Exam-useful questions from this chapter, grouped by marks, each with a full model answer. Try writing the answer yourself first, then check it against this one.
1 1-Mark Questions
Q. Who chaired the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly?
Answer: B.R. Ambedkar, who, on the advice of Mahatma Gandhi, was asked to join the Union Cabinet as law minister.
Q. Who introduced the Objectives Resolution, and when?
Answer: Jawaharlal Nehru introduced the Objectives Resolution on 13 December 1946.
Q. From what date did the Indian Constitution come into effect?
Answer: From 26 January 1950, though it had already been signed in December 1949.
Q. Who was President of the Constituent Assembly?
Answer: Rajendra Prasad, who steered discussion so that all members had a chance to speak.
Q. What power did Article 356 give the Centre?
Answer: The power to take over a state’s administration on the recommendation of the Governor.
Q. What status did the Language Committee’s compromise give to Hindi?
Answer: The status of official language in the Devanagari script, with English continuing alongside it for the next 15 years.
2 2-Mark Questions
Q. What were the three lists of subjects created by the Draft Constitution?
Answer: The Union List (Centre’s exclusive preserve), the State List (states’ exclusive preserve), and the Concurrent List (shared between Centre and states).
Q. Why did the Muslim League boycott the Constituent Assembly?
Answer: Despite winning most reserved Muslim seats, the League boycotted the Assembly outright because it was pressing for a separate constitution for Pakistan.
Q. What was Begum Aizaz Rasul’s position on separate electorates?
Answer: Though a Muslim member, she called separate electorates self-destructive; by 1949 most Muslim Assembly members had also concluded a shared democratic process served minorities better than isolation.
Q. How did N.G. Ranga redefine the term ‘minority’?
Answer: He defined it in economic rather than religious terms: the “real minorities” were people who had no access even to elementary education, whatever their religion.
Q. What did Jaipal Singh demand for tribals, and what did he not demand?
Answer: He did not ask for separate electorates, but argued that reservation of seats in the legislature was essential so tribal voices would actually be heard.
Q. What was K. Santhanam’s criticism of the proposed Centre-state distribution of power?
Answer: He argued it would weaken, not strengthen, the Centre by overburdening it, and warned the fiscal terms would leave states unable to fund basic services.
3 3-Mark Questions
Q. What was the difference between the roles of B.N. Rau and S.N. Mukherjee?
Answer: B.N. Rau was Constitutional Advisor, who prepared comparative background papers on other countries’ political systems; S.N. Mukherjee was Chief Draughtsman, who put complex proposals into clear legal language. Both were civil servants, not Congress leaders.
Q. How did public opinion shape the discussions within the Constituent Assembly?
Answer: Opinions reported in newspapers shaped the Assembly’s discussions, and the public was itself invited to send in views: linguistic minorities wanted mother-tongue protection, religious minorities wanted safeguards, and dalits demanded an end to caste oppression and reserved seats.
Q. What did R.V. Dhulekar say in the debate over separate electorates?
Answer: He told B. Pocker Bahadur directly that the English had played their game under the cover of safeguards, luring minorities into a long lull, and that now there was no one left to mislead them, so the demand should be given up.
Q. How did J. Nagappa and K.J. Khanderkar present the issue of the Depressed Castes?
Answer: Nagappa argued the real problem was social, not merely political, and that the Depressed Castes formed 20-25 per cent of the population despite their marginalisation; Khanderkar said thousands of years of suppression had affected their minds, bodies, and now even their hearts.
Q. How did Hansa Mehta define what women’s members wanted?
Answer: She said women had never asked for privileges, but for social, economic and political justice, and for the equality that alone could be the basis of mutual respect and understanding; she demanded justice for women, not reserved seats or separate electorates.
4 4-Mark Questions
Q. What arguments did Ambedkar give in favour of a strong Centre?
Answer: Ambedkar directly stated he wanted “a strong and united Centre,” much stronger than the Centre created under the Government of India Act of 1935. Gopalaswami Ayyangar and Balakrishna Sharma echoed this, arguing only a strong Centre could plan economic development, mobilise resources and run the administration, especially given ongoing communal violence and foreign threats.
Q. What were the main ideals emphasised in the Objectives Resolution?
Answer: The Resolution proclaimed India an “Independent Sovereign Republic” guaranteeing justice, equality and freedom, and promised “adequate safeguards … for minorities, backward and tribal areas, and Depressed and Other Backward Classes.” It placed India within the history of global revolutions while insisting India would not simply copy anyone.
Q. What was the Constitution’s approach to fiscal federalism?
Answer: Fiscal federalism was layered: some taxes (customs, company tax) stayed wholly with the Centre; others (income tax, excise) were shared; still others (estate duties) went wholly to the states, which could independently levy land and property tax, sales tax, and liquor tax. Financial power, like the subject lists, tilted toward the Centre.
Q. Why did Mahatma Gandhi think Hindustani should be the national language?
Answer: Gandhiji considered Hindustani genuinely composite and widely understood, capable of uniting Hindus and Muslims, north and south. He held it should be “neither Sanskritised Hindi nor Persianised Urdu but a happy combination of both,” freely admitting words from regional languages as well.
5 5-Mark Questions
Q. Discuss how the political situation of 1946-47 may have shaped the nature of debates within the Constituent Assembly.
Answer: The violence of Partition, the ambiguous future of the princely states, and the crisis of millions of refugees remained a constant backdrop. This shaped the Assembly in two ways: first, concern for security and unity strengthened arguments for a strong Centre (Ambedkar, Ayyangar, Sharma); second, the same violence made communally-based arrangements such as separate electorates almost universally suspect, since they were seen as a British weapon that had already helped bring about Partition. The immediate political situation thus pushed debates in the same direction on both the centralisation and the communal-safeguard fronts.
