In a small town in the late nineteenth century, a tea-stall owner reads a daily newspaper aloud every evening. Farmers, clerks and weavers gather to listen. The same reports are being read out in towns hundreds of miles away, to people these listeners do not even know exist. Over the years, the listeners begin to follow the affairs of those distant readers as closely as they follow their own.
Anderson said that people who did not know of each other came to feel like members of which of the following?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → A family
Option (1) A clan — Incorrect. A clan is a kin group whose members claim descent from one common ancestor. Anderson did not use the clan as his image; he spoke of strangers who feel like one family.
Option (2) A caste — Incorrect. Caste is a group a person is born into, ranked by ritual purity. Anderson's point was about distant strangers feeling close, which has nothing to do with caste rank.
Option (3) A village — Incorrect. A village is a small settlement where people mostly know one another face to face. Anderson spoke of people who did not even know of each other's existence, so a village does not fit.
Option (4) A family — Correct. Anderson argued that print helped nationalism: people who never knew of each other came to feel like members of a family. The listeners in the passage follow distant readers' affairs as their own, which is this family-like bond.
NCERT (2026-27): “7.1 The Beginnings of Modern Mass Media … |