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NCERT Solutions for Class 12 Sociology Chapter wise
Q1. What is meant by cultural diversity? Why is India considered to be a very diverse country?
Answer: The term diversity gives emphasis on differences instead of inequalities. When we say that great cultural diversity exists in India, it means that many different types of social groups and communities live over here. These communities are defined by cultural markers like religion, language, sect, race or caste.
People of many castes and religions live in India which is why their languages, eating habits, living styles, traditions, customs, etc., are different from each other. Every group has different ways of marriage, living styles, etc. Religious scriptures of every religion are different and every one pays its homage to them. Dances, art, festivals, architecture, etc., are also different. That is why India is considered as a diverse country.
Q2. What is community identity and how is it formed?
Answer:
- Community identity is based on birth and ‘belonging’ rather than on some form of acquired qualifications or ‘accomplishment’. It is what we ‘are’ rather than what we have ‘become’.
- It is ‘ascriptive’ – that is, they are determined by the accidents of birth and do not involve any choice on the part of the individuals concerned.
- People feel a deep sense of security and satisfaction in belonging to communities in which their membership is entirely accidental.
- People often react emotionally or even violently whenever there is a perceived threat to their community identity.
- A second feature of ascriptive identities and community feeling is that they are universal.
Q3. Why is it difficult to define the nation? How are nation and state related in modem society?
Answer: Presently it is difficult to define a nation in any way other than to say that it is a community that has succeeded in acquiring a state of its own. Interestingly, the opposite has also become increasingly true. Just as would-be or aspiring nationalities are now more and more likely to work towards making a state, existing states are also finding it more and more necessary to claim that they represent a nation.
One of the main features of modern age is the establishment of democracy and nationalism as dominant sources of political legitimacy. It means that, nowadays, the nation is the most accepted justification for a state and the people are the most important source of legitimacy of the nation. Therefore, it can be said that states need the nation as much or even more than nations need states.
Q4. Why are states often suspicious of cultural diversity?
Answer:
- States have generally been suspicious of cultural diversity because they fear that the recognition of varied culturally diverse identities such as language, ethnicity, religion will lead to social fragmentation and prevent the creation of a harmonious society.
- In short, such identity politics was considered a threat to state unity. In addition, accommodating these differences is politically challenging, so many states have resorted to either suppressing these diverse identities or ignoring them on the political domain.
- Policies of assimilation – often involving outright suppression of the identities of ethnic, religious or linguistic groups – try to erode the cultural differences between groups.
Q5. What is regionalism? What factors is it usually based on?
Answer:
- Regionalism in India is rooted in India’s diversity of languages, cultures, tribes and religions. It is encouraged by the geographical concentration of these identity markers in particular regions, and fuelled by a sense of regional deprivation.
- Indian federalism has been a means of accommodating these regional sentiments. After Independence, initially the Indian state continued with the British-Indian arrangement dividing India into large provinces, called Presidencies. Madras, Bombay and Calcutta were the three major presidencies.
- Soon after Independence and the adoption of the constitution, all these units of the colonial era had to be reorganized into ethno-linguistic states within the Indian union in response to strong popular agitations.
- Language coupled with regional and tribal identity and not religion has provided the most powerful instrument for the formation of ethno-national identity in India.
Q6. In your opinion, has the linguistic reorganisation of states helped or harmed India?
Answer: In 1956, states were reorganised by the Indian Government on linguistic basis. After this, it became quite easy for the government to run the administration and it accepted to reorganise other regions as well on linguistic basis. But no one thought about its negative impact. In my opinion, linguistic reorganisation of states has harmed India.
The feeling of regionalism aroused due to reorganisation. This, in turn gave strength to terrorism and the demand was again raised for the reorganisation of other states on the same base. Even today, people of South India hardly accept Hindi as their own language. They like to use English language with their mother tongue.
Q7. What is a ‘minority’? Why do minorities need protection from the state?
Answer:
- Religious minorities like Parsis or Sikhs may be relatively well off economically but they may still be disadvantaged in the cultural sense because of their small numbers compared to overwhelming majority Hindus.
- However, religious or cultural minority groups need special protection because of the demographic dominance of majority.
- These groups are politically vulnerable. They might face the risk that the majority community will capture political power and use the state machinery to suppress their religious or cultural institutions, ultimately forcing them to abandon their identity.
- The protection of minorities requires that they be given special consideration in a context where the normal working of the political system places them at a disadvantage vis-s-vis the majority.
- This leads to the accusation of favouritism. But supporters would state that without this protection, secularism can turn into an excuse for imposing majority community’s values and norms on minorities.
Q8. What is Communalism?
Answer: In common language, the word communalism means aggressive chauvinism based on religious identity. Chauvinism itself is an attitude which sees one’s own group as the only legitimate or worthy group, with other groups being seen as illegitimate, inferior and opposed. One of the major features of communalism is its claim that religious identity overrides everything else. Whether one is rich or poor, whatever is his occupation, caste or political beliefs, alone the religion counts in it.
Q9. What are the different senses in which ‘secularism’ has been understood in India?
Answer:
- The Indian meanings of secular and secularism imply that state does not favour any religion. This implies equal respect for all religions rather than separation or distancing.
- In the western context, secularism implies separation of church and state. This implies the progressive retreat of religion from public life, as it was converted from a mandatory obligation to a voluntary personal practice.
- Secularization was related to the arrival of modernity and the rise of science and rationality as alternatives to religious ways of understanding the world.
- One difficult issue that arises from this is the tension between the western sense of state maintaining distance from religion and the Indian sense of the state giving equal respect to all religions.
Q10. What is the relevance of civil society organisations today?
Answer: The broad arena which lies beyond the private domain of the family, but outside the domain of both market and the state is known as Civil Society. It is the non-market and non-state part of the public domain in which individuals voluntarily come closer to each other and create institutions and organisations. It is a sphere of active citizens where individuals take up social issues, try to influence the state, pursue their collective interests and try to get support for a number of causes.
Voluntary associations, organisations, institutions formed by groups of citizens are included in it. Political parties, trade unions, media institutions, NGO’s, religious organisations and other types of collective entities are also included in it.
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