Complete solutions to all ten exercise questions printed at the end of NCERT Class 12
Sociology, Indian Society, Chapter 6 The Challenges of Cultural Diversity.
The questions are reproduced in the book’s own wording, and each answer is
written the way it should be written in the exam. The three in-text activities are solved at the end.
1 Question 1
Q. What is meant by cultural diversity? Why is India considered to be a very
diverse country?
Answer: “Diversity” emphasises differences rather than inequalities. Cultural
diversity means that many different social groups and communities live within one
society, defined by cultural markers such as language, religion, sect, race or caste.
India is considered very diverse for concrete reasons the chapter itself gives, from
the 2011 Census: a population of about 1.21 billion people speaking around 1,632
different languages and dialects, of which 22 are officially recognised under the 8th
Schedule of the Constitution. Religiously, about 80% of the population is Hindu (itself
regionally varied and divided by caste and language), 14.2% Muslim, 2.3% Christian, 1.7%
Sikh, 0.7% Buddhist and 0.4% Jain. Because India’s total population is so large, even
these small percentages add up to very large absolute numbers of people.
2 Question 2
Q. What is community identity and how is it formed?
Answer: Community identity is based on birth and “belonging” rather than on
any acquired qualification or “accomplishment”: it is what we “are”, not what we have
“become”. Such identities are called ascriptive because they are determined by
birth and involve no choice on the part of the individual.
It is formed through socialisation: the continuous process, involving
dialogue, negotiation and sometimes struggle with significant others such as parents,
family and kin, by which our immediate community teaches us how to live in society.
Our community gives us our mother tongue and the cultural values through which we
understand the world, anchoring our own sense of self. Because this belonging is
accidental yet almost inescapable, people often feel deeply, even emotionally, attached
to it, and community identity is universal: in general, everyone has a motherland, a
mother tongue, a family and a faith (this may not be strictly true of every individual,
but it is true in a general sense).
3 Question 3
Q. Why is it difficult to define the nation? How are nation and state related
in modern society?
Answer: A nation is easy to describe but hard to define because no single
criterion (a shared language, religion, ethnicity or history) reliably distinguishes it.
For every possible criterion, there are exceptions: many nations share no single common
language or religion, while many languages, religions or ethnicities are shared across
several different nations without those nations merging into one. Conceptually, there is
no hard distinction between a nation and an ethnic group, a religious community or a
regional community: any of them could become a nation, but none is guaranteed to.
The criterion that comes closest to defining a nation is the state: nations are
communities that have a state of their own, which is why the two words are joined with a
hyphen as “nation-state”. In recent times there has usually been a one-to-one bond
between nation and state, but this is a new development, not a historical or logical
necessity: the Soviet Union recognised over a hundred internal “nationalities” within
one state, and dual-citizenship laws let a person belong to two states at once. Today it
is easiest to define a nation simply as a community that has succeeded in acquiring a
state of its own; conversely, existing states increasingly claim to represent “a
nation” because the nation is now the most accepted justification for a state’s
legitimacy.
4 Question 4
Q. Why are states often suspicious of cultural diversity?
Answer: Because any of the many bases of community identity, language,
religion, ethnicity, could one day become the basis for a rival nation, an already
existing state sees all forms of community identity as dangerous rivals to its own
claim of representing “the nation”. States therefore generally favour a single,
homogenous national identity, in the hope of being able to control and manage it, and
historically many states have pursued policies of assimilation (persuading,
encouraging or forcing all citizens to adopt a uniform set of cultural values, often by
suppressing group identities) or integration (restricting only the public culture
to one national pattern) to achieve this.
The chapter is equally clear that this suspicion is costly: suppressing cultural
diversity alienates the minority or subordinated communities whose culture is treated as
“non-national”, and the very act of suppression can intensify the community identity it
was meant to erase. So the book’s own conclusion is that encouraging, or at least
allowing, cultural diversity is better policy, both practically and on principle.
5 Question 5
Q. 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 usually based on the geographical
concentration of these identity markers in particular regions, and it is fuelled by a
sense of regional deprivation. Indian federalism, with its Constitutional division of
powers between the Centre and the States, has been a means of accommodating these
regional sentiments.
In practice, regionalism in India led to the reorganisation of British-era provinces
into ethno-linguistic States after strong popular agitation, formalised by the States
Reorganisation Commission’s report of 1 November 1956. But language is not the only
basis: in the creation of Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand (in 2000), language
did not play a prominent role; a combination of ethnicity based on tribal identity,
language, regional deprivation and ecology provided the basis for statehood.
