CSAT Solved Papers/ 2025/Q23
2025 CSAT — Q23
Passage
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.
Which one of the following statements best reflects the most logical and rational message conveyed by the author of the passage?
Thinking pathway
Locate. This asks for the author’s view, so find the line where the author commits to a stance, not one where the author merely reports a fact. The committing move here is: “the notion of tradition as a single, linear entity is being strongly contested” → “when we promote handloom as a traditional industry, it is not surprising that large sections… choose to ignore it.” The author endorses the contestation — the single-tradition framing is the problem.
Test (commitment test). The key must be the stance the author takes, stated to the scope the author takes it. (a) — free handloom from “the limited narrative linked to preserving cultural heritage” — is precisely the author’s critical conclusion. The other options either contradict the author’s stance or address questions the author never raises (modernization, designer products).
Eliminate by anatomy. (b) gets the direction backwards and smuggles in the reader’s own opinion — it praises State support for preserving tradition, the opposite of the author’s critical view of the tradition framing. (c) and (d) are claims the passage never actually makes — modernization into an “organized industry” and conversion to “machine-made designer products” are remedies the passage never discusses; the author’s concern is the narrative, not the production technology. The transferable rule: pick the stance the author asserts, reject the reasonable-sounding opinion the author never endorses. Key: (a).
Evidence in the text
“the notion of tradition as a single, linear entity is being strongly contested today… when we promote handloom as a traditional industry, it is not surprising that large sections of our population choose to ignore it.” The author’s stance is critical of the single-tradition narrative that frames handloom — i.e. handloom must be freed from that limited “cultural heritage” framing (a).
Worked rationale
The author argues that equating handloom with a single, linear “tradition/cultural heritage” is a contested and exclusionary framing — dominant narratives reflect some identities while others are “discounted… forcibly stifled,” and that is why large sections ignore handloom when it is promoted as “traditional.”
The author’s message is therefore that handloom must be freed from that limiting cultural-heritage narrative. (a) states this. Answer: (a).
Why the other options miss
- B the reader’s own view smuggled in, and it gets the direction backwards: celebrates State support for preserving tradition — the very framing the author criticizes. It is the reader’s likely sympathy, not the author’s stance.
- C a claim the passage never actually makes: “modernized… organized industry” is an economic-restructuring idea the passage never raises; the author’s concern is the narrative, not industrial form.
- D a claim the passage never actually makes: “machine-made designer products” is a product-strategy claim with no basis in the text.
Specialist insight
The deadly distractor is (b): it is warm, pro-handloom, and “sounds rational” — exactly the reader’s instinct. But an author’s-view question asks for the author’s committed stance, and this author is critical of the tradition-preservation framing, not supportive of it. Reading the author’s actual commitment (the single-tradition narrative is a problem that alienates large sections) eliminates the sympathetic-but-opposite (b) and the two off-topic remedies, leaving (a).
(b) voices the reader's pro-tradition sympathy — the opposite of the author's critical stance on the single-tradition narrative — (a).