A student was interested in studying problems faced by Indian soldiers during the Kargil War. She interviews several soldiers who took part in the Kargil War. These soldiers can be considered

A student was interested in studying problems faced by Indian soldiers during the Kargil War. She interviews several soldiers who took part in the Kargil War. These soldiers can be considered Correct Answer Primary sources

The sources from where we get information are called information sources and these comprise documents, humans, institutions as well as mass media like newspapers, radio, and television. We can group information sources into two broad categories as follows:

  • Documentary Sources:- All recorded sources of information irrespective of their contents and forms come under documentary sources. These may be published or unpublished, in print or in electronic form. These may be books, periodicals, magazines, and others.
  • Non-documentary Sources:- Non-documentary sources of information are those sources that are not recorded in any form.

​Important Points

Based on the information contents and organisational level documentary sources can be grouped into:

  1.  Primary source
  2. Secondary source
  3. Tertiary source

Key Points

A student was interested in learning more about the issues that Indian soldiers experienced during the Kargil War. She speaks with a number of troops who fought in the Kargil War. These soldiers are the main sources of information.

  • Primary sources are those sources that contain original material that has been published, reported, or recorded for the first time and have not been interpreted, commented upon, summarised, translated, or evaluated by a secondary party.
  • Primary sources include new raw data, a new interpretation of previously known facts or ideas, any new observation or experiment, etc.
  • It provides first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation.
  • They are created by participants who experienced the events or conditions.
  • They are characterised by their content, regardless of whether they are available in the original format.

Hint 

  • Secondary sources of information are mostly dependent upon primary sources of information for their existence. They usually present the contents of primary documents in condensed form or list them in a helpful way so that the existence of primary documents are known and access to them is made easy.

Hence, it is concluded that these soldiers can be considered the primary sources.

Related Questions

A passage is given with five questions following it. Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given fouralternatives. Teaching about compassion and empathy in schools can help deal with problems of climate change and environmental degradation,” says Barbara Maas, secretary,
Standing Committee for Environment and Conservation, International Buddhist Confederation (IBC). She was in New Delhi to participate in the IBCs governing
council meeting, December 10-11, 2017. “We started an awareness campaign in the year 2005-2006 with H H The Dalai Lama when we learnt that tiger skins were
being traded in China and Tibet. At that time, I was not a Buddhist; I wrote to the Dalai Lama asking him to say that this is harmful and he wrote back to say, “We
will stop this.” He used very strong words during the Kalachakra in 2006, when he said, If he sees people wearing fur and skins, he doesnt feel like living. This sent
huge shock waves in the Himalayan community. Within six months, in Lhasa, people ripped the fur trim of their tubba, the traditional Tibetan dress. The messenger was ideal and the audience was receptive,” says Maas who is a conservationist. She has studied the battered foxs behavioral ecology in Serengeti,Africa. She heads the endangered species conservation at the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU) International Foundation for Nature, Berlin. “I met Samdhong Rinpoche, The Karmapa, HH the Dalai Lama and Geshe Lhakdor and I thought, if by being a Buddhist, you become like this, I am going for it, “says Maas, who led the IBC initiative for including the Buddhist perspective to the global discourse on climate change by presenting the statement, The Time to Act is Now: a Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change, at COP21 in Paris. “It was for the first time in the history of Buddhism that leaders of different sanghas came together to take a stand on anything! The statement lists a couple of important things: the first is that we amass things that we dont need; there is overpopulation; we need to live with contentment and deal with each other and the environment with love and compassion,” elaborates Maas. She is an ardent advocate of a vegan diet because “consuming meat and milk globally contributes more to climate change than all "transport in the world.” Turning vegetarian or vegan usually requires complete change of perspective before one gives up eating their favorite food. What are the Buddhist ways to bringabout this kind of change at the individual level? “To change our behavior, Buddhism is an ideal vehicle; it made me a more contented person,” says Maas, who grewup in Germany, as a sausage chomping, meat-loving individual. She says, “If I can change, so can anybody”. According to the passage, how can studying compassion and empathy in schools help?