes of all the voters of a caste or community. When people say that a caste is a ‘vote bank’ of one party, it usually means that a large proportion of the voters from that caste vote for that party.

5. What is the status of women’s representation in India’s legislative bodies?

Ans: In India, the proportion of women in the legislature has been very low. For example, the percentage of elected women members in Lok Sabha was 14.36 percent of its total strength for the first time in 2019. Their share in the state assemblies is less than 5 percent.

One-third of seats in local government bodies are reserved for women in panchayats and municipalities in India. Now there are more than 10 lakh elected women representatives in rural and urban local bodies.

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

6. Mention any two constitutional provisions that make India a secular state.

Ans: two constitutional provisions that make India a secular state:-

The Constitution provides all individuals and communities the freedom to profess, practice, and propagate any religion.
The Constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion.

7. When we speak of gender divisions, we usually refer to:

(a) Biological difference between men and women

(b) Unequal roles assigned by the society to men and women

(d) Absence of voting rights for women in democracies

Ans: (b) Unequal roles assigned by the society to men and women

8. In India seats are reserved for women in

(a) Lok Sabha

(b) State legislative assemblies

(d) Panchayati Raj bodies

Ans: (d) Panchayati Raj bodies

9. Consider the following statements on the meaning of communal politics. Communal politics is based on the belief that:

A. One religion is superior to that of others.

B. People belonging to different religions can live together happily as equal citizens.

C. Followers of a particular religion constitute one community.

D. State power cannot be used to establish the domination of one religious group over others.

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

Which of the statements are correct?

(a) A, B, C, and D

(b) A, B, and D

(c) A and C

(d) B and D

Ans: (c) A and C

10. Which among the following statements about India’s Constitution is wrong? It

(a) prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion.

(b) gives official status to one religion.

(d) ensures equality of citizens within religious communities.

Ans: (b) gives official status to one religion.

11. Social divisions based on _________ are peculiar to India.

Ans: caste

12. Match List I with List II and select the correct answer using the codes given below the Lists:

	List I	List II
1.	A person who believes in equal rights and opportunities for women and men	A. Communalist
2.	A person who says that religion is the principal basis of community	B. Feminist
3.	A person who thinks that caste is the principal basis of community	C. Secularist
4.	A person who does not discriminate others on the basis of religious beliefs	D. Castiest

	1	2	3	4
(a)	B	C	A	D
(b)	B	A	D	C
(c)	D	C	A	B
(d)	C	A	B	D

Ans:

(b)

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

Additional question and answer

Multiple choice question and answer

1. __________ is a form of hierarchical social division.

(a) Gender division

(b) Caste division

(c) Religion division

(d) Political division

Ans: (a) Gender division

2. what was the literacy rate of women compared to men?

(a) 70

(b) 50

(c) 60

(d) 54

Ans: (d) 54

3. which act did provide equal wages to equal work?

(a) The Equal Right Act, 1970

(b) The Right to Equality Act, 1976

(c) The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976

Ans: (c) The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976

4. The Equal Remuneration Act was passed in______.

(a) 1970

(b) 1976

(c) 1975

(d) 1980

Ans: (b) 1976

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

5. What was the position of women in the legislature body?

(a) High

(b) Very high

(c) Low

(d) Very low

Ans: (d) very low

6. The male cabinets are _______ than _____.

(a) More, women

(b) Less, men

(c) Less, women

Ans: (a) More, women

7. what was the percentage of elected women members in Lok Sabha in 2019?

(a) 15.36%

(b) 14.63%

(c) 14.36%

(d) 16.63%

Ans: (c) 14.36%

8. what was the percentage of elected women members in state assemblies?

(a) More than 4%

(b) Less than 5%

(c) More than 6%

(d) Less than 8%

Ans: (b) Less than 5%

9. How many seats are reserved in panchayats and municipalities in India for women?

(a) One-fourth

(b) Half

(c) One-fifty

(d) One-third

Ans: (d) One-third

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

10. “Religion can never be separated from politics.” Who said this?

