CAT 2023 QUESTION PAPER WITH ANSWER KEYS (SLOT 01)
Section 01: Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension
Comprehension:
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best
answer for each question.
For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial
novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the
novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for
supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting - land-focused and inward
looking.
My new book "Writing Ocean Worlds" explores another kind of world of the novel: not the
village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the
Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak
Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the
majority of their novels. . . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking full of movement,
border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different - from colonially
inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider
sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the
effect of remapping the world in the reader's mind, as centred in the interconnected global
south. ...
The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the
coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia. These connections were made
possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much
easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily
connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological
evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is
the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book.
For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and
geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found
ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and
whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight
instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi,
Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a
southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world.
1
https://online.bodheeprep.com
, CAT 2023 QUESTION PAPER WITH ANSWER KEYS (SLOT 01)
This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors
and travellers are not all European. . . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are
traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does
not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is
portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery
is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role
in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.
Q. 1)
On the basis of the nature of the relationship between the items in each pair below, choose the
odd pair out:
A. Postcolonial novels : Anti-colonial nationalism
B. Indian Ocean novels : Outward-looking
C. Indian Ocean world : Slavery
D. ostcolonial novels : Border-crossing
Q. 2)
All of the following statements, if true, would weaken the passage's claim about the
relationship between mainstream English-language fiction and Indian Ocean novels EXCEPT:
A. the depiction of Africa in most Indian Ocean novels is driven by a postcolonial nostalgia for
an idyllic past.
B. most mainstream English-language novels have historically privileged the Christian, white,
male experience of travel and adventure.
C. the depiction of Africa in most Indian Ocean novels is driven by an Orientalist imagination of
its cultural crudeness.
D. very few mainstream English-language novels have historically been set in American and
European metropolitan centres.
Q. 3)
Which one of the following statements is not true about migration in the Indian Ocean world?
A. The Indian Ocean world's migration networks were shaped by religious and commercial
histories of the region.
B. Migration in the Indian Ocean world was an ambivalent experience.
C. Geographical location rather than geographical proximity determined the choice of
destination for migrants.
D. The Indian Ocean world's migration networks connected the global north with the global
south.
2
https://online.bodheeprep.com
, CAT 2023 QUESTION PAPER WITH ANSWER KEYS (SLOT 01)
Q. 4)
All of the following claims contribute to the "remapping" discussed by the passage, EXCEPT:
A. the global south, as opposed to the global north, was the first centre of globalisation.
B. cosmopolitanism originated in the West and travelled to the East through globalisation.
C. Indian Ocean novels have gone beyond the specifics of national concerns to explore rich
regional pasts.
D. the world of early international trade and commerce was not the sole domain of white
Europeans.
Comprehension:
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best
answer for each question.
Many human phenomena and characteristics - such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes,
incomes, life expectancies, and other things - are influenced both by geographic factors and by
non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to
geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils,
and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term
culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people....
[T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea ... cannot be
attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] ... They are instead due
entirely to the different [government] policies ... At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other
traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no
agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur
clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic,
rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . Aboriginal Australia
remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming
or herding ... [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no
domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the
crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all non-
native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by
overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices
play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don't react to cultural, historical, and
individual-agent explanations by denouncing "cultural determinism," "historical determinism,"
or "individual determinism," and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any
explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing "geographic determinism" ...
3
https://online.bodheeprep.com
Section 01: Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension
Comprehension:
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best
answer for each question.
For early postcolonial literature, the world of the novel was often the nation. Postcolonial
novels were usually [concerned with] national questions. Sometimes the whole story of the
novel was taken as an allegory of the nation, whether India or Tanzania. This was important for
supporting anti-colonial nationalism, but could also be limiting - land-focused and inward
looking.
My new book "Writing Ocean Worlds" explores another kind of world of the novel: not the
village or nation, but the Indian Ocean world. The book describes a set of novels in which the
Indian Ocean is at the centre of the story. It focuses on the novelists Amitav Ghosh, Abdulrazak
Gurnah, Lindsey Collen and Joseph Conrad [who have] centred the Indian Ocean world in the
majority of their novels. . . Their work reveals a world that is outward-looking full of movement,
border-crossing and south-south interconnection. They are all very different - from colonially
inclined (Conrad) to radically anti-capitalist (Collen), but together draw on and shape a wider
sense of Indian Ocean space through themes, images, metaphors and language. This has the
effect of remapping the world in the reader's mind, as centred in the interconnected global
south. ...