6 Question 6
Q. In your opinion, has the linguistic reorganisation of states helped or
harmed India?
Answer: This is an opinion question, but the chapter’s own evidence points
strongly in one direction: linguistic reorganisation has helped strengthen Indian
unity, not harmed it. Many, including Prime Minister Nehru, feared in the early 1950s
that states based on language would hasten India’s subdivision. The opposite happened:
it has proved entirely consistent to be, in the chapter’s own words, “Kannadiga and
Indian, Bengali and Indian, Tamil and Indian, Gujarati and Indian”.
The chapter strengthens this case by contrast: in the very same year as India’s 1956
reorganisation, Sri Lanka’s Parliament declared Sinhala its sole official language over
Tamil protest, and the civil war that has raged there since 1983 is, the chapter says,
partly based on the majority linguistic group’s denial of the minority’s rights; and
Pakistan divided in 1971 because Punjabi and Urdu speakers of the west would not respect
Bengali sentiments in the east. Quoting Ramachandra Guha, the chapter concludes that had
India ignored its language communities, it might instead have faced “One language,
fourteen or fifteen nations”: so, on the book’s own evidence, linguistic states were a
source of unity, not division, though states based on language do sometimes have
disputes with each other.
7 Question 7
Q. What is a ‘minority’? Why do minorities need protection from the state?
Answer: In sociology, “minority” is more than a numerical distinction: it
usually implies relative disadvantage, and it also implies that the members of the
minority form a collectivity: a strong sense of group solidarity and belonging.
A group that is a numerical minority but shares no such solidarity, such as left-handed
people, is not a sociological minority. It is also possible for a group to be
disadvantaged in one sense but not another: Parsis or Sikhs, for example, may be
relatively well-off economically, yet still culturally disadvantaged because of their
small numbers next to India’s Hindu majority.
Minorities need protection from the state because of the majority’s demographic
dominance: the normal working of the political system can place them at a disadvantage
vis-à-vis the majority community, so they need special consideration. This is why
Dr B.R. Ambedkar, the chief architect of the Constitution, addressed the Constituent
Assembly directly on this point. Article 29 gives any section of citizens with a
distinct language, script or culture the right to conserve it, and Article 30 gives all
minorities, based on religion or language, the right to establish and administer their
own educational institutions.
8 Question 8
Q. What is communalism?
Answer: In everyday South Asian usage, communalism refers to aggressive
chauvinism based on religious identity: an aggressive political ideology, linked to
religion, that treats one’s own group as the only legitimate or worthy group and other
groups as inferior, illegitimate or opposed. This is a peculiarly Indian, or perhaps
South Asian, meaning, different from the neutral English word “communal”, which simply means
related to a community or collectivity rather than to an individual.
The chapter stresses that communalism is about politics, not religion: there
is no necessary link between personal faith and communalism: a communalist may or may
not be devout, and a devout believer may or may not be communalist. The deciding factor
is how a person treats those who hold other kinds of identities. Communalists build an
aggressive political identity and are prepared to condemn or attack anyone who does not
share it, treating religious identity as overriding everything else, caste,
occupation, wealth or political belief, and homogenising large, diverse groups (“all
Hindus”, “all Muslims”) into one.
9 Question 9
Q. What are the different senses in which ‘secularism’ has been understood in
India?
Answer: In the Western sense, secularism means the separation of church and
state, tied to “secularisation”: religion’s progressive retreat from public life as it
becomes a voluntary personal practice rather than a mandatory obligation.
Indian meanings of secular/secularism include this Western sense, but add another:
in everyday language, “secular” is most commonly used as the opposite of “communal”. A
secular person or state, in this sense, does not favour any particular religion over
others; this opposes religious chauvinism, but need not imply hostility to religion as
such. In terms of the state’s relationship to religion, this Indian sense implies
equal respect for all religions, rather than separation or distance: for
example, the secular Indian state declares public holidays for the festivals of every
religion. The chapter also notes a real tension in this Indian sense: the state’s
simultaneous commitment to secularism and to protecting minorities invites the charge of
“appeasement” from critics, while supporters argue that without such protection,
secularism could become an excuse to impose majority values on minorities.
10 Question 10
Q. What is the relevance of civil society organisations today?
Answer: Civil society is the broad arena beyond the private domain of the
family, but outside both the state and the market: the sphere of active citizenship
where individuals voluntarily create institutions and organisations, take up social
issues, and try to influence or make demands on the state. It includes political
parties, media institutions, trade unions, NGOs and religious organisations, so long as
they are not state-controlled and not purely commercial.