(a) Gandhi

(b) Nehru

(c) Subhas Chandra Bose

(d) Ambedkar

Ans: (a) Gandhi

11. caste politics help ______ and ______ to get access to better decision-making.

(a) Dalit, Obc

(b) Backward, Dalit

(c) Backward, upper class

(d) Upper class and Obc

Ans: (a) Dalit, Obc

12. What was a new kind of caste group?

(a) Dalit, Obc

(b) Backward, Dalit

(c) Backward, forward

(d) Upper class and Obc

Ans: (c) Backward, forward

13. The ruling party and the sitting MP or MLA frequently lose elections in our country.

(a) When all castes and communities were frozen in political preference.

(b) When political leaders influence people.

(c) When all candidates are not voting.

Ans: (a) When all castes and communities were frozen in political preference.

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

Short answer type question

14. What do you mean by the sexual division of labour?

Ans: A system in which all work inside the home is either done by the women of the family or organised by them through the domestic helpers.

15. What is feminist?

Ans: A woman or a man who believes in equal rights and opportunities for women and men.

16. What is the feminist movement?

Ans: when radical women’s movements aimed at equality in personal and family life as well. These movements are called feminist movements.

17. What was the condition of women now?

Ans: The political expression of gender division and political mobilisation helped to improve women’s role in public life. Now, we find women working as scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers, managers, and college and university teachers which were earlier not considered suitable for women. In some parts of the world, for example in Scandinavian countries, such as Sweden, Norway, and Finland, the participation of women in public life is very high.

18. Why did girls drop out of their education?

Ans: Girls drop out of school because their parents prefer to spend their resources or money on their boys’ education.

19. What do you mean by Equal Remuneration Act 1976?

Ans: The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 provides equal wages to equal work. Women are paid less than men for the same work In all areas of work including sports and cinema, factories, and fields. This act gives them justice to get equal wages.

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

20. Why did the girl’s ratio is less than the boy’s in India?

Ans: In many parts of India, parents prefer to have sons and they find ways to abort the girl child before she is born. Such sex-selective abortion led to a decline in the child sex ratio (number of girl children per thousand boys) in the country to merely 919. This ratio has fallen below 850 or even 800 in some States.

21. What was the status of women in the Indian legislature?

22. “Religion can never be separated from politics.” Explain.

Ans: Gandhiji says that religion can never be separated from politics. What he meant by religion was not any particular religion like Hinduism or Islam but moral values that inform all religions. He believed that politics must be guided by ethics drawn from religion.

23. What is communal politics?

Ans: when one religion is presented as superior to other religions and state power established domination of one religion over the rest. This manner of using religion in politics is communal politics.

24. What do you mean by family laws?

Ans: : Those laws that deal with family-related matters such as marriage, divorce, adoption, inheritance, etc. In our country, different family laws apply to followers of different religions.

25. What is secularism?

Ans: Secularism is not just an ideology of some parties or persons. This idea constitutes one of the foundations of our country.

26. What is the caste system?

Ans: The caste system is an example of being passed on from one generation to another. Members of the same caste group were supposed to practice the same or similar occupation, married within the caste group, and can not eat with members from other caste groups.

27. Who did work on caste inequality?

Ans: The caste system was based on exclusion and discrimination against the ‘outcaste’ groups. That is why political leaders and social reformers like Jotiba Phule, Gandhiji, B.R. Ambedkar, and Periyar Ramaswami Naicker advocated and worked to establish a society in which caste inequalities are absent.

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

28. Why does caste matter in electoral politics?

Ans: Caste matters in electoral politics and many other factors. The voters have a strong attachment to political parties which is often stronger than their attachment to their caste or community. People within the same caste or community have different interests depending on their economic condition so they vote very differently. People’s performance assessment of the government and the popularity rating of the leaders matter in decisive elections.

