NCERT Solutions for Class 9 Social Science Chapter 12 Resistance and Resilience (1000–1700 CE) (PDF) – 2027

Indian rulers protected their lands by fighting invaders directly, by uniting with other rulers, by using the local terrain for guerrilla warfare, and, when it served them, by negotiating with stronger powers.

• Direct military resistance: Queen Nāikī Devī defeated Muhammad Ghūrī at Kasahrada (1178); the Yādavas, Kākatīyas and Hoysālas checked the Delhi Sultanate.
• Confederacies: Rāṇā Sāngā led a Rajput confederacy against Bābur at Khanua (1527).
• Terrain and guerrilla war: Mahārāṇā Pratāp in the Aravallis, the Ahoms on the Brahmaputra (Saraighat, 1671), the Marathas from their hill forts.
• Alliances and negotiation: the Kachhwāhas of Amber allied with the Mughals; Mewar won a treaty that kept its autonomy; the Marathas built a network of tributary alliances.

Resilience, the ability to endure hardship and adapt while keeping one’s traditions, came from several factors working together:

• Geography and local knowledge: the Aravallis for Mewar, Assam’s rivers, forests and monsoons for the Ahoms, the Deccan hills for the Marathas, the river and rocky terrain at Vijayanagara.
• Strong institutions: the Ahom Paik system, Maratha forts, the Sikh Akāl Takht, Khalsa and misals.
• Community support: the Bhils for Mewar; peasants who joined the Sikh and Jat struggles.
• Faith and culture: Bhakti in local languages, nām kīrtan, and temples that were restored or rebuilt.
• Economic strength: farming, irrigation, trade, merchant networks and the hunḍī gave people resources to hold out.

Bhakti brought people together across caste, class, gender and region by making devotion simple, shared and open to all.

• Local languages: hymns in Marathi, Tamil, Awadhi, Assamese and other languages “strengthened shared identities and fostered a sense of solidarity”.
• Community singing: satsang and sankīrtan drew large gatherings and created a shared feeling; Chaitanya Mahāprabhu and Guru Nānak used it to bridge social divides.
• Equality: saints came from many backgrounds, and women such as Akkā Mahādevi, Lāl Ded and Bahinābāī became saints.
• Shared stories: Tulsīdās’s Rāmcharitmānas in Awadhi took the story of Rāma into ordinary homes.
• Collective courage: Chaitanya’s public sankīrtan protested a Qazi’s restrictions.

Even in a time of wars, the economy stayed strong because farming, trade and finance kept growing.

• Agriculture: expanding empires brought more land under cultivation; rope pulleys and the Persian wheel improved irrigation; Vijayanagara invested in small-scale irrigation; temples funded irrigation and gave credit to cultivators.
• Inland trade: caravans linked India with Central Asia; banjārās connected villages with towns.
• Sea trade: seaborne trade grew from the 13th century, and India gradually became a major centre of the Indian Ocean network; later European companies joined it.
• Finance and merchants: the hunḍī allowed safe long-distance payments; merchants in Gujarat, Malabar, Coromandel and Bengal financed trade and even states.

This wealth gave people the resources to resist and recover.

Two actions in the poem that show his independence:

1. He never took part in the Nauroz festival celebrated at the Mughal court. Attending it would have meant joining the emperor’s court as a subordinate noble.
2. He never mounted guard during Jharokha Darshan, the emperor’s public appearance at the palace window. Standing guard there was a duty of nobles who served the emperor.

A third action also fits: he kept his horses unbranded, so they never carried the Mughal mark. By refusing all these duties he showed that he did not accept Mughal authority.

Strategies

• Guerrilla warfare: quick raids and surprise attacks by light cavalry, using the Deccan hills and valleys.
• A network of forts such as Raigad and Sinhagad, used as bases, safe retreats and centres of administration.
• A navy and sea forts to guard the Konkan coast.
• Bold leadership: Śhivājī killed Afzal Khan at the Battle of Pratapgarh (1659).
• Alliances that built a wide network of tributary relationships.

Institutions

• Coronation in 1674 as an independent sovereign, showing the idea of swarājya, or self-rule.
• The Aṣhṭapradhān, a council of eight ministers.
• Chauth and sardeshmukhī, taxes collected from regions outside direct Maratha rule.

