Solved Precis - Digital Discite

CSS Solved Precis 2025

1. Distil the passage into a précis and suggest an apt title:

Homi K. Bhabha, a prominent postcolonial scholar, advances a profoundly philosophical yet grounded concept of nationalism, positing that “Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully encounter their horizons in the mind’s eye,” thereby highlighting the complex interplay between the imagined, the mythical, and the material in the construction of national identity. Nations, like narratives, are constructed through historical contingency, shaped by ethnic obsessions and regional affiliations that often obscure their origins. As a result, national identities can become rigid and exclusionary, antagonizing the notion of humanism envisioned by ancient philosophers like Socrates and Plato. This idea has implications for our understanding of humanism, a cornerstone of intellectual traditions from Goethe and Rousseau’s emphasis on the universal human experience to Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd’s advocacy for reason and compassion as bridges between cultures. Al-Ghazali’s “The Alchemy of Happiness” strikes a balance between promoting local identity and warning against provincial, insular nationalism, making him a votary of cultural exchange and understanding. He advocates for an evenhanded approach, balancing love for one’s land with justice for all citizens. In “The Revival of Religious Sciences,” Al-Ghazali emphasizes balancing universalism and particularism, recognizing that national identity must be tempered by justice and equality. By promoting inclusive citizenship, Al-Ghazali offers an antidote to exclusivist nationalist ideologies. By exploring the intersections between nationalism and humanism, Bhabha’s work also encourages us to think critically about how national identities are constructed and imagine new forms of global citizenship prioritizing shared humanity over narrow national interests. However, the rise of nationalism has often led to a narrowing of perspectives, prioritizing regional affiliations over universal values, resulting in a stringent and macho form of patriotism that stifles dissent and creativity. Like a chameleon, nationalism can adapt and change, often blurring the lines between patriotism and xenophobia. Altogether, nationalism is not a bane, its mixed benefits over the last century have been a double-edged sword, yielding a staggering array of positive and negative consequences. On one hand, nations have become increasingly aware of the need to align themselves with pluralism and egalitarian schemes. However, the desire to dominate, as exemplified by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel’s idea of organic borders, continues to have a silent appeal, often manifesting in bizarre and violent forms, such as the recent bloodshed in Palestine and the earlier Bosnian massacre. This scary trail is long and hard to absorb, especially when democracy itself has been exposed as a mere façade, leaving many to blurt out frustrations and disillusionments. As the philosopher Allama Iqbal aptly put it in his famous poem, “The Devil’s Parliament,” democracy is merely the outer crust, while the essence is imperialist. Iqbal’s words ring true, warning us against the uncritical subservience and adoration of nationalism, which can lead to historical myopia, strengthening dictatorial hegemony and incarcerating the human spirit within the narrow confines of love for the land. Perhaps democracy is the safest carrier of the seed of nationalism, transporting it under the guise of economic equality. Still, weaker nations face the political bravado of the powerful leaving the meager nations to be content with mere paeans of love for border and territorial integrity. Imperialism planted the embryo of nationalism, abandoning the wretched children of the earth to fend for themselves, left to navigate the treacherous waters of self-determination. The power of nationalism is a potent form of Volksgeist – a term coined by Johann Gottfried Herder to describe a nation’s unique spirit or character – that can be both unifying and divisive, depending on how it is wielded. In this context, a more frugal and nuanced approach to nationalism is needed, one that balances national pride with a commitment to universal values and human rights.