29. What do you mean by “vote bank”?

Ans: vote bank means a large proportion of the voters from that caste vote for that party.

30. What do you mean by urbanisation?

Ans: Urbanisation means the Shift of population from rural areas to urban areas.

31. What do you mean by occupational mobility?

Ans: occupational mobility means shifting from one occupation to another when a new generation takes up occupations other than those practice by their ancestors.

32. What do you mean by caste hierarchy?

Ans: caste hierarchy means A ladder-like formation in which all the caste groups are placed from the ‘highest’ to the ‘lowest’ castes.

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

Long answer type question

33. Why did society think that women only can work at home?

Why did women’s works not recognised by society?

What was the condition of women in early society?

Ans: Boys and girls are brought up to believe that women’s main responsibility is housework and raising children.

This is reflected in a sexual division of labour in most families: women do all the work inside the home such as cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, tailoring, looking after children, etc., and men do all the work outside the home.

It doesn’t mean that men cannot do housework; they think that it is for women to attend to these things. Men are ready to take up work like cooking, and tailoring when these jobs are paid for.

Similarly, women can work outside their homes. In villages, women fetch water, collect fuel and work in the fields. In urban areas, poor women work as domestic helpers in middle-class homes, while middle-class women work in offices.

The majority of women do some sort of paid work in addition to domestic labour. But their work is not valued and does not get recognition.

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

34. Which kind of disadvantage and discrimination did women face in earlier society?

Ans: Women face disadvantage, discrimination, and oppression in various ways:

Women’s literacy rate is only 54 percent compared to men’s with 76 percent. Only a smaller proportion of girls go for higher studies. Girls drop out of school because parents prefer to spend their resources on their boys’ education.
Small portion of Women work under highly paid and valued jobs. On average, an Indian woman works one hour more than an average man every day but they get undervalued paid.
The Equal Remuneration Act, 1976 provides equal wages to equal work. Women are paid less than men for the same work In all areas of work including sports and cinema, factories, and fields.
In many parts of India, parents prefer to have sons and find ways to have the girl child aborted before she is born. Such sex-selective abortion led to a decline in the child sex ratio (number of girl children per thousand boys) in the country to merely 919. This ratio has fallen below 850 or even 800 in some States.

35. How did women get positions in politics and legislative bodies? Explain.

In India, the proportion of women in the legislature has been very low. For example, the percentage of elected women members in Lok Sabha was 14.36 percent of its total strength for the first time in 2019. Their share in the state assemblies is less than 5 percent.

India is among the bottom group of nations in the world. India is behind the averages for several developing countries in Africa and Latin America.

In the government, male cabinets more than women even the Chief Minister or the Prime Minister are women. This problem is solved by making a fair proportion of women in the elected bodies.

Women’s organisations and activists have been demanding a similar reservation of one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha and State Assemblies for women.

36. How did politics get involve in religion?

Ans: Unlike gender differences, religious differences are often expressed in the field of politics.

Consider the following:

Gandhiji says that religion can never be separated from politics. What he meant by religion was not any particular religion like Hinduism or Islam but moral values that inform all religions. He believed that politics must be guided by ethics drawn from religion.
Human rights groups in our country have argued that minorities are victims of communal riots in our country. They demanded that the government should protect religious minorities.
Women’s movement has argued that family laws of all religions discriminate against women. So they have demanded that government should change laws to make them more equitable.

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

37. How did communalism practice in politics?

Ans: Communalism can take various forms in politics:

The most common expression of communalism is in everyday beliefs. These involve religious prejudices, stereotypes of religious communities, and belief in the superiority of one’s religion over other religions. This is so common that we believe it but fail to notice.
A communal mind often leads to own religious community for political dominance. The majority community forms majoritarian dominance and makes a desire to form a separate political unit.
Political mobilisation on religion is another frequent form of communalism. This involves the use of sacred symbols, religious leaders, emotional appeal, and plain fear to bring all followers together in the political arena. In electoral politics, this involves the interests or emotions of voters of one religion in preference to others.
Sometimes communalism takes the ugly form of communal violence, riots, and massacre. India and Pakistan suffered some of the worst communal riots at the time of the Partition. The post-Independence period has also seen large-scale communal violence.

