How does Indian society maintain continuity in traditional social values ? Enumerate the changes taking…

Question

How does Indian society maintain continuity in traditional social values ? Enumerate the changes taking place in it.

Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

Indian society keeps its traditional values alive through family socialisation, ritual, and adaptive absorption of the new, while women's autonomy, individual choice and politicised caste are changing them. The Lok Foundation-Oxford survey (2018) found 93% of marriages still arranged, even as child marriage halved between NFHS-3 and NFHS-5.

**Introduction**

Indian society, in Yogendra Singh's phrase, modernises its tradition rather than discarding it. The Lok Foundation-Oxford University survey (2018) found 93% of marriages still arranged, even in nuclear, urban households.

**How Traditional Values Maintain Continuity**

1. **Family socialisation**: The family teaches respect for elders and duty to kin, and I.P. Desai found separated households staying functionally joint in property, rites and care.
2. **Ritual and pilgrimage**: Festivals, life-cycle rites and gatherings like the Prayagraj Maha Kumbh of 2025 renew what Durkheim called the collective conscience.
3. **Adaptive absorption**: Milton Singer's Madras industrialists kept ritual at home and modern rules at work, and Srinivas's Sanskritisation shows mobility through the old idiom.

**Changes Taking Place in Traditional Values**

SKETCH: comparison | Tradition and Its New Form
a: Traditional value
b: Changing form
- Joint household :: Nuclear, functionally joint
- Parental choice :: Arranged with consent
- Ascribed status :: Achieved status
- Austerity :: Consumerism

1. **Women's autonomy**: Child marriage among women aged 20-24 fell from 47% (NFHS-3) to 23% (NFHS-5, 2019-21), and the 2005 amendment made daughters equal coparceners.
2. **Caste and choice**: Caste has moved from ritual to politics, while Shafin Jahan (2018) and Shakti Vahini (2018) protected adults choosing their own partners.
3. **Strained elder care**: The Senior Citizens Act, 2007 had to make a child's duty to parents a legal obligation.

**Way Forward**

1. **Reform with respect**: Law should curb harmful custom while protecting cultural rights under Articles 25 and 29, and NEP 2020 can teach heritage beside constitutional values.

**Conclusion**

Indian society continues by adapting: respect for elders, hospitality and pluralism endure while hierarchy and patriarchy erode. Guided by constitutional morality, this selective continuity can make tradition a resource for a just India by 2047.

How does Indian society maintain continuity in traditional social values ? Enumerate the changes taking place in it.

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