Civil society matters today because states can become insulated from the people they
claim to represent, turning authoritarian, or simply fail their citizens through
corruption, inefficiency or a lack of resources. Non-state actors keep watch on the
state, protest its injustices, or supplement its efforts. The chapter’s own list of
issues civil society organisations take up is wide: tribal struggles for land rights,
urban governance, campaigns against violence against women, rehabilitation of the
dam-displaced, fishermen’s struggles, housing rights, primary education reform and land
distribution to Dalits. Its clearest example is the campaign for the Right to
Information, which began as a rural Rajasthan agitation over village-development funds
and grew into the nationwide movement that produced the Right to Information Act, 2005,
showing exactly how civil society can force the state to be accountable to the nation
and its people.
11 In-text Activities
The chapter also prints three activities inside the text. They are solved here in the order the book prints them. They are research and discussion tasks, so each answer shows what to do and which points from the chapter to use.
Q. Find out about the origins of your own State. When was it formed? What were the main criteria used to define it? Was it language, ethnic/tribal identity, regional deprivation, ecological difference or other criterion? How does this compare with other States within the Indian nation-state? Try to classify all the States of India in terms of the criteria for their formation. Are you aware of any current social movements that are demanding the creation of a State? Try to find out the criteria being used by these movements. (Hint: Check the Vidarbha movements, and others in your region…)
Answer: Find your own State’s year of formation and the reason for it, and then place it in the chapter’s framework:
- Language. Soon after the Constitution was adopted, the large British-era provinces were reorganised into ethno-linguistic States in response to strong popular agitations. The Telugu-speaking movement, after Potti Sriramulu’s death following a fast unto death, led to the creation of Andhra Pradesh, and the States Reorganisation Commission, whose report was implemented on 1 November 1956, put the final seal of approval on the principle of linguistic States. Language, coupled with regional and tribal identity, has been the most powerful instrument for the formation of ethno-national identity in India, as the chapter puts it.
- Tribal identity, regional deprivation and ecology. Chhattisgarh, Uttaranchal and Jharkhand, created in 2000, are the chapter’s examples of States where language did not play a prominent role; a combination of ethnicity based on tribal identity, language, regional deprivation and ecology was the basis for statehood.
- Classify. Make a table of all the States with their year of formation and main criterion (language, tribal identity, regional deprivation, ecology or a combination), using your textbook, atlas or library for the details.
- Current demands. For a movement demanding a new State, such as the Vidarbha movement that the book’s hint mentions, find out which of these criteria it uses, for example a sense of regional deprivation.
Q. Talk to your parents and the elders in your family and collect from them poems, songs, short stories which highlight issues such as religious pluralism, syncretism or communal harmony. When you have collected all this material and presented them in class, you may be pleasantly surprised to learn how broad based our traditions of religious pluralism are, and how widely they are shared across different linguistic groups, regions and religions.
Answer: Collect a few pieces from your family, note the language and region each comes from, and write one line on how it shows pluralism (different faiths living together), syncretism (the mixing of traditions) or communal harmony. The chapter’s own example is Kabir (Box 6.8), whose poems synthesise Hindu and Muslim devotion: “Where do you search for me? I am with you … Not in temples, nor in mosques … Neither in Kaaba nor in Kailash”. The chapter says this syncretic heritage is clearly evident in the devotional songs and poetry of the Bhakti and Sufi movements, and that India has a long tradition of religious pluralism, ranging from peaceful co-existence to actual inter-mixing. When the class puts its material together, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that the same message of harmony appears across many languages, regions and religions, which is the point of the activity.
Q. Find out about the civil society organisations or NGOs that are active in your neighbourhood. What sorts of issues do they take up? What sort of people work in them? How and to what extent are these organisations different from a) government organisations; b) commercial organisations?
Answer: List two or three organisations near you, the issues they work on, and the kind of people who work in them (volunteers, activists, professionals). Compare them using the chapter’s definition: civil society is the non-state and non-market part of the public domain, where individuals come together voluntarily to create institutions and organisations. (a) Unlike a government organisation, a civil society organisation is not state-controlled; it can keep a watch on the state, protest against its injustices or supplement its efforts. (b) Unlike a commercial organisation, it is not a purely commercial, profit-making entity; it works for a cause or a collective interest. The chapter’s examples of the issues such organisations take up include tribal struggles for land rights, campaigns against violence against women, rehabilitation of those displaced by dams, housing rights, primary education reform and the campaign for the Right to Information.