Read the passage and answer the questions that follow:
Modernity spelled not merely new ideas but also rethinking and reinterpretation of tradition. Both culture and traditions are living entities. People learn them and in turn modify them. India's structural and cultural diversity is self-evident. This diversity shapes the different ways that modernisation or westernisation, sanskritisation or secularisation effects or does not effect different groups of people. It is up to you to explore and identify the complex ways modernisation impacts people in different parts of the country or impacts different classes and castes in the same region. And even women and men from the same class or community.
What has been the impact of modernisation and sanskritisation?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → These processes led to uneven social changes among different castes.
Option (1) These processes shaped urban India with no effect in rural areas. — Incorrect. The passage asks the student to explore how modernisation impacts people in different parts of the country; it nowhere limits these processes to cities. Sanskritisation in particular worked in villages, through caste.
Option (2) These processes brought in same set of changes in different localities. — Incorrect. The passage says the opposite. India’s structural and cultural diversity shapes the different ways in which these processes affect, or do not affect, different groups of people. The changes are not the same everywhere.
Option (3) These processes led to uneven social changes among different castes. — Correct. Because of India’s diversity, modernisation, westernisation, sanskritisation and secularisation affect different groups in different ways. The passage says these processes impact different classes and castes in the same region differently, and even women and men of the same class or community. So the change they bring is uneven.
Option (4) These processes directly led to secularisation. — Incorrect. Secularisation is itself one of the four processes the passage names, side by side with modernisation and sanskritisation; it is not described as their result.
NCERT (2025-26): “2.1 Social reform movements in the 19th and early 20th century … As this chapter will show, modernity spelled not merely new ideas but also rethinking and reinterpretation of tradition.…” “…People learn them and in turn modify them. Take the everyday example of how the sari or jain sem or sarong is worn in India today. Traditionally the sari, a loose unstitched piece of cloth was differently worn in different regions. The standard way that the modern middle class woman wears it was a novel combination of the traditional sari with the western ‘petticoat’ and ‘blouse’. India’s structural and cultural diversity is self-evident. This diversity shapes the different ways that modernisation or westernisation, sanskritisation or secularisation effects or does not effect different groups of people. The following pages seek to capture these differences. The constraint of space prevents a further detailing out. It is up to you to explore and identify the complex ways modernisation impacts people in different parts of the country or impacts different classes and castes in the same region. And even women and men from the same class or community.” |