Who among the following stated that 'A just society is that society in which ascending sense of reverence and descending sense of contempt is dissolved into the creation of a compassionate society'?
- (a)Vinoba Bhave
- (b)Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
- (c)Rammanohar Lohia
- (d)Jayaprakash Narayan
Correct — B, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. The sentence is recognisable from its vocabulary rather than from any single speech. 'An ascending scale of reverence and a descending scale of contempt' is Ambedkar's own formula for what caste does to a society: each caste looks up to those above it and down on those below, so that the whole is a graded order held together by pride and disdain rather than by fellow-feeling. He used that description repeatedly in his writing on caste, and the sentence quoted here states the corollary — a just society is one in which that graded ordering has dissolved into compassion. Of the four names offered, only Ambedkar built his social philosophy on the analysis of graded inequality; Vinoba Bhave, Rammanohar Lohia and Jayaprakash Narayan each wrote about equality, but not in these terms.
- (a)Vinoba Bhave — Vinoba Bhave's characteristic vocabulary is that of Bhoodan and Gramdan — voluntary land-giving and village self-rule — not of an ascending and descending scale of caste regard.
- (c)Rammanohar Lohia — Rammanohar Lohia argued for the destruction of caste and for reservation, and coined his own phrases such as the 'seven revolutions', but the graded-reverence formula is not his.
- (d)Jayaprakash Narayan — Jayaprakash Narayan's characteristic themes are Sarvodaya, party-less democracy and Total Revolution; the sentence quoted belongs to the caste analysis rather than to that vocabulary.
Ambedkar's central claim about caste is that it is not merely division of labour but division of labourers into a graded hierarchy, and that the grading is what makes it durable: because every group has someone beneath it, no group has an unmixed interest in destroying the order. From that analysis follows his conception of a just society, built on liberty, equality and fraternity, in which the graded regard is replaced by compassion and shared citizenship.
Quotation-attribution items are answered from vocabulary, not from memory of the sentence. Look for the writer's signature terms. 'Ascending sense of reverence and descending sense of contempt' is a paraphrase of Ambedkar's own description of the caste order, and 'compassionate society' fits his reading of fraternity, which he traced to the Buddhist idea of maitri. Be honest about what can and cannot be certified here: the phrase is thoroughly Ambedkarite and the attribution is standard, but the sentence as printed reads like a compiled restatement rather than a verbatim line from a single identified text, so treat it as an attribution question rather than as a quotation to be located.
- Ambedkar described the caste order as a graded hierarchy in which regard ascends and contempt descends, which is why he held that it could not be reformed piecemeal.
- He moved the Objectives-inspired trinity of liberty, equality and fraternity into the Preamble's vocabulary and traced fraternity to Buddhist thought.
- He chaired the Drafting Committee of the Constituent Assembly, appointed on 29 August 1947.
- He led the Mahad Satyagraha of 1927 for access to the Chavdar tank and publicly burnt the Manusmriti at that gathering.
- He embraced Buddhism at Nagpur on 14 October 1956, a few weeks before his death on 6 December 1956.
- Attributing any sentence about equality to Gandhi or Nehru by reflex; here the vocabulary is specifically Ambedkar's.
- Confusing Ambedkar's fraternity with Sarvodaya, which is the Gandhian and Bhave-Narayan vocabulary.
- Assuming a printed quotation must be traceable word for word to one text; several circulating Ambedkar quotations are compiled restatements.
As a who-said-it item, answered by matching the sentence's distinctive vocabulary to a thinker's known analysis.
According to B. R. Ambedkar, which one among the following Articles is the 'heart and soul' of the Constitution of India?
- (a) Article 15
- (b) Article 21
- (c) Article 23
- (d) Article 32
Answer(d) Article 32
The same examiner testing the same thinker one session earlier — there through a phrase he used in the Constituent Assembly about the right to constitutional remedies, here through his account of what a just society would look like.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Who among the following described caste as a system of graded inequality rather than merely a division of labour?
- (a)M. K. Gandhi
- (b)B. R. Ambedkar
- (c)Vinoba Bhave
- (d)Jayaprakash Narayan
Answer(b) B. R. Ambedkar — his central argument was that caste divides labourers into a graded hierarchy, which is what makes it durable.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The Mahad Satyagraha of 1927, launched for the right to draw water from a public tank, was led by
- (a)Jyotirao Phule
- (b)B. R. Ambedkar
- (c)E. V. Ramasamy
- (d)Narayana Guru
Answer(b) B. R. Ambedkar — the satyagraha at the Chavdar tank at Mahad in Maharashtra.