Q. Discuss the debate over separate electorates in the Constituent Assembly, and how it was finally resolved.
Answer: B. Pocker Bahadur argued on 27 August 1947 for continuing separate electorates, saying only they could give Muslims a meaningful voice. Sardar Patel and Govind Ballabh Pant opposed this forcefully: Patel asked whether any free country practised it, and said the British had “left the mischief behind”; Pant called it suicidal for the minorities themselves. Muslim members such as Begum Aizaz Rasul agreed. Result: separate electorates were dropped. Separately, for the Depressed Castes, Ambedkar too no longer argued for separate electorates after the Partition violence, and the Assembly recommended the abolition of untouchability, the opening of Hindu temples to all castes, and the reservation of seats in legislatures and jobs in government offices for the lowest castes.
Q. Discuss the debate over the powers of the Centre and the states, and explain why the Constitution finally favoured a strong Centre.
Answer: The Draft Constitution created three lists, placing more subjects under Union and Concurrent control, and gave powers such as Article 356. K. Santhanam warned this would weaken the Centre and leave states unable to fund basic services. Ambedkar, Gopalaswami Ayyangar and Balakrishna Sharma answered that only a strong Centre could handle economic planning, mobilise resources and run the administration. The Constitution finally favoured a strong Centre because the pre-Partition Congress commitment to provincial autonomy had been a deliberate concession to reassure the Muslim League; Partition removed that political pressure, and the ongoing communal violence made a strong Centre look necessary to prevent chaos.
6 6-Mark Questions
Q. Trace the language debate in the Constituent Assembly from Dhulekar’s first speech to the final compromise formula.
Answer: 1. Starting point. The Congress had accepted Hindustani as the national language since the 1930s; Gandhiji saw it as a happy Hindi-Urdu combination.
2. Dhulekar’s first speech. In one of the Assembly’s earliest sessions, R.V. Dhulekar demanded that members who did not know Hindustani were not fit to remain in the Assembly; Nehru had to intervene to restore order.
3. The south’s concern. G. Durgabai warned that aggressive promotion of Hindi would be seen by non-Hindi regions as suppressing other languages; Shankarrao Deo and T.A. Ramalingam Chettiar counselled restraint.
4. The compromise. The Language Committee proposed Hindi in the Devanagari script as the official language, with English continuing alongside it for the next 15 years.
5. Dhulekar’s second reaction. On 13 September 1949, Dhulekar called even the word “official” inadequate, but accepted it as “a consummation of a historic process.”
Conclusion: Gandhiji’s broad vision of Hindustani was finally narrowed into a single official language, Hindi, with each province allowed a regional language for its own official work.
Q. Why should the Constituent Assembly Debates be read as an evolving argument rather than a record of fixed positions? Illustrate with an example from the chapter.
Answer: 1. The common mistake. It is wrong to treat the Constituent Assembly Debates as a fixed record of unchanging positions; members genuinely changed their minds over the three years.
2. Ambedkar’s example. During the national movement Ambedkar had demanded separate electorates for the Depressed Castes; after the violence of Partition, he dropped this demand himself, the clearest example of a position genuinely changing.
3. Congress and provincial autonomy. The pre-Partition Congress commitment to provincial autonomy had been a concession to reassure Muslim-majority provinces; once Partition removed that political pressure, most nationalists shifted decisively toward centralisation.
4. General reason. Change came sometimes from being persuaded by others’ arguments, sometimes in reaction to fast-moving events such as Partition.
Conclusion: The CAD must be read as a live, evolving argument, not a transcript of positions members had already settled before the debate began.
7 Case Studies
— N.G. Ranga, welcoming the Objectives Resolution (Source 6)
(A) 2 marks Who did Ranga call the “real minorities,” and how did this differ from the usual definition of a religious minority?
Answer: For Ranga the real minorities were not any religious group (Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims) but the broad masses of the country who lacked even elementary education; this defined minority status by economic and educational deprivation rather than religion.
(B) 3 marks Using the example of the tribal areas in the passage, explain why Ranga felt that legal rights alone did not protect the “real minorities”.
Answer: By their own tribal law the lands of tribal people cannot be alienated, yet merchants go there and, in the so-called free market, snatch their lands, turning tribal people into bond-slaves. So rights on paper were not enough; as Ranga put it elsewhere in the debate, the poor needed protection to enjoy their rights: “They need props. They need a ladder.”
(C) 3 marks What strength does this passage show the Constituent Assembly Debates have as a historical source?
Answer: It shows that the CAD records not only mainstream Congress-led voices but also alternative, economically-focused perspectives such as this socialist peasant leader’s, which pushed debate on terms like “minority” and “protection” beyond a purely religious frame into economic justice, giving the historian a glimpse of the ideological diversity of the period.
— Hansa Mehta, on women’s demands (Source 8)
(A) 2 marks According to Hansa Mehta, what did women ask for, and what did they not ask for?
Answer: They never asked for privileges; they asked for social, economic and political justice, and for the equality that alone could be the basis of mutual respect and understanding, not any special concession.
(B) 3 marks Why, according to Hansa Mehta, was equality so important for women and men alike?
Answer: She said equality alone could be the basis of mutual respect and understanding, and without it real cooperation between man and woman was not possible. That is why women asked for equality and justice rather than for privileges.
(C) 3 marks What does this passage reveal about the range of the word ‘rights’ in the Constituent Assembly’s debates?
Answer: It shows that demands for “rights” and “protection” in the Assembly were not confined to religious and caste groups alone; the demand for gender justice was part of the same debate, but it chose the language of equal citizenship and socio-economic justice rather than safeguards, highlighting how different groups pursued different strategies of “protection” within the Assembly.