At a college seminar, two students give short talks. Nidhi shows family photographs: her grandmother draped an unstitched sari in the old regional style, while her mother wears it with a stitched blouse and petticoat, as most urban middle-class women do today. Imran reads from a speech made at a women's conference in the early twentieth century. Citing her scripture, the speaker urged educated women to use their influence among their relations to end a practice followed by certain sections of her community.
Nidhi's example best supports which of the following ideas?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Culture and tradition are living entities that people learn and modify.
Option (1) Sanskritisation spread upper-caste ways of dress to the middle class. — Incorrect. Sanskritisation is the process by which a lower caste takes up the customs, rituals and way of life of a higher caste. The new way of wearing the sari came from joining the old sari with a western blouse and petticoat, so it is not caste imitation.
Option (2) Secularisation separated dress from its older religious meanings. — Incorrect. Secularisation means religion losing its hold over social life and practices. Nidhi's photographs show a change in how a garment is worn, and nothing about a religious meaning being dropped.
Option (3) Culture and tradition are living entities that people learn and modify. — Correct. Culture and tradition are living entities: people learn them and in turn modify them. The modern middle-class woman joined the traditional unstitched sari with a western petticoat and blouse, so tradition was reworked and kept alive.
Option (4) Such co-existence of old and new ways is natural to India. — Incorrect. Calling such co-existence natural to India is the common-sense view that sociology does not rest content with. The sari example shows people reworking tradition, a social process with its own causes.
NCERT (2026-27): “2.2 Different Kinds of Social Change … |