…

CSS Solved Precis 2025Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2025 Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2024

1. Write a précis of the following passage and suggest a suitable title:

In the heart of bustling cities, urban green spaces stand as oases of tranquility, providing respite from the hustle and bustle. Parks, adorned with vibrant flora, become havens for relaxation and recreation. The greenery offers a sanctuary for diverse wildlife, creating a delicate balance between urban development and environmental preservation. Beyond their aesthetic appeal, city parks play a crucial role in fostering community bonds. Families gather for picnics, friends engage in sports, and individuals find solace amidst nature’s embrace. These communal spaces serve as venues for cultural events, open-air concerts, and art installations, enriching the urban experience. The benefits of urban green spaces extend beyond leisure. They contribute to improved air quality, mitigate the urban heat island effect, and promote overall well-being. Access to nature within city limits becomes a vital aspect of mental health, offering a refuge for introspection and rejuvenation. However, the challenge lies in balancing the increasing urbanization with the preservation of green spaces. Sustainable urban planning becomes imperative to ensure the coexistence of concrete jungles and natural havens. Efforts to create and maintain parks, tree-lined avenues, and green rooftops become integral components of shaping cities that prioritize both human and environmental health. As cities evolve, the preservation and enhancement of urban green spaces become a shared responsibility. The vision is to cultivate urban landscapes that seamlessly integrate nature into the tapestry of city life, fostering a sustainable and harmonious cohabitation between human progress and the environment.

…

CSS Solved Precis 2024Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2024 Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2022

1. Write a précis of the following and suggest a suitable title:

The fear of human beings when faced with the mysteries of life and their weakness by comparison with the vastness of nature created in them a need to communicate with the divine, with the superior powers which they believed regulated the universe and determined their own fates. Knowledge of wishes of the gods was always a sure guide for human behavior. In ancient Greece, the precise nature of these wishes was ‘decoded’ by the art of giving oracles, practiced by soothsayers who had the gift of understanding the signs or signals sent by the gods.

The soothsayers uttered their oracles by interpreting flashes of lightning, rolls of thunder or the flights of certain birds of prey (omens); alternatively, they might observe the direction in which the fire burned when a sacrifice was made, examine the entrails of animals which had just been sacrificed, or base judgments on the sacrificial beast’s willingness to approach the altar. The interpretation of dreams was popular too, and so was palmistry. The most notable soothsayers of ancient Greece were Tiresias, Calchas, Helenus, Amphiaraus and Cassandra.

However, there were abundant instances in which the gods did not manifest themselves to the faithful in the forms of signs but spoke directly to an intermediate who for a short time was overcome by a ‘divine mania’ and transcended his own human essence. Here the prophet– or more usually the prophetess– entered a state of ecstasy in which he or she delivered the message from the gods to the suppliants.

These practices for foreseeing the future were the basis on which the ancient Greek oracles operated. Each oracle was located within a properly-organized sanctuary and was directly associated with one or other of the gods. Apollo was the archetypal soothsayer for the Greeks, the god who was responsible for conveying to mortals the decisions pronounced by Zeus. The most important of the oracles, that at Delphi, delivered the messages with the intervention of Apollo, while the oldest that of Dodona, functioned with the assistance of Zeus.

…

CSS Solved Precis 2022Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2022 Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2021

1. Write a précis of the following and suggest a suitable title:

Nizar Hassan was born in 1960 and raised in the village of Mashhad, near Nazareth, where he has lived with his family. He studied anthropology at Haifa University and after graduating worked in TV. Starting in 1990, he turned to cinema. In 1994, he produced Independence, in which he pokes his Palestinian interlocutors about what they think of the bizarre Israeli notion of their “independence”. They have stolen another people’s homeland and call the act “independence”! Hassan dwells on that absurdity.

As the world’s attention was captured by the news of Israel planning to “annex” yet a bit more of Palestine and add it to what they have already stolen, I received an email from Nizar Hassan, the pre-eminent Palestinian documentary filmmaker. He wrote to me about his latest film, My Grandfather’s Path, and included a link to the director’s cut. It was a blessing. They say choose your enemies carefully for you would end up like them. The same goes for those opposing Zionist settler colonialists. If you are too incensed and angered by their daily dose of claptrap, the vulgarity of their armed robbery of Palestine, you would soon become like them and forget yourself and what beautiful ideas, ideals, and aspirations once animated your highest dreams. Never fall into that trap. For decades, aspects of Palestinian and world cinema, art, poetry, fiction, and drama have done for me precisely that: saved me from that trap. They have constantly reminded me what all our politics are about – a moment of poetic salvation from it all.