38. What was the idea of communal politics?

Ans: Communal politics is based on the idea that religion is the principal basis of a social community.

Communalism involves thinking along the following lines. The followers of a particular religion must belong to one community. Their fundamental interests are the same and they may have irrelevant or trivial for community life.

It also follows that people from different religions cannot belong to the same social community. If the followers of different religions have some common superficial, immaterial, and their different interest involves conflict.

Communalism leads to the belief that different religions people cannot live as equal citizens within one nation. Either, one of them has to dominate the rest or they have to form different nations. This belief is fundamentally flawed.

39. How communalism was controlled by the constitution?

Why do we need a secular state?

How secular state help to protect from communalism?

Ans: Communalism is one of the major challenges to democracy in our country. The makers of our Constitution were aware of this challenge. That is why, they chose the model of a secular state. This choice was reflected in several constitutional provisions that we studied:

There is no official religion in the Indian state. Our Constitution does not give a special status to any religion in our country like other countries such as the status of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Islam in Pakistan, and Christianity in England.
The Constitution provides to all individuals and communities the freedom to profess, practice, and propagate any religion.
The Constitution prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion.
At the same time, the Constitution allows the state to intervene in matters of religious equality within religious communities. For example, it bans untouchability.

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

40. How caste discrimination was stopped in society?

Ans: The changes in castes and caste systems in modern India are due to the efforts of political leaders and social economics.

The old notions of caste hierarchy are broken down due to economic development, large-scale urbanisation, growth of literacy and education, occupational mobility, and the weakening of the position of landlords in the villages.

The Constitution of India prohibited any caste-based discrimination and laid the foundations of policies to reverse the injustices of the caste system. If a person who lived a century ago returned to India, she would be greatly surprised to see the change in the country.

41. How does caste discrimination help in politics?

Ans: Caste can take various forms in politics:

When parties choose candidates in elections, they keep in mind the caste composition of the electorate and nominate candidates from different castes to muster the necessary support to win elections. When governments are formed, political parties usually take care that representatives of different castes and tribes find a place in it.
Political parties and candidates in elections make appeals to caste sentiment to muster support. Some political parties are known to favour some castes and are seen as their representatives.
Universal adult franchise and the principle of one-person-one-vote compelled political leaders to gear up to the task of mobilising and securing political support. It also brought new consciousness among the people of castes who were treated as inferior and low.

42. How did politics influence the caste?

Ans: The relationship between caste and politics is not one way. Politics too influences the caste system and caste identities by bringing them into the political arena. Thus, it is not politics that gets caste-ridden, it is the caste that gets politicised. This takes several forms:

Each caste group tries to become bigger by incorporating within neighbouring castes or sub-castes which were earlier excluded from it.
Various caste groups are required to enter into a coalition with other castes or communities and thus enter into a dialogue and negotiation.
New kinds of caste groups have come up in the political arena like ‘backward’ and ‘forward’ caste groups.

43. How did politics help the caste?

Ans: This caste plays different kinds of roles in politics. The caste politics has helped people from Dalits and OBC castes to gain better access to make decisions. Several political and non-political organisations have been demanding and agitating to end discrimination against castes for more dignity and more access to land, resources, and opportunities.

The exclusive attention to caste can produce negative results as well. As in the case of religion, caste politics is not very healthy in a democracy. It can divert attention from other pressing issues like poverty, development, and corruption. In some cases, caste division leads to tensions, conflict, and even violence.

➜ Gender, Religion and Caste Notes

CBSE 10 Polity Gender, Religion and Caste Questions and Answers

Gender, Religion and Caste Question and answer

Exercise question and answer

Additional question and answer

Multiple choice question and answer

Short answer type question

Long answer type question

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