Word Meaning

Decadent - characterized by or reflecting a state of moral or cultural decline (Syn - dissolute, dissipated, degenerate, corrupt).

Ex - Most of the earlier intruders who came to India had settled within her frontiers, were absorbed by her superior culture and had become part of the land and its people. However, the British conquest was different. It came at a time when India, in contrast to an enlightened Europe of the eighteenth century affected in every aspect by science and scientific outlook, presented the picture of a stagnant civilisation and decadent society.

Obscurantism - the practice of deliberately preventing the facts or full details of something from becoming known.

Ex - Indian society in the nineteenth century was caught in vicious web created by religious superstitions and social obscurantism.

Clemency - mercy, lenience.
Ex - R&AW top officer B. Raman favouring clemency to Memon for co-operating with investigating agencies to unravel the blasts probe

animism - the attribution of a living soul to plants, inanimate objects, and natural phenomena.
Ex - Hinduism had become a compound of magic, animism and superstition.

deceptive - giving an appearance or impression different from the true one; misleading.(Syn - misleading, illusory, illusive, delusive)
Ex  - The priests exercised an overwhelming, and indeed, unhealthy influences on the minds of the people. Idoltary and polytheism helped to reinforce their position, and their monopoly of scriptural knowledge imparted a deceptive character to all religious systems.

debilitate - make (someone) very weak and infirm.
Ex - Another debilitating factor was caste.