PASSAGE 1

As institutions go, the Ku Klux Klan has had a markedly up-and-down history. It was founded in the
immediate aftermath of the Civil War by six former Confederate soldiers in Pulaski, Tennessee. The six young men,
four of whom were budding lawyers, saw themselves as merely a circle of like-minded friends - thus the name they
chose, "Kuklux," a slight mangling of 'kuklos', the Greek word for "circle." They added "Klan" because they were all
of Scottish-Irish descent. In the beginning, their activities were said to be harmless midnight pranks - riding horses
through the countryside while draped in white sheets and pillowcase hoods. But soon the Klan evolved into a multi-
state terrorist organization designed to frighten and kill emancipated slaves. Among its regional leaders were five
former Confederate generals; its staunchest supporters were the plantation owners for whom the Reconstruction
posed an economic and political nightmare. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant spelled out for the House of
Representatives the true aims of the Ku Klux Klan: "By force and terror, to prevent all political action not in accord
with the views of the members, to deprive colored citizens of the right to bear arms and right of a free ballot, to
suppress the schools in which colored children were taught; and to reduce the colored people to a condition closely
allied to that of slavery."
The early Klan did its work through pamphleteering, lynching, shooting, burning, castrating, pistol-whipping,
and a thousand other forms of intimidation. They targeted former slaves and any whites who supported the blacks'
rights to vote, acquire land, or gain an education. Within barely a decade, however, the Klan had been extinguished,
largely by legal and military interventions out of Washington, D. C.
But, if the Klan itself was defeated, its aims had largely been achieved through the establishment of Jim
Crow laws. The Congress, which during the Reconstruction, had been quick to enact measures of legal, social, and
economic freedom for blacks, just as quickly began to roll them back. The federal government agreed to withdraw
its occupation troops from the South, allowing the restoration of white rule. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the U. S.
Supreme Court gave the go-ahead to full-scale racial segregation.
The Ku Klux Klan lay largely dormant until 1915, when, D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation' -originally
titled The Clansman' - helped spark its rebirth. Griffith presented the Klan as crusaders for white civilization itself,
and as one of the noblest forces in American history. The film quoted a line from 'A History of the American People',
written by a renowned historian: "At last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of
the South, to protect the Southern country." The book's author was U. S. President Woodrow Wilson, a onetime
scholar and president of Princeton University.
By the 1920s, a revived Klan claimed eight million members, including president Warren G. Harding, who
reportedly took his Klan oath in the Green Room of the White House. This time around, the Klan was not confined
to the South but ranged throughout the country; this time, it concerned itself not only with blacks but also with
Catholics, Jews, communists, unionists, immigrants, agitators, and other disrupters of the status quo. In 1933, with
Hitler ascendant in Germany, Will Rogers was the first to draw a line between the new Klan and the new threat in
Europe: "Papers all state Hitler is trying to copy Mussolini" he wrote, "looks to me like it's the Ku Klux that he is
copying."
The onset of World War II and a number of internal scandals once again laid the Klan low. Public sentiment
turned against the Klan as the unity of a country at war trumped its message of separatism. But, within a few years,
there were already signs of massive revival. As wartime anxiety gave way to postwar uncertainty, the Klan
membership flourished. Barely two months after V-J Day, the Klan in Atlanta burned a 300 foot cross on the face of
Stone Mountain, site of a storied rock carving of Robert E. Lee. The extravagant cross burning, one Klansman later
said, was intended "just to let the niggers know the war is over and that the Klan is back on the market."
Atlanta had by now become the Klan headquarters. The Klan held great sway with key Georgia politicians,
and its Georgia chapters included many policemen and sheriff's deputies. Yes, the Klan was a secret society,
reveling in passwords, and cloak-and-dagger ploys, but its real power lay in the very public fear that it fostered -
exemplified by the open secret that the Ku Klux Klan and the law-enforcement establishment were brothers-in-arms.
Atlanta - the Imperial City of the KKK's Invisible Empire, in Klan jargon - was also home to Stetson Kennedy,
a thirty-year-old man with the bloodlines of a Klansman but a temperament that ran opposite. He came from a
prominent southern family whose ancestors included two signers of the Declaration of Independence, an officer in
the Confederate Army, and John B. Stetson, founder of the famed hat company and the man for whom Stetson
University was named.
