Which of the following is a special feature of the Indian State ?

Concept: In a passage-based comprehension question, a ‘special feature’ is not any true statement about the subject — it is the one predicate the author himself marks out as distinctive. The correct option must therefore reproduce that predicate in full: every element the author attaches to it, and none of the elements he expressly rules out. A wording that keeps only part of it, or that substitutes a different social process, fails the test however plausible it sounds.

Application: apply the test to this passage in three steps.

1. Locate the sentence in which the author names the feature himself. The passage says: “The Indian ‘State’s’ special feature is the peaceful, or perhaps mostly peaceful, co-existence of social groups of various historical provenances which mutually adhere in a geographical, economic, and political sense, without ever assimilating to each other in social terms, in ways of thinking, or even in language.”

2. Decompose that predicate into its parts — the mode of the relation (peaceful, or mostly peaceful, co-existence), the parties to it (social groups of various historical provenances), and the bond that holds them together (mutual adherence in a geographical, economic and political sense) — together with the exclusion the author attaches to it: the groups never assimilate to each other socially, intellectually or linguistically.

3. Match the offered wordings against all four parts. The wording that carries the mode, the parties and the bond, and leaves the exclusion intact, is ‘Peaceful co-existence of social groups of different historical provenances attached to each other in a geographical, economic and political sense’.

Cross-check: measure each of the other wordings against the same sentence.

• ‘Peaceful co-existence of people under a common system of leadership’ — a common system of leadership is how the passage defines the word ‘State’ in general (“the geographically delimited agglomeration of peoples or groups enjoying a common system of leadership which we call the ‘State’”). It belongs to every State the author is talking about, so it cannot be what distinguishes the Indian one.

• ‘Social integration of all groups’ — the same sentence says the groups adhere “without ever assimilating to each other in social terms”, so a merging of the groups into one social order is the very thing the author denies.

• ‘Cultural assimilation of all social groups’ — the exclusion also covers “ways of thinking, or even in language”, and the passage reinforces it with litigants who still follow their regional law though their ancestors left the region three or four centuries earlier.

Result: the special feature of the Indian State, on the author’s own statement, is the peaceful co-existence of social groups of different historical provenances attached to each other in a geographical, economic and political sense — union without assimilation.