The Nayanars (63 devotees of Śhiva) and the Alvars (12 devotees of Viṣhṇu) began the Bhakti movement in the Tamil region and spread it through Tamil hymns.

Practices: many of these saints travelled from temple to temple, singing in praise of the deity of each place. Connection with people: the hymns were in Tamil, set to music and easy to remember. They spoke of love rather than ritual, so people of every caste, and women too, could join in. Collected in the Śhaiva Tirumurai and the Vaiṣhṇava Nālāyira Divya Prabandham, they are still sung today.

The saints in Fig. 3.19 are linked with 14 present-day states and Union Territories:

Sample saint not on the list: Akkā Mahādevi of Karnataka (named on page 66). Sample verse: Narasimha Mehtā’s “Vaiṣhṇava jana to tene kahiye, je pīḍ parāyī jāṇe re” means that a true devotee is one who feels the pain of others. I like it because it makes kindness, not ritual, the test of faith.

Knowing a rule is in the mind: we can remember it and repeat it. Following it is in our actions: we have to act on it every day, even when it is inconvenient, nobody is watching, or we must give something up. Knowing takes memory. Following takes discipline, patience and honesty.

Example: I know that I should not waste food and should switch off the fan when I leave the room. I can explain why: it saves food, money and electricity. But actually doing it every time, especially when I am in a hurry, is much harder.

That is Lāl Ded’s point: true learning shows in how one lives, not in how much one can recite.

A hunḍī let a merchant send money as a piece of paper instead of carrying heavy coins.

• Safety: no coins travelled on long, unsafe roads, so robbers had nothing to steal. The money stayed with the sarrāfs, and only the paper moved.
• Convenience: it was light and easy to carry. There was no need for guards, carts or animals to move large sums.
• Trust: it was handled by well-known networks of sarrāfs (money-changers) and their agents (gumasthas) in many towns, so it was honoured at the other end.
• Large trade: it worked like a bill of exchange, so big deals could be settled without counting out piles of currency.

Together these pillars give a society identity, unity and resources. Even if a ruler is defeated, people keep their way of life and can recover and resist again.

Answer: (b) Resilience enables communities to endure difficulties and sustain resistance.

The chapter calls resilience “the backbone of resistance”: a leader or cause may start a struggle, but the ability to keep it going comes from resilience.

Why: to protect their land, sovereignty, faith and way of life from the expanding Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire, which brought heavy taxes, destruction of sacred sites and, at times, religious persecution.

Some Rajput rulers, such as the Kachhwāhas of Amber, chose alliance because it protected their kingdoms and gave them power within the empire.

• The Mughals were at the peak of their power. Wars were very costly; Chittor fell to Akbar in 1567–68 only after a siege of more than five months.
• Alliance kept their kingdoms and people safe and let them continue to rule their own lands.
• Rank and rewards: the Mughals granted them mansabs (ranks) and high positions in the army and administration.
• Mutual need: the Mughals needed Rajput “military might, their loyalty as well as their administrative strength”, so Rajputs could bargain for good terms.
• Freedom to build: allied rulers could build major structures. Rājā Mān Singh rebuilt the Kashi Vishwanath Temple and patronised the Govind Devji Temple at Vrindavan.

A French trader at Masulipatnam (a model answer):

Securing the cloth: I would order through a local merchant or broker who deals with the weavers. I would show him a sample of the cloth I want, agree on the quantity and the date, and pay part of the price in advance so that the weavers can buy yarn.

Whose help: a dubhaśhī (interpreter) to translate; brokers and merchants who know the weavers, dyers and bleachers; sarrāfs to change my silver into local coins and send payments by hunḍī; and local officials for customs and permission to ship.

Challenges:

• Language: people here speak Telugu and officials use Persian, not French, so I depend on interpreters.
• Quality: weave, length and colour vary, so each bale must be checked.
• Prices: they change with the cotton harvest and demand, and Dutch, English and Indian buyers compete with me.
• Time: ships sail with the monsoon winds, so late delivery can cost a whole season.