Stetson Kennedy grew up in a fourteen room house in Jackson Ville, Florida, the youngest of five children.
His uncle Brady was a Klansman, but he got his first real exposure to the Klan when the family's maid, Flo, who had
pretty much raised Stetson, was tied to a tree, beaten, and raped by a gang of Klansmen. Her offense: talking back
to a white trolley driver who had shortchanged her.
Because Kennedy couldn't fight in World War II - he had a bad back since childhood - he felt compelled to
defend his country at home. Its worst enemy, he believed, was bigotry. Kennedy became a self-described "dissident
at large," writing anti-bigotry articles and books. He became close friends with Woody Guthrie, Richard Wright, and
a host of other Progressive men; Jean-Paul Sartre published his work in France.
 Writing did not come easily to Kennedy, or happily. He was, at root, a country boy who would rather have
been off fishing the swamps. But he was afflicted by a foolhardy devotion to his cause. Kennedy would go on to
become the only gentile member of the Anti Defamation League's postwar effort to smite bigotry. (He coined the
phrase "From Power," a centerpiece of the ADL's peer-pressure campaign, which encouraged people to pointedly
frown when they heard bigoted speech.) He became the only white correspondent for the Pittsburgh Courier, the
country's largest black newspaper. (He wrote a column about the race struggle in the South under the pseudonym
'Daddy Mention' - a black folk hero who, as myth told it, could out run the blast of a sheriff's shotgun.)
What drove Kennedy was a hatred of small-mindedness, ignorance, obstructionism, and intimidation -which,
in his view, were displayed by no organization more proudly than by the Ku Klux Klan. Kennedy saw the Klan as the
terrorist arm of the white establishment itself. This struck him as an intractable problem, for a variety of reasons.
The Klan was in cahoots with political, business, and law-enforcement leaders. The public was frightened and felt
powerless to a act against the Klan. And the few anti-hate groups that existed at the time had little leverage or even
information about the Klan. As Kennedy later wrote, he was particularly chagrined by one key fact about the Klan:
"Almost all of the things written on the subject were editorials, not exposes. The writers were against the Klan, all
right, but they had precious few inside facts about it."
1. Who founded the Ku Klux Klan?
a) The soldiers
b) Mr.Klux
c) The lawyers
d) None of these
2. Why was the word 'Klan' added to Ku Klux Klan?
a) because it looked good
b) because it is a Scottish-Irish word
c) because the founders of the Ku Klux Klan were from Scottish-Irish descent
d) because the group conducted harmless activities
3. What is the Ku Klux Klan?
a) it is an organization
b) it was established by five lawyers
c) it is a terrorist group
d) all of these
4. Which of the following was not among the early activities of the Klan?
a) pamphleteering, lynching, and shooting
b) burning, and castrating
c) pistol-whipping and intimidation
d) making groups of Negros
5. What gave rebirth to the Klan?
a) the injustice against Whites
b) the movie, The Birth of a Nation
c) the contemporary American policies
d) none of these
6. What brought the Klan down again?
a) the anti Klan activities
b) Hitler
c) the Jews
d) the World War II
7. Who wrote under the pseudonym "Daddy Mention"?
a) Stetson Kennedy
b) the Ku Klux Klan
c) Will Rogers
d) none of these

PASSAGE 2
For a thousand years, the crosscurrents of competing empires have lapped at the borders of Kashmir: Delhi
to the south, Kabul to the west, the Turks and the Mongols from the vast plains in the north, China and Tibet to the
east. Yet, traveling at a speed much greater than the pace of any cavalry, and with an impact far more lasting than
the turn of a battle, were ideas and influences. It was an age of change, and no defence, natural or man-made, has
yet been created to block the passages to the human mind. A strange and wondrous combination of events - the
arrival of a Musawi Saiyyid, disciple of the Sufi divine Shah Niamatullah Farsi of the Suhrawardy order; the presence
of an adventure driven by a dream from his native Swat (now in Pakistan); the death of the great Kublai Khan in
distant Beijing, to name but three - created the conditions for the establishment of first Islam, and then Muslim rule in
the Valley of Kashmir by the fourteenth century.
