Q1 · UPPSC PCS Mains 2020 · Essay · 50 marks · ~700 words in the hall · 2 min read

Q2 →

Sociality of Literature.

Topic: Literature, culture, society and polity. Syllabus: Section A — Literature and Culture; the Social sphere; the Political sphere. Same official PYQ from year-wise 2020 and Literature, culture, society and polity.

Essay map

Opening scene

Anecdote

A locked-down reader in a UP town opens a novel because the street is shut. Literature’s sociality did not die. It moved into a room that still needed a we — a language, a caste, a rumour the book could argue with. Sociality is the ‘we’ a page is willing to carry — not a club of taste.

Keep this in every paragraph

One stand

  • Sociality: made in a society, read as a society, able to change a we. 2020: isolation as a test.

Use once, in a scene — do not dump names

Quotes to earn

  • Premchand

    A social wound in a form.

  • Tagore

    A public of letters.

Turn each heading into a full paragraph in the hall

Heading map

What the line is asking

  • Sociality: relation, a public, a moral weather.
  • Literature: form that carries that weather.

Language / market

  • Hindi, a translation, a cancelled mushaira.

The counter

A purely private lyric still uses a social tongue. And a ‘social’ novel that is only a pamphlet loses the social of art.

A we on the page

  • Who is allowed into the sentence: a labourer, a woman, a dialect.
  • Market taste can shrink the we; a small magazine can widen it.
  • Censorship and a mob are anti-sociality in the name of society.
  • Form still matters: a slogan is not a public.

Drop one peg where it fits — not a data dump

Value addition

  • Art. 19 A book as a social act.
  • Sahitya Akademi An official we of literature.
  • Lockdown / library Sociality under a shut street.

Last 8–10 lines in the exam

Last paragraph

Literature’s sociality is the size of the ‘we’ on the page. A cupboard story that lets a child see a hunger is already a public. A bestseller that sells a caste as a joke is also social — a cruel we. Do not confuse society with a ministry, or sociality with a pamphlet. Keep craft; refuse a literature that only flatters a club. Censorship in the name of ‘hurt’ can be anti-social. In the last paragraph, put a we on the page that includes the person the statistic hid. That is sociality — a seeing, not a membership form.

Quick related

Students also ask

  • Caste System in 21st Century: Problem and Challenges.

    Next question in the 2020 paper (Q2). View answer →

  • Full 700-word essay?

    No. Map only. In the hall, grow each heading; write in English or Hindi, not both.

  • Tone?

    Literary. One room, one we. Not a sociology dump.

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