4. Describe the role of intellectuals up to the end of the 19th century India.

If the prime mover of the 19^th century social revolutions in England and some other Western Countries was technology. In India as in some other underdeveloped countries, it was education. A small number of intellectuals-administrators, educators, writers, religious reformers and other opinion makers- bore the major responsibility for a great social transformation. The close of the century ended this era of elite revolutions in India. The first World War ushered in the era of populism with Gandhi as its high priest.

But the social forces that ended this era and culminated in the religious violence and political partitioning of the country into two independent states in 1947 had been generated by the end of the 1890’s. Till the middle of the 1850’s the East India Company, the Christian missionaries, and segments of the Indian elite—especially the Hindu middle classes—cooperated with each other in creating a humane and liberal society. By the 1870’s this triple alliance had given way to a triangular conflict. The Muslims who till this time had remained aloof or passively hostile to the british and the missionaries now turned to active cooperation with the British and opposition to the incipient forces of secular nationalism and neo-Hinduism. The Indian and British liberals and the missionaries began to fade from the political scene. British imperialism, militant nationalism and Hinduism, and Muslims revivalism joined the battle that lasted some six decades, An important thread interwoven in the story of this fateful historical transition is that of western education.

5. Why do we require an independent judiciary in a federal setup ?

We require an independent judiciary to both resolve conflicts between states and the federal government, and to determine whether the government has exceeded its authority on a particular issue. The judiciary needs to be independent to ensure that it will not be self-interested in the outcome of the case (though this is arguably a fiction--everyone is self-interested).