Mahmud of Ghazni brought the sword of Islam in 1015; the steel clattered against the cold stone of the
Himalayas and retreated. Three hundred years later, Saiyyid Bilal Shah, immortal in the memory of the people as
Bulbul Shah, brought the love and compassion of Islam; and the faith continues to flourish to this day. Some
conversions had, of course, taken place earlier: Marco Polo mentions the presence of Muslims in Kashmir around
1277. It was inevitable that the mercurial rise and consolidation of Islam in Central Asia would seep through the
Pamirs, but it was not until Bulbul Shah came in the reign of King Sahadeva that the message took root among the
masses. By the time Bulbul Shah passed away in 1327, the king, the king's brother, the commander-in-chief of the
army were Muslims, and the first mosque of Kashmir, below the fifth bridge in Srinagar, now called Bulbul Langar,
had been constructed. In fact, he was buried near the mosque. In an adjoining grave lies the body of his disciple,
Mulla Ahmed, who became the first Sheikh-ul-lslam of Kashmir and whose two books, Fatwa-i-Shihabi and Shihab-i-
Saqib are an important contributions to scholarship. Bulbul Shah's most dramatic convert was the king himself. This
ruler also happened to be the king Kashmir had been waiting for.
The great Changez Khan never reached Kashmir though he did knock on its door after Tibet fell to him in
1203. It was left to Kublai Khan (1260-1294) to extend the stability of proper Mongol administration to this vast,
remote and frozen plateau. On the edge of this Tibetan plateau lay Little and Great Bhanttaland, corresponding to
modern Baltistan and Ladakh. Kublai Khan appointed the local Bhantta royal family to administer in his name, and
there was peace during the three decades of Kublai Khan's rule. But no sooner did the news of the Khan's death
reach this remote edge of the vast domain, than the local passions which had been subdued by the force of empire
erupted once again. The tribes launched into a familiar internecine war. The Baltis revolted against Beijing's viceroy,
Lha-Chen-Dugos Grub. Lha-Chen lost both the battle and his life, and his handsome young warrior son was forced
to flee Ladakh. And that was how the chain reaction beginning from Kublai Khan's death brought the young Rinchin
across the Zojila Pass into Kashmir.
The first important village that Rinchin reached after crossing the Sonamarg valley was called Gagangir,
distinguished by the castle of Rama Chandra, the commander-in-chief of Sahadeva's army as well as prime
minister. Rinchin found shelter and service in Rama Chandra's castle. The minister-general's hospitality must have
been encouraged by the sight of several hundred Bhantta fighting men under Rinchin's command. Those were
turbulent times; and only a very naive or a very rash man would have spumed a readily available private army. In
fact, another foreigner with a similar body of men was already in service in that castle, awaiting the moment when
he and his force would be needed.
Shah Mir's story is out of Ripley's Believe It or Not. This young man from the near inaccessible valley of Swat, had a
dream one night, in which, a holy man told him to go to Kashmir where he would one day become king. Shah
Mir clearly belonged to that rare category of men which insists on making dreams come true. Without wasting any
time, without pausing to wonder how or why an unknown wanderer could become king, Shah Mir collected his family
and followers, and came to Sahadeva's court where he made an immediate impression on Rama Chandra.
Understanding each other better, perhaps, than Rama Chandra understood either of them, Rinchin and Shah Mir
became very good friends. Rinchin also fell deeply in love with Kota, Rama Chandra's beautiful daughter who, we
shall discover, had a very intelligent attitude towards power. Kota reciprocated this love.
Those eight months of Dulacha, as we have seen, were the hinge on which this story moves. The betrayal of
Sahadeva left Rama Chandra holding the fort; and he did that a bit too literally, simply shutting himself up in his
castle while the people all around were getting butchered. It was during this brutal crisis that a Buddhist refugee
from Ladakh, and a Muslim adventurer from Swat, with no blood or emotional ties to Kashmir, came to the help of
the people. Along with Kota, Rinchin and Shah Mir organized what little resistance they could. They might not have
been able to do very much, but the people were never to forget those who had been at their side, and never to
forgive those who had run away.
