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UPSC Prelims 2025 CSAT, question 23

Topic: Reading comprehension

Directions · Q21 to Q24

Directions for the following 4 (four) items :
Read the following two passages and answer the items that follow the passages. Your answers to these items should be based on the passages only.

Passage · Q23 to Q24

In our country, handlooms are equated with a culture that ensures a continuity of tradition. This idea has become part of the public policy-framing and provides a legitimate basis for the State to support the sector. But the notion of tradition as a single, linear entity is being strongly contested today. The narratives dominant in defining culture/tradition in a particular way are seen to have emerged as the identities and histories of large sections. The discounted and, at times, forcibly stifled identities are fighting for their rightful place in history. Against this backdrop, when we promote handloom as a traditional industry, it is not surprising that large sections of our population choose to ignore it.

Q23

Which one of the following statements best reflects the most logical and rational message conveyed by the author of the passage ?

  1. (a) We need to free the handloom industry from the limited narrative linked to preserving cultural heritage.Correct answer
  2. (b) Continued State support to the handloom industry ensures the preservation of some of our glorious art forms and old traditions.
  3. (c) Household units of the handloom sector should be modernized and made an economically viable organized industry.
  4. (d) Handloom products need to be converted to machine-made designer products so as to make them more popular.

Solution.

Answer: (a) We need to free the handloom industry from the limited narrative linked to preserving cultural heritage.

  1. The passage argues that equating handlooms with a single, linear narrative of 'tradition' alienates large sections of the population whose identities were discounted by that dominant narrative.
  2. Therefore, the rational message is that the handloom industry needs to be freed from this narrow narrative of preserving a monolithic cultural tradition.