BharatNotes Exile
noun; verb (transitive)Usage in a UPSC answer
The decision to exile dissidents rather than engage their grievances often hollows out a polity's moral authority, for a government that silences its critics abroad merely exports the dissent it fears at home.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Word Family
exiled (adj), exilic (adj), exile (v), exiles (n pl)
Root
Latin exsilium = state of banishment; exsul = banished person; Old French essil; attested c. 1330
Etymology
From Middle English exil, from Old French essil, from Latin exsilium ("state of banishment"), from exsul ("banished person"); first attested in English c. 1330.
Memory Hook
"Ex-" means OUT, and exile sends you OUT — picture being shown the EXIT and forbidden to come back, marching down a lonely AISLE away from home.
How This Word Works in UPSC Writing
Enforced or self-imposed residence away from one's country. Bose is the case in point, escaping house arrest in Calcutta in January 1941 in disguise and travelling via Peshawar and Kabul to Moscow and then Berlin, before transferring to South-East Asia by submarine in 1943 when a German U-boat handed him to a Japanese vessel in the Indian Ocean. The analytical point for an answer is that exile was a change of theatre rather than a withdrawal from the struggle. It freed him to pursue the strategy the Congress leadership had refused, seeking foreign military assistance on the reasoning that Britain's difficulty was India's opportunity, and it is precisely this willingness to accept Axis help that makes his relationship to the mainstream movement contested, since it separated the goal of independence from the question of whose company one kept in pursuing it.
Don’t Confuse It With
Exile is residence away from one's country, whether imposed or chosen to escape arrest. Banishment or deportation is expulsion by order of the state. Transportation, as to the Andaman Cellular Jail, was a penal sentence of removal, so it is punishment rather than exile in the political sense. A government in exile is an authority claiming to represent a country from outside it, which is what Bose went on to establish.
Hindi Meaning
निर्वासन (nirvāsan); प्रवासी सरकार for a government in exile.
Common Questions
- How did Bose leave India in 1941?
- He escaped house arrest in Calcutta in disguise and travelled through Peshawar and Kabul to Moscow and then Berlin.
- Why is Bose's exile strategy debated?
- Because seeking military assistance from the Axis powers separated the aim of independence from the character of the allies enlisted for it, which the Congress leadership had refused to do.
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