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 kind of change is brought about by secularisation in India?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Cultural change
Option (4) Cultural change — Correct. Besides the deliberate reform movements, India saw less deliberate but decisive changes in cultural practices, understood as four processes: sanskritisation, modernisation, secularisation and westernisation. Secularisation is one of these four, so it brings about cultural change. The passage also places secularisation among the processes that affect different groups of people in different ways.
Note: The passage of Q1-Q5 is taken from the NCERT chapter ‘Cultural Change’ (Social Change and Development in India), where it opens the discussion of the four processes. Read the chapter’s opening pages with care; this one paragraph carried five questions.
NCERT (2025-26): “This chapter looks at two related developments, both a complex product of the impact of colonial rule. The first deals with the deliberate and conscious efforts made by the 19th century social reformers and early 20th century nationalists to bring in changes in social practices that discriminated against women and ‘lower’ castes. The second with the less deliberate yet decisive changes in cultural practices that can broadly be understood as the four processes of sanskritisation, modernisation, secularisation and westernisation. Sanskritisation pre-dates the coming of colonial rule. The other three processes can be understood better as complex responses of the people of India to the changes that colonialism brought about.” “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.…” |