WBCHSE HS History case studies
WBCHSE HS History · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The WBCHSE Higher Secondary History examination is the Class XII history paper set by the West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education, the state board that conducts the Uchcha Madhyamik examinations. It is taken by students completing higher secondary schooling in West Bengal and is used for admission to undergraduate history and related humanities programmes, as well as for eligibility in competitive examinations that recognise state board qualifications. The WBCHSE HS History case studies are 5 cases and about 2,595 words.
1Four Sources, One Question: How Centralised Was the Mauryan State?
A candidate's project file contains four sources on the Mauryan state and one question: was it a centralised bureaucracy or a core with limited reach? The sources are: (i) Kautilya's Arthashastra, Book II, with its superintendent (adhyaksha) offices for mines, weaving and liquor, and its provisions on slaves and hired labour; (ii) Megasthenes' Indica, known only in fragments quoted by Strabo, Arrian and Diodorus, describing a six-committee city administration and claiming that slavery did not exist in India; (iii) Ashoka's Major Rock Edicts, which speak of dhamma and of humane treatment of servants, but never mention a revenue ministry or provincial administration; (iv) the Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman, of about 150 CE, which says the Sudarshana lake was made by Pushyagupta, Chandragupta's governor, and that conduits were added by the Yavana Tushaspha under Ashoka.
509 words, about 3 min2Jama, Hasil and the Temptation of a 31 Per Cent Decline
A student must pronounce on the agrarian condition of pargana Bhadaur, sarkar Kara-Manikpur, between 1595 and 1700. The file contains: (a) the jama of the pargana as entered in the Ain-i-Akbari of about 1595, expressed in dams and totalling 42 lakh dams; (b) a Persian farman of 1678 confirming a madad-i-maash grant, whose preamble cites the hasil of the same pargana as 29 lakh dams for that year; (c) a Persian chronicle of the 1720s stating that in the late seventeenth century 'the pargana was laid waste and its cultivators scattered'; (d) a note from the teacher that no village-level khasra or dastur-ul-amal for Bhadaur survives.
533 words, about 3 min3Tinkathia: Contract, Custom, or Coercion?
A student is reconstructing the Champaran indigo dispute of 1917. The file holds: (i) the report of the Champaran Agrarian Committee of 1917, whose members included Motilal Nehru and Madan Mohan Malaviya, recommending the abolition of tinkathia, the practice of sowing indigo on three kathas out of every twenty; (ii) a memorial from the Bihar Planters' Association arguing that indigo agreements were freely entered into, were renewable at enhanced rents (sharahbeshi), and that custom bound the raiyat; (iii) several thousand depositions recorded in villages in 1917 by volunteers assisting Gandhi, most of them unsworn; (iv) the standard narrative that the German synthetic dye industry forced planters to release land.
509 words, about 3 min41933: Legal Revolution or Coup?
A student must decide whether 1933 in Germany should be called a 'legal revolution' or a coup. On the table: NSDAP vote shares of 2.6 per cent in 1928, 18.3 in 1930, 37.3 in July 1932, 33.1 in November 1932, and 43.9 in March 1933; the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February 1933, suspending the Weimar civil liberties; the Enabling Act of 24 March 1933, which required a two-thirds majority of members present and passed by 444 votes to 94, after the Communist Party's 81 seats had been annulled and 26 Social Democratic deputies were in custody or in hiding; and the fact that the March 1933 election was held under the Fire Decree with the SA in the streets.
508 words, about 3 min5The 1943 Famine: Choosing a Death Toll
A student must write on the 1943 Bengal famine and has four items: (i) the Famine Inquiry Commission (Woodhead Commission) report of 1945, which put excess deaths at about 1.5 million; (ii) later work estimating about 3 million excess deaths, derived from the gap between expected and recorded mortality, and arguing that the cause was a collapse of entitlements rather than a fall in aggregate food availability; (iii) a note that Bengal lost rice imports from Burma after 1942 - roughly a tenth to a fifth of its supply - and that the provincial government's 'denial policy' removed rice and destroyed boats in coastal districts to deny them to a possible Japanese invasion; (iv) a table showing that the registered birth rate fell sharply in 1943-44 and that malaria and cholera deaths spiked in 1944. The student must not cite the higher figure merely 'because it is newer'.
536 words, about 3 min