Question

Answer any one among the three;
(i) Explain how the family life in Chawls in Bombay was? And the impacts of social change on their family life?
OR
(ii) Give three significant values that come with silk routes.
OR
(iii) Throw some light on the five features of proto-industrialization.

Answer 1

Hint: Write the answer in points so that it’s easier to remember the points. For Chawls; talk about what Chawls are and how people lived there. Also explain how dingy the place was for the family to live. Social impact brought huge change. For silk routes; trade, exchange of valuable materials, religious exchange. For proto-industrialization; work in the countryside, production of goods, under the control of merchants.

Complete answer:
(i) Chawl’s structure: The structure was of multiple storeys, they were tenements that were separated to form small rooms with no private toilets. The owners of the houses included bankers, merchants or contractors. Rooms were generally shared by fellow castes, relatives or friends due to high rents.

a) Family life: Small houses, so there was no place to do daily activities rather than on the streets. Everything was done in the neighbourhood, including sleeping, cooking or washing. So there was barely any water available and the atmosphere was rather filthy.

b) Social change’s impact: Liquor stores and akharas sprouted up everywhere. In certain instances, the mill jobber often acted as the unofficial community official, settling conflicts, gathering food supply, and arranging informal credit. We know that the changes in the worker's family life is due to changes in his or her social life or cultural life. The old caste-based system of family life was eventually turned into modern urban life.

The Chawls embodied the realities of urban life poverty, with dissatisfaction and destruction of dreams.

(ii) Significant values of Silk routes:
- The silk routes are a clear example of pre-modern commerce and important cultural ties between remote areas of the globe.
- Spices, Chinese pottery, textiles from India and Southeast Asia were transported through this road, and gold and silver were transported from Europe to Asia as a result.
- Religious views were exchanged by the muslim preachers, Buddhist monks and early Christian missionaries that traveled this path.

(iii) Proto-industrialization’s five features: Decentralization of production was there. Even though the work was normally carried out in the countryside, the merchants were originally from towns itself.
- It was all under the control of merchants but the producers of goods were from family businesses.
- The whole family worked together to produce goods.
- The original workers stayed in the countryside.
- Revenue from proto-industrial outputs replaces the peasant’s diminishing income.


Note: Silk routes were commonly used by a good majority of people to proceed with their exchange. Also there are historians that had discovered a number of silk channels which connected Asia's vast regions with Europe and Northern Africa. These have been recorded to have happened before the Christian era.