KSLU Solved Question Papers
English III (Hons)
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B.B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) · Sem 3
2015 Dec Examination
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B.B.A. LL.B. (Five Years) Sem 3 English III (Hons) 2015 Dec Question Paper with Solutions
First published on munotes.in on 1 November 2026.
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The question paper reproduced here is the paper as set by Karnataka State Law University at the 2015 Dec examination.
Contents
The questions below are the paper as Karnataka State Law University set it at the 2015 Dec examination, in the order it was set.
MarksPage
MarksPage
The Paper as Set
The questions in this volume are the questions asked at the 2015 Dec examination, reproduced as Karnataka State Law University set them, in the order it set them. Long reading passages are shortened to their first and last lines and our summary; the original paper prints them in full. Only the answers are ours. See the original question paper.
Total marks 70 · 12 questions answered
How to use this volume
Solve the paper first, under exam conditions and against the clock. Then read the answers here and mark your own. Reading a solution before attempting the question feels productive and teaches very little, because recognising an answer is not the same as being able to write one.
Q1There is never a dull moment in the writings of Nirad C. Chaudhuri. Explain with reference to Indian crowds.[10]
Answer
For full marks, cover: who Chaudhuri is and where he describes Indian crowds; the contrast with silent English crowds; why he can judge (fifteen years in Delhi buses); the bus incidents, grouped as closeness, talk, help and drama; the story at the bus stop; the devices that keep the writing alive; the serious point under the humour; a conclusion.
Introduction
Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897 to 1999) was a Bengali writer in English, best known for The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951). At fifty-seven he went abroad for the first time, on a five-week visit to England. In his travel book A Passage to England (1959), he compares the crowds of London with the crowds of India. His picture of Indian crowds is never dull. It moves from one surprising scene to the next, and nearly every scene makes the reader smile.
1. A lively contrast
He begins with a contrast. English crowds are silent. People in the London Underground bury their faces in their newspapers. Oxford Street is packed with people, yet it seems to make no sound, like an old silent film. Indian public life is the opposite. It is loud, friendly and quarrelsome all at once. For Indians, he says, noise is as necessary to good cheer as sunshine is to warmth.
Even this contrast is told with wit. An Indian who wrote an angry letter about English silence reminds him of a sailor dying among Arctic icebergs. Londoners filing into the Underground remind him of ants streaming into an anthill. He also turns a famous line of the French thinker Pascal. Pascal feared the eternal silence of infinite space; Chaudhuri fears the silence of infinite crowds.
2. A witness with fifteen years of evidence
He explains why he can speak with authority. He never owned a car, so he always went by bus or tram. For more than fifteen years he went about Delhi in its government-run buses. A bus, he says, is the best place to watch how a nation behaves in public. So the essay is built on real scenes he lived through, not on general opinions. This is the first reason it never grows dull.
3. Bodies and watches: no private space
In a Delhi bus, passengers use one another for comfort. People in northern India find it hard to stand steady in a moving vehicle. So they lean on a neighbour or put an arm round him. Anyone who objects is asked, in a hurt tone, what harm there is in it, since he is not a woman.
A passenger who wants to know the time simply lifts another man's left hand and reads his wristwatch. Chaudhuri wears his watch on the inner side of the wrist, so his wrist gets twisted. The joke is against himself, and that makes it more charming.
4. Conversation with strangers
The buses are full of talk, on public matters and on very private ones, even between strangers. One passenger joked that Chaudhuri's large sola topee (a sun helmet) was heavier than his whole body. Chaudhuri answered that the topee was no larger than the man's own turban. The man then hoped he had not given offence.
On another day his neck itched in the heat, and he kept jerking his head like a bird. The man beside him asked, in English, whether it was a habit or a disease. He even imitated the jerk. Chaudhuri said it was a habit. The stranger then explained that habit is second nature. The scene is comic because both men are so polite and so absurd.
5. Help that nobody asked for
Indian crowds are helpful, sometimes too helpful. Conductors often do not know the roads of Delhi, so passengers give directions. They contradict one another, and each insists that his own route is right. Nobody snatches a newspaper. But passengers politely borrow the pages you are not reading, share them round and return them carefully.
When Chaudhuri waits at the door to get down quickly, others beg him to be patient and even hold his coat-tails. Once the conductor refused his bad rupee coin. A fellow passenger took the coin, gave him a good one-rupee note and pocketed the bad coin himself. Chaudhuri was too amazed to stop him.
6. Drama and quarrels
The bus has its dramas too. A man tugged at Chaudhuri's copy of the Gita. When Chaudhuri resisted, the man scolded him for holding a holy book and behaving so badly, and then shunned him. Once a hysterical young woman tried to jump out of a window, and her husband pulled her back.
Passengers quarrel with each other and with the conductor. One day the driver and the conductor came to blows. The driver walked off to lie on the grass in Edward Park. He came back only after all the passengers had shouted their pleas for some time. No wonder Chaudhuri calls the Delhi bus "a microcosm of our national life" (Nirad C. Chaudhuri).
7. The story at the bus stop
The best scene happens at a bus stop, where buses on some routes come only every twenty minutes or more. An elderly visitor asks him whether he can reach the Red Fort from there. Within minutes the stranger has introduced his son and his daughter, a B.A. student. He adds that he is thinking of her marriage, and that the family has just seen Pandit Nehru.
Then, with a shy smile, he tells the whole story of a lawsuit against his own father. The widowed father had begun living with a woman he had not married, and brought her into the family home. The sons objected, and the father threatened to disinherit them all. The judge advised a settlement out of court. As the bus arrives, the visitor asks for Chaudhuri's address, to send him mangoes from his orchard as thanks for the company.
Why the writing is never dull
| Device | Example from the Indian crowds |
|---|---|
| Real incidents | The wristwatch, the bad rupee, the Gita |
| Dialogue | The question about habit or disease; the lawsuit told at the bus stop |
| Jokes against himself | His twisted wrist, his jerking head, his heavy topee |
| Contrast | Silent London against noisy Delhi |
| Allusion | Pascal's silence of infinite space; the idea of a human comedy |
| Pace | One short scene after another, never a long argument |
The serious point under the humour
Beneath the fun there is a judgement. Chaudhuri calls the whole scene a human comedy. Indians, he says, wipe out the line between public and private life, and they want sympathy from everyone. That is why they find English public behaviour dreary. Yet he does not simply praise. The same warmth invades privacy: strangers twist your wrist, pull at your book and question your health. The reader laughs, and then thinks.
Conclusion. The claim holds for his picture of Indian crowds. Chaudhuri never argues about crowds in the abstract. He shows them in action, scene after scene, and he is often the butt of his own joke. Exact observation, comic dialogue and a sharp contrast with England keep every paragraph alive. Under the laughter lies a real insight: Indian public life is noisy, intrusive and generous all at once.
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