RC 1

Directions for questions 1 to 3: The passage given below is followed
by a set of three questions. Choose the most appropriate answer to
each question.

The young are given to analysis; they love to sift every issue
threadbare with passionate scepticism and eager competence. The
elderly tell stories. Fortunately for the latter, in recent years
stories have become respectable in the social sciences, more so after
some people have cleverly begun to call them narratives. However,
listening to Indian stories can be trying, even in these post-modern
days. Most of them lack a proper ending - this is no longer a crime, I
am told - but they are also often not new, which is still an
unforgivable sin in the global culture of knowledge. As with classical
plays and ritual narrations of epics and sacred myths, these stories
create their own surprises in the process of being re-told. So I need
not apologise if you find my story is not new and lacks a proper
ending; I shall apologise only if you find that I have not told it
right.

This is actually a story about stories. It begins with the awareness
that in ancient societies like China and India, which possess
resilient cultural traditions, there is a certain ambivalence towards
democratic politics. While drawing sustenance from traditions,
democratic politics is also expected to alter and update such
societies for the contemporary world. These countries have reportedly
fallen behind in the race that all countries these days breathlessly
run to stay where they stand in the global Olympiad of nation-states.
One enters this race not just with a political style which reflects
specific cultural traditions, but also with a political process
seeking to become a legitimate force of cultural change and promising
to mediate between hope and experience, inherited fears and acquired
ambitions. The contending stories of politics and traditions frame
this process. They contain the ambivalence and anxieties associated
with democracy, and they help construct the past in a way that makes
possible meaningful political choices in the present.

Such stories also have shelf lives. They are born and they die; some
after a long and glorious life, others after a brief, inglorious
tenure. For instance, scholars of Indian political culture have, off
and on, ventured the story of a stable culture facing an alien
political order and, on the whole, unable to make much sense of it.
Their idea of Indian politics as a straightforward reflection of Hindu
culture and personality now looks jaded not because of the passage of
time and academic fashions, but because a different political
situation has now gripped the pubic imagination - that of a culture
being literally bombarded by new global challenges and trying to
maintain its identity in the face of these. Likewise, the competing
stories that others have produced - of cultural and psychological
forces as epiphenomena, and of Indian politics as a sequence of modern
economic forms vanquishing traditional structures of behaviour and
ideas in order to establish the supremacy of a historically superior
order - have not survived well either. The global resurgence of
religion and ethnicity has taken better care of such economic
determinism than have their academic opponents. In both cases, the
truth or falsity of such stories is of secondary importance; more
important is the fact that neither rings true in the present global
context.


Q.1
Why is there ambivalence towards democratic politics in societies like
those of China and India?
a Because these societies are rigidly hierarchical and therefore
cannot progress while simultaneously committing to democratic
principles.
b Because China and India are demographically plural and therefore
cannot follow the concept of one-nation democracy.
c Because these ancient societies look to sustain their tradition
while also modifying and updating it through the process of democratic
politics.
d Cannot be determined


Q.2
The author uses the word 'epiphenomena' to suggest
a obvious reasons for the occurrence of a phenomenon.
b a secondary effect or by-product of a phenomenon.
c adverse factors that hinder progress.
d None of these

Q.3
As per the passage, countries participate in the global Olympiad with
which of the following?
a A political style reflective of specific cultural traditions.
b An identical political style, common to all countries, to ensure
that they can perform equally.
c A political process that seeks to become a force capable of
affecting a cultural change.
d Both (a) and (c)


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