Nizar Hassan’s new documentary is one such work – in a moment of dejection over Israel’s encroachment on Palestinian rights and the world’s complicity, it has put Palestine in perspective. The film is mercifully long, beautifully paced and patient, a masterfully crafted work of art – a Palestinian’s epic ode to his homeland. A shorter version of My Grandfather’s Path has been broadcast on Al Jazeera Arabic in three parts, but it must be seen in its entirety, in one go. It is a pilgrimage that must not be interrupted.

…

CSS Solved Precis 2021Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2021 Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2018

1. Write a précis of the following passage in about 120 words and also suggest a suitable title: (20)

It is in the temperate countries of northern Europe that the beneficial effects of cold are most manifest. A cold climate seems to stimulate energy by acting as an obstacle. In the face of an insuperable obstacle our energies are numbed by despair; the total absence of obstacles, on the other hand leaves no room for the exercise and training of energy; but a struggle against difficulties that we have a fair hope of over-coming, calls into active operation all our powers. In like manner, while intense cold numbs human energies, and a hot climate affords little motive for exertion, moderate cold seems to have a bracing effect on the human race. In a moderately cold climate man is engaged in an arduous, but no hopeless struggles and with the inclemency of the weather. He has to build strong houses and procure thick clothes to keep himself warm. To supply fuel for his fires, he must hew down trees and dig coal out of the earth. In the open air, unless he moves quickly, he will suffer pain from the biting wind. Finally, in order to replenish the expenditure of bodily tissue caused by his necessary exertions, he has to procure for himself plenty of nourishing food.

Quite different is the lot of man in the tropics. In the neighbourhood of the equator there is little need of clothes or fire, and it is possible with perfect comfort and no danger to health, to pass the livelong day stretched out on the bare ground beneath the shade of a tree. A very little fruit or vegetable food is required to sustain life under such circumstances, and that little can be obtained without much exertion from the bounteous earth.

We may recognize must the same difference between ourselves at different seasons of the year, as there is between human nature in the tropics and in temperate climes. In hot weather we are generally languid and inclined to take life easily; but when the cold season comes, we find that we are more inclined to vigorous exertion of our minds and bodies.

…

CSS Solved Precis 2018Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2018 Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2017

1. Write a précis of the following passage and also suggest a suitable title:

All the evils in this world are brought about by the persons who are always up and doing, but do not know when they ought to be up nor what they ought to be doing. The devil, I take it, is still the busiest creature in the universe, and I can quite imagine him denouncing laziness and becoming angry at the smallest waste of time. In his kingdom, I will wager, nobody is allowed to do nothing, not even for a single afternoon. The world, we all freely admit, is in a muddle but I for one do not think that it is laziness that has brought it to such a pass. It is not the active virtues that it lacks but the passive ones; it is capable of anything but kindness and a little steady thought. There is still plenty of energy in the world (there never were more fussy people about), but most of it is simply misdirected. If, for example, in July 1914, when there was some capital idling weather, everybody, emperors, Kings, arch dukes, statesmen, generals, journalists, had been suddenly smitten with an intense desire to do nothing, just to hang about in the sunshine and consume tobacco, then we should all have been much better off than we are now. But no, the doctrine of the strenuous life still went unchallenged; there must be no time wasted; something must be done. Again, suppose our statesmen, instead of rushing off to Versailles with a bundle of ill-digested notions and great deal of energy to dissipate had all taken a fortnight off, away from all correspondence and interviews and what not, and had simply lounged about on some hillside or other apparently doing nothing for the first time in their energetic lives, then they might have gone to their so-called peace conference and come away again with their reputations still unsoiled and the affairs of the world in good trim. Even at the present time, if half of the politicians in Europe would relinquish the notion that laziness is crime and go away and do nothing for a little space, we should certainly gain by it. Other examples come crowding into mind. Thus, every now and then, certain religious sects hold conferences; but though there are evils abroad that are mountains high, though the fate of civilization is still doubtful, the members who attend these conferences spend their time condemning the length of ladies’ skirts and the noisiness of dance bands. They would all be better employed lying flat on their backs somewhere, staring at the sky and recovering their mental health.

