Q1.
What types of communities are you part of?
Answer
Every one of us belongs to several at once. Use the chapter’s own examples on pages 147–148 as your headings, and fill in your own.
| Kind of community | Sample answer — the ones I belong to |
|---|---|
| Family and relatives | My own family, and the wider circle of relatives who gather for weddings and festivals |
| Neighbourhood | The families of my lane; our Residents’ Welfare Association, which decides about waste collection and the cleaning of the common park |
| School | My class; the school’s sports community (I play kabaddi); the science club; the school band |
| Place or region | The people of my town, and those who share my mother tongue |
| Work or interest | The cycling group in our colony; the children who read at the free library on Sundays |
| Service groups | Scouts and Guides; older students in my school join the NSS and the NCC |
| Jāti or religious community | The chapter notes that a jāti, or a group of one religion, is also called a community |
Why the answer is ‘several at once’: the chapter calls ‘community’ a flexible concept. You are not in one box. The same person can belong to a class, a sports team, a colony, a town, a language group and a service organisation on the same day — and each of those communities also contains people who differ from you in other ways. Belonging to many communities is what keeps a society stitched together.