The Indian Ocean world is a term used to describe the very long-lasting connections among the
coasts of East Africa, the Arab coasts, and South and East Asia. These connections were made
possible by the geography of the Indian Ocean. For much of history, travel by sea was much
easier than by land, which meant that port cities very far apart were often more easily
connected to each other than to much closer inland cities. Historical and archaeological
evidence suggests that what we now call globalisation first appeared in the Indian Ocean. This is
the interconnected oceanic world referenced and produced by the novels in my book.
For their part Ghosh, Gurnah, Collen and even Conrad reference a different set of histories and
geographies than the ones most commonly found in fiction in English. Those [commonly found
ones] are mostly centred in Europe or the US, assume a background of Christianity and
whiteness, and mention places like Paris and New York. The novels in [my] book highlight
instead a largely Islamic space, feature characters of colour and centralise the ports of Malindi,
Mombasa, Aden, Java and Bombay. . . . It is a densely imagined, richly sensory image of a
southern cosmopolitan culture which provides for an enlarged sense of place in the world.
1
https://online.bodheeprep.com
, CAT 2023 QUESTION PAPER WITH ANSWER KEYS (SLOT 01)
This remapping is particularly powerful for the representation of Africa. In the fiction, sailors
and travellers are not all European. . . African, as well as Indian and Arab characters, are
traders, nakhodas (dhow ship captains), runaways, villains, missionaries and activists. This does
not mean that Indian Ocean Africa is romanticised. Migration is often a matter of force; travel is
portrayed as abandonment rather than adventure, freedoms are kept from women and slavery
is rife. What it does mean is that the African part of the Indian Ocean world plays an active role
in its long, rich history and therefore in that of the wider world.
Q. 1)
On the basis of the nature of the relationship between the items in each pair below, choose the
odd pair out:
A. Postcolonial novels : Anti-colonial nationalism
B. Indian Ocean novels : Outward-looking
C. Indian Ocean world : Slavery
D. ostcolonial novels : Border-crossing
Q. 2)
All of the following statements, if true, would weaken the passage's claim about the
relationship between mainstream English-language fiction and Indian Ocean novels EXCEPT:
A. the depiction of Africa in most Indian Ocean novels is driven by a postcolonial nostalgia for
an idyllic past.
B. most mainstream English-language novels have historically privileged the Christian, white,
male experience of travel and adventure.
C. the depiction of Africa in most Indian Ocean novels is driven by an Orientalist imagination of
its cultural crudeness.
D. very few mainstream English-language novels have historically been set in American and
European metropolitan centres.
Q. 3)
Which one of the following statements is not true about migration in the Indian Ocean world?
A. The Indian Ocean world's migration networks were shaped by religious and commercial
histories of the region.
B. Migration in the Indian Ocean world was an ambivalent experience.
C. Geographical location rather than geographical proximity determined the choice of
destination for migrants.
D. The Indian Ocean world's migration networks connected the global north with the global
south.
2
https://online.bodheeprep.com
, CAT 2023 QUESTION PAPER WITH ANSWER KEYS (SLOT 01)
Q. 4)
All of the following claims contribute to the "remapping" discussed by the passage, EXCEPT:
A. the global south, as opposed to the global north, was the first centre of globalisation.
B. cosmopolitanism originated in the West and travelled to the East through globalisation.
C. Indian Ocean novels have gone beyond the specifics of national concerns to explore rich
regional pasts.
D. the world of early international trade and commerce was not the sole domain of white
Europeans.
Comprehension:
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best
answer for each question.
Many human phenomena and characteristics - such as behaviors, beliefs, economies, genes,
incomes, life expectancies, and other things - are influenced both by geographic factors and by
non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological factors tied to
geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal species, soils,
and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under the term
culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual people....
[T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea ... cannot be
attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] ... They are instead due
entirely to the different [government] policies ... At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other
traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no
agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur
clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic,
rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . Aboriginal Australia
remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous farming
or herding ... [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has no
domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead, the
crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all non-
native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia by
overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices
play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don't react to cultural, historical, and
individual-agent explanations by denouncing "cultural determinism," "historical determinism,"
or "individual determinism," and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any
explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing "geographic determinism" ...
3
https://online.bodheeprep.com
