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NCERT Class 10 Social Science Print Culture and the Modern World: Discuss Solutions

Point-by-point answers for every question of Exercises: Discuss in NCERT's Class 10 Social Science book, chapter “Print Culture and the Modern World”, written by Shishya. Each question is in our own short words; open the NCERT chapter for the exact wording and figures.

1. Discuss Q1

   Why did some people in eighteenth-century Europe think print culture would bring enlightenment and end despotism?

   1. By the mid-eighteenth century, many Europeans believed that books were a primary tool for spreading progress and enlightenment.
   2. Novelists like Mercier argued that the printing press was a powerful engine that would sweep away despotism through public opinion.
   3. Print popularised Enlightenment ideas that attacked the sacred authority of the Church and the despotic power of the state.
   4. Reading these critical texts allowed people to question tradition and superstition, fostering a culture of dialogue and debate.
   5. This new public culture encouraged the application of reason and rationality, which eroded the legitimacy of traditional social orders.

   Answer: People believed print would end despotism because it spread Enlightenment ideas that used reason to challenge traditional authority and foster critical public debate.

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2. Discuss Q2

   Why did some people fear the effect of easily available printed books? Give one example from Europe and one from India.

   1. Not everyone welcomed printed books: many feared they would spread rebellious and irreligious ideas, and that readers would no longer accept authority.
   2. Europe: the Roman Catholic Church feared heretical ideas spreading through print; when the miller Menocchio in sixteenth-century Italy reinterpreted the Bible after reading books, he was tried and executed, and the Church began keeping an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558.
   3. India: conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed, and Muslims feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances, so many families stopped women from reading.
   4. The colonial government also feared the press after 1857, and the Vernacular Press Act of 1878 let it censor and seize vernacular newspapers.

   Answer: They feared print would spread dissent and weaken authority: in Europe the Catholic Church punished Menocchio and banned books through its Index; in India conservatives tried to keep women from reading, and the colonial government gagged the vernacular press.

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3. Discuss Q3

   What were the effects of the spread of print culture on poor people in nineteenth-century India?

   1. Cheap small books sold at crossroads in nineteenth-century Madras towns let poor people buy something to read.
   2. Public libraries from the early twentieth century, mostly in cities, towns and some prosperous villages, gave them more access to books.
   3. Printed tracts and essays exposed caste discrimination: Jyotiba Phule's Gulamgiri (1871), and the writings of B.R. Ambedkar and E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyar), were read across India.
   4. Factory workers were overworked and had little education, but Kashibaba of Kanpur published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal (1938) on caste and class exploitation, and the poems of Sudarshan Chakr were collected as Sacchi Kavitayan.
   5. By the 1930s Bangalore millworkers, following Bombay workers, set up libraries to educate themselves, supported by social reformers.

   Answer: Print gave poor people cheap books and libraries, and a way to speak out against caste and class injustice through writers such as Phule, Ambedkar, Periyar and Kashibaba.

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4. Discuss Q4

   Explain how print culture helped nationalism grow in India.

   1. Nationalist newspapers increased in number across India despite government repression.
   2. These publications reported on colonial misrule and encouraged nationalist activities.
   3. Attempts to silence nationalist criticism provoked militant protest, which led to more persecution and more protests; when Balgangadhar Tilak wrote sympathetically in his Kesari about the Punjab revolutionaries deported in 1907, he was imprisoned in 1908, sparking protests all over India.

   Answer: Newspapers and print spread news of colonial misrule across India, encouraged nationalist activity and united people in protest whenever the government tried to silence them, as when Tilak was jailed in 1908.

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