Which of the following situation explain the concept of Westernisation of culture?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → Households where individuals have a choice in deciding their educational and professional goals.
Note: The given answer is as per the official NTA Answer Key. However, there seems to be an ambiguity in the question. In the NCERT book (2025-26), westernisation covers changes in ideology and values, which fits Option (3), but the book also says that westernisation does involve the imitation of external forms of culture without modern values, and its example, middle class homes with a television set and a fridge, fits Option (2) as well, as explained below.
Option (1) Households that use modern technology to practice female foeticide. — Incorrect. Female foeticide shows a contradiction: it combines a discriminatory attitude towards women with very modern technology. Using a machine to discriminate against daughters is not the adoption of any western cultural trait.
Option (2) Households that use OTG and refrigerator but strictly follows caste endogamy. — Should also be taken as westernisation, but has been taken as Incorrect as per the NTA answer key. The general spread of western cultural traits such as new technology, dress and food, with a fridge and a sofa set in middle class homes, is itself a picture of westernisation, which does not necessarily mean that people adopt modern values. A household with an OTG and a refrigerator that still keeps caste endogamy is such a case.
Option (3) Households where individuals have a choice in deciding their educational and professional goals. — Correct. M.N. Srinivas defines westernisation as the changes brought about in Indian society and culture by over 150 years of British rule, at the levels of technology, institutions, ideology and values. Letting each person choose his or her own education and career is a change in values, the kind of western way of thinking the early westernised Indians took up.
Option (4) Households which depend on the decision making of the male members. — Incorrect. A family in which the men take the decisions is a patriarchal family, where men exercise authority and dominance. It shows an older pattern of authority, not a western one.
Tip for students: Where two options both fit, mark the one that shows a change in ideas and values; NTA treats westernisation here as a change in the way people think, not only in what they buy.
NCERT (2025-26): “Westernisation … M.N. Srinivas defines westernisation as ‘the changes brought about in Indian society and culture as a result of over 150 years of British rule, the term subsuming changes occurring at different levels…technology, institutions, ideology and values’.…” “There were different kinds of westernisation. One kind refers to the emergence of a westernised sub-cultural pattern through a minority section of Indians who first came in contact with Western culture. This included the sub culture of Indian intellectuals who not only adopted many cognitive patterns, or ways of thinking, and styles of life, but supported its expansion.…” “…There were, therefore, small sections of people who adopted western life styles or were affected by western ways of thinking. Apart from this there has been also the general spread of Western cultural traits, such as the use of new technology, dress, food, and changes in the habits and styles of people in general. Across the country a very wide section of middle class homes have a television set, a fridge, some kind of sofa set, a dining table and chair in the living room. Westernisation does involve the imitation of external forms of culture. It does not necessarily mean that people adopt modern values of democracy and equality.” |