Rama Chandra assumed the title of king in the vacuum left by Dulacha's departure. Sahadeva, with the help
of a Kishtwar tribe which had given him shelter, the Gaddis, attempted to seize Srinagar and was driven back. But
Rama Chandra was hardly the hero the people were searching for, either. Sensing the mood, Rinchin struck.
Disguised as pedlars, his Ladakhi followers entered the palace, slipped into the king's chambers and killed him. With
Shah Mir at his side, and the people behind him, Rinchin became lord of Kashmir on 6 October 1320. Kota quickly
put aside what reservations she might have had about her father's murderer and became Rinchin's queen.
He proved an astute ruler. He moved quickly to protect what he had seized, and on every flank, beginning
with the people. He ensured their goodwill with an intensive relief and rehabilitation programme, essential after the
devastation by Dulacha. His soldiers quelled fresh marauders, like the notorious tribe of Lavanyas (now Lons), and
established what Kashmir thirsted for most: peace. Order and justice were the principal achievements of Rinchin's
reign, which Pandit Jonaraja calls a "golden age". As for enemies at the top, he eliminated them - not by the sword,
but by the far more sensible device of offering them a share of power. And since Rama Chandra's.family was an
obvious source of danger, he offered his son the posts Rama Chandra had held under Sahadeva. The offer was
accepted.
But there was a personal frontier yet to be crossed, a delicate one. Rinchin was a Buddhist, and he was
conscious of the fact that a king could not belong to a faith which did not enjoy mass support. Buddhism had
virtually disappeared; Hinduism was again the dominant creed while Islam had begun to get a growing number of
adherents. Rinchin decided that he had no option but to worship the Lord Shiva, and sent word to Deva Swami,
head priest of the Shaiva Hindus.
A solemn conclave was summoned by the pandits, and with great solemnity they informed King Rinchin that
conversion to Hinduism was not possible. Why? They could not decide which caste in the hierarchy to place Rinchin
in.
The folly of the pandits provided Shah Mir with the opportunity he had been waiting for. He offered Islam as
the answer to his friend's confusion. They argued through the night, as Rinchin weighed the personal and political
implications. The two friends decided to leave the final decision to the morning.
1. What were the events that, in combination, led to the acceptance of Islam and then Muslim rule in Kashmir?
a) arrival of Musawi, Shah Farsi and Kublai Khan
b) death of Khan, arrival of Musami, and Shah Farsi
c) arrival of Musami, Shah Mir"s dream, and death of Kublai Khan.
d) death of Shah Farsi, arrival of Musawi, and Kublai Khan
2. What shows that even before the arrival of Bulbul Shah, Muslims were there in Kashmir?
a) the presence of Ghazni
b) construction of the first Muslim mosque
c) Marco Polo's statements mentioning presence of Muslims
d) none of these
3. Which of the following cannot be inferred from the line, "But Rama Chandra was hardly the hero to whom
people were looking for", in the passage?
a) people never forgive those who had run away
b) people never forget those who had been at their side.
c) Ramachandra simply shut himself up in his castle while people all around were being butchered
d) the betrayal of Sahadeva left Rama Chandra holding the fort
4. How did Rinchin become the king of Kashmir?
a) by killing Shah Mir
b) by marrying the King's daughter 'Kota'
c) the King himself crowned Rinchin, the king
d) by killing Rama Chandra with the help of his daughter, Kota and Shah Mir
5. Which skill of Rinchin is being demonstrated in the eighth paragraph by the author?
a) political Skill
b) diplomatic Skill
c) statesmanship
d) all of these
6. Why was Rinchin's conversion to Hinduism not possible?
a) because Rinchin killed a Hindu king
b) because Rinchin was a Buddhist
c) because Rinchin had a Muslim friend
d) because it was difficult for the Pandits to decide which caste in the hierarchy should they place Rinchin in.
7. "........the chain reaction beginning from Kublai Khan's death." What chain reaction is being discussed by the
author?
a) Kublai Khan's death and the arrival of Rinchin.
b) Kublai Khan's death and the defeat of Lha-Chen.
c) Kublai Khan's death and the rise of Baltis revolt.
d) Kublai Kahn's death resulting in the Baltis revolt, which caused the defeat of Lha-Chen and his son's exile,
culminating in the arrival of Rinchin in Kashmir.