…

CSS Solved Precis 2017Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2017 Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2015

1. Make a précis of the following text and suggest a suitable title. (20)

In studying the breakdowns of civilizations, the writer has subscribed to the conclusion — no new discovery! — that war has proved to have been the proximate cause of the breakdown of every civilization which is known for certain to have broken down, in so far as it has been possible to analyze the nature of these breakdowns and to account for their occurrence. Like other evils, war has an insidious way of appearing not intolerable until it has secured such a stronghold upon the lives of its addicts that they no longer have the power to escape from its grip when its deadliness has become manifest. In the early stages of a civilization’s growth, the cost of wars in suffering and destruction might seem to be exceeded by the benefits accruing from the winning of wealth and power and the cultivation of the “military virtues”; and, in this phase of history, states have often found themselves able to indulge in war with one another with something like impunity even for the defeated party. War does not begin to reveal its malignity till the war-making society has begun to increase its economic ability to exploit physical nature and its political ability to organize man-power; but, as soon as this happens, the god of war to which the growing society has long since been dedicated proves himself a Moloch by devouring an ever larger share of the increasing fruits of man’s industry and intelligence in the process of taking an ever larger toll of life and happiness; and, when the society’s growth in efficiency reaches a point at which it becomes capable of mobilizing a lethal quantum of its energies and resources for military use, then war reveals itself as being a cancer which is bound to prove fatal to its victim unless he can cut it out and cast it from him, since its malignant tissues have now learnt to grow faster that the healthy tissues on which they feed.

In the past, when this danger-point in the history of the relations between war and civilization has been reached and recognized, serious efforts have sometimes been made to get rid of war in time to save society, and these endeavours have been apt to take one or other of two alternative directions. Salvation cannot, of course, be sought anywhere except in the working of the consciences of individual human beings; but individuals have a choice between trying to achieve their aims through direct action as private citizens and trying to achieve them through indirect action as citizens of states. A personal refusal to lend himself in any way to any war waged by his state for any purpose and in any circumstances is a line of attack against the institution of war that is likely to appeal to an ardent and self-sacrificing nature; by comparison, the alternative peace strategy of seeking to persuade and accustom governments to combine in jointly resisting aggression when it comes and in trying to remove its stimuli before hand may seem a circuitous and unheroic line of attack on the problem. Yet experience up to date indicates unmistakably, in the present writer’s opinion, that the second of these two hard roads is by far the more promising.

…

CSS Solved Precis 2015Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2015 Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2014

1. Make a précis of the following passage and suggest a suitable heading.

Probably the only protection for contemporary man is to discover how to use his intelligence in the service of love and kindness. The training of human intelligence must include the simultaneous development of the empathic capacity. Only in this way can intelligence be made an instrument of social morality and responsibility – and thereby increase the chances of survival.
The need to produce human beings with trained morally sensitive intelligence is essentially a challenge to educators and educational institutions. Traditionally, the realm of social morality was left to religion and the churches as guardians or custodians. But their failure to fulfil this responsibility and their yielding to the seductive lures of the men of wealth and pomp and power are documented by history of the last two thousand years and have now resulted in the irrelevant “God Is Dead” theological rhetoric. The more pragmatic men of power have had no time or inclination to deal with the fundamental problems of social morality. For them simplistic Machiavellianism must remain the guiding principle of their decisions – power is morality, morality is power. This over-simplification increases the chances of nuclear devastation. We must therefore hope that educators and educational institutions have the capacity, the commitment and the time to in-still moral sensitivity as an integral part of the complex pattern of functional human intelligence. Some way must be found in the training of human beings to give them the assurance to love, the security to be kind, and the integrity required for a functional empathy.

