Assignment Paper

Alexander College
History 201 – Winter 2020
Assignment #2
Value: 20% of your final grade (outline 5% + essay 15%)
Due date: April 7, midnight, on canvas
Length: ca. 3000 words. incl. footnotes. Please use a title page and a bibliography
Citations: Chicago Manual Style (footnotes + bibliography)

Context:
Your final assignment is an in-depth textual analysis of Zareer Masani’s 1987 Indian Tales of the Raj. Born in 1947, Masani conducted a radio series on the BBC (British Broadcasting Company), interviewing Indian people about their past experiences living under British rule. The central question of the interview project was to find an answer to: What did Indians (in the 1980s) think of the British previously ruling over India? In his book Indian Tales of the Raj (published in 1987 by BBC Books, London) the author reconstructs unique first-hand memories and personal narratives of more than fifty Indian men and women “who had lived and worked with the British when they were there” (1). These stories describe the authors’ apprenticeships under the sahibs in the major professions, the complex racial barriers they encountered and that divided the rulers from the ruled, the Western education which only encouraged some of the authors’ sense of rebellion, and the ways in which liberal British arguments were turned against the raj by nationalist campaigns to force the British to quit India, to name a few. The authors’ perceptions, fascinating and often touched with humor, are as rich and varied as India itself.

The focus questions are:
1. How do the sources judge and evaluate the British presence in India?
2. What similar and dissimilar views and perceptions of Indians who had lived in and worked for British India do you discern and how do you explain for the similarities or differences?
3. How should we, as historians, treat such historical memories and what are some potential caveats in relying on sources that use hindsight? Are the sources authentic and factual?

Assignment:
In this assignment, you are asked to read most of Indian Tales. To make this essay-research assignment feasible, you are going to work in groups of THREE (randomly generated). Once you are finished, your groups will submit ONE essay. All group members will receive the same grade. This type of group assignment requires you to split the amount of work evenly amongst you. For instance, you should assign the reading of different chapters to individual members; at the same time, you must work closely together as a team, exchanging notes and thoughts before you start writing. You should also construct a coherent thesis statement as a team, and work on an essay outline. As a team, furthermore, you should proofread and edit each other’s work (sections of the essay for instance) several times before you submit your final paper. Keep in mind: though you will split the work amongst yourselves, the expectations for this essay are, in anything, higher compared to a normal essay assignment.

Outline:
On March 31, you must submit a ONE-page essay outline. This can be brief and in bullet form. In your outline, you need to CLEARLY state your argument or thesis (what you want to prove/demonstrate in your paper) as well as a structure of body paragraphs with central points (topic sentences) and evidence to be used in each paragraph. Make sure your paragraphs follow a structure and are logically connected with one another. Your outline is worth 5%

Thesis:
This essay will focuses on the mixed memories of the Indians during the British raj. As we know that Indian were not unified because of their class system and based on this system they got the opportunities from the British like western education, employment, good living condition, clubs, printing press and so on. The rest or the lower class people were treated unfairly and thus, they had negative views for them. Therefore, position and class system in society determined the memories of the Indians. Eventually, western education helped Indian for rebellion against British and new liberal arguments force them to quit India.