Functions of forts (from the chapter):

• Defence: thick walls, hilltop sites and strong gates helped forts withstand long sieges. One gateway at Senji was said to be defensible by a small group against ten thousand.
• Military base: Maratha forts were “strategic nuclei for guerrilla warfare”, places from which to launch swift raids and to retreat to safely.
• Outposts and fallback capitals: frontier forts watched the enemy, and others served as reserve capitals.
• Administration and justice: forts were centres of government and courts.
• Self-sufficiency: water sources, granaries and armouries.
• Symbol of power: capturing a fort meant controlling the region.

How rulers saw them: forts were the key to holding territory. Rāṇā Kumbhā built forts as part of Mewar’s “resistance framework”, and Śhivājī built a network of forts so that losing one never meant total defeat.

Changes (from the 16th century onwards):

• Temples were built in less visible places, along narrow lanes, with entrances that did not open onto main streets.
• Many looked like ordinary houses (havelīs), so historians call them havelī temples.
• Detailed exteriors became less common and tall shikharas were often avoided.
• Examples are found in Delhi, Varanasi and Rajasthan, including the Jagat Shiromani Temple at Amer.

What this shows: communities adapted temple design to avoid destruction but did not give up worship. They also restored and rebuilt sacred sites: the Kashi Vishwanath Temple (by Toḍar Mal and Rājā Mān Singh), the Govind Devji Temple at Vrindavan and the Keshav Dev Temple at Mathura. Changing the form while keeping the faith is resilience.

1. Fertile land gives food and money to hold out. A food surplus can be stored in forts so that soldiers and people survive a long siege. Land revenue pays for soldiers, weapons and repairs, and can win allies. Like the Maratha forts with their water and armouries, the kingdom becomes self-sufficient and can outlast an enemy far from home.

2. Local support and knowledge of the terrain make up for a small army. Instead of fighting the enemy head-on, the kingdom can use guerrilla warfare: ambushes in hills, forests and rivers it knows well, with local people acting as guides, scouts and suppliers. Mahārāṇā Pratāp did this in the Aravallis with the Bhils, and the Ahoms did it with their knowledge of Assam’s rivers, forests and monsoons.

Yes, I agree. A temple or an image can be destroyed, but a song, a prayer or a story that people carry in their hearts and memories cannot.

• Nām kīrtan: when temples were destroyed or their building was restricted, devotees recited the divine Name. This made devotion “less dependent on physical structures that could be destroyed.”
• Songs in local languages: Bhakti hymns in Marathi, Tamil, Kashmiri and other languages were easy to memorise and passed on orally.
• Satsang and sankīrtan: worship could happen wherever people gathered, so it was “more difficult to suppress”.
• Texts in the people’s language: Tulsīdās’s Rāmcharitmānas in Awadhi and Sankardev’s Kīrtana Ghosha went into ordinary homes.
• Devotion in daily life: Bahinābāī followed Bhakti while doing her household duties.

Physical sites still mattered and were restored, but a tradition that lives in people goes wherever they go and survives what happens to buildings.

1. A Bhakti saint

“They broke the temple in our town, and for a while the people wept. But the Lord does not live only in stone. Each evening we gather in the courtyard and sing His Name in our own tongue. The weaver, the potter and the Brahmin sit together, for in devotion no one is higher or lower. They can break walls, but not a song that lives in a hundred hearts. For me, resilience is keeping faith and love alive whatever happens around us.”

2. An Ahom commander

“The Mughal fleet is larger than ours, with big, heavy boats. But this is our river. We know where the Brahmaputra runs fast and narrow, and when the monsoon floods the roads. Our light bāchārī boats strike and vanish. Under the Paik system every village sends men in turn, so our fields are never left empty. They took Garhgaon once, yet we returned. Resilience means we bend like reeds in the flood, and stand again when it passes.”

How the design helps in a long siege:

• The fort stands on a steep hill, ringed by thick defensive walls with round bastions, so enemies cannot easily climb or break in.
• Watchtowers at the corners see an attack coming from every side.
• The bent main gate forces attackers to turn, so they cannot charge with elephants or battering rams.
• A water tank collects rainwater, a step-well reaches groundwater, and the granary stores grain for months, so the people and soldiers can hold out for a long time.
• The administrative area keeps government and the treasury working during the siege.
• A hidden escape route lets messengers go for help and lets the ruler and people escape if needed.