…

CSS Solved Precis 2014Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2014 Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2013

1. Make a précis of the following passage and suggest a suitable heading.

Culture, in human societies, has two main aspects; an external, formal aspect and an inner, ideological aspect. The external forms of culture, social or artistic, are merely an organized expression of its inner ideological aspect, and both are an inherent component of a given social structure. They are changed or modified when this structure is changed or modified and because of this organic link they also help and influence such changes in their parent organism. Cultural problems, therefore, cannot be studied or understood or solved in isolation from social problems, i.e. problems of political and economic relationships. The cultural problems of the underdeveloped countries, therefore, have to be understood and solved in the light of the larger perspective, in the context of underlying social problems. Very broadly speaking, these problems are primarily the problems of arrested growth; they originate primarily from long years of imperialist–Colonialist domination and the remnants of a backward outmoded social structure. This should not require much elaboration. European Imperialism caught up with the countries of Asia, Africa or Latin America between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some of them were fairly developed feudal societies with ancient traditions of advanced feudal culture. Others had yet to progress beyond primitive pastoral tribalism. Social and cultural development of them all was frozen at the point of their political subjugation and remained frozen until the coming of political independence. The culture of these ancient feudal societies, in spite of much technical and intellectual excellence, was restricted to a small privileged class and rarely intermingled with the parallel unsophisticated folk culture of the general masses. Primitive tribal culture, in spite of its childlike beauty, had little intellectual content. Both feudal and tribal societies living contiguously in the same homelands were constantly engaged in tribal, racial, and religious or other feuds with their tribal and feudal rivals. Colonialist–imperialist domination accentuated this dual.

…

CSS Solved Precis 2013Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2013 Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2012

1. Write a précis of the following passage and suggest a suitable title.

One of the most ominous and discreditable symptoms of the want of candour in present-day sociology is the deliberate neglect of the population question. It is, or should be, transparently clear that, if the state is resolved, on humanitarian grounds, to inhibit the operation of natural selection, some rational regulation of population, both as regards quality and quantity, is imperatively necessary. There is no self-acting adjustment, apart from starvation, of numbers to the means of subsistence. If all natural checks are removed, a population in advance of the optimum number will be produced and maintained at the cost of a reduction in the standard of living. When this pressure begins to be felt, that section of the population which is capable of reflection and which has a standard of living which may be lost will voluntarily restrict its numbers, even to the point of failing to replace death by an equivalent number of new births; while the underworld, which always exists in every civilized society ____ The failure and misfits and derelicts, moral and physical _____ will exercise no restraint and will be a constantly increasing drain upon the national resources. The population will thus be recruited in a very undue proportion by those strata of society which do not possess the qualities of useful citizens.

The importance of the problem would seem to be sufficiently obvious. But politicians know that the subject is unpopular. The urban have no votes. Employers are like a surplus of labour, which can be drawn upon when trade is good. Militarists want as much food for powder as they can get. Revolutionists instinctively oppose any real remedy for social evils; they know that every unwanted child is a potential insurgent. All three can appeal to a Quasi-Religious prejudice, resting apparently on the ancient theory of natural rights which were supposed to include the right of unlimited procreation. This objection is now chiefly urged by celibate or childless priests; but it is held with such fanatical vehemence that the fear of losing the votes which they control is a welcome excuse for the baser sort of politicians to shelve the subject as inopportune. The socialist calculation is probably erroneous; for experience has shown that it is aspiration, not desperation, that makes revolutions.

…

CSS Solved Precis 2012Read More »

CSS Solved Precis 2012 Read More »