Instructions

Read the passage carefully and select the best answer to each question out of the given four alternatives.
Passage:

Let’s move to the crackling topic of the SC’s firecracker ban in Delhi. Like me and millions of other children raised in India, Masaba must have celebrated Diwali with new clothes, sweets and the quintessential rockets, anars and phuljharis. But when she supports the ban on firecrackers because of the pollution it creates, the earthworms once again flail desperately, not by quoting statistics or making logical arguments to refute her point but by muck-raking. ‘Don’t mess with our ancient traditions,’ they say. I would like to tell them that if we stuck to all our traditions just because they’re ancient then we should still be pushing widows into funeral pyres to commit sati and get our children married off at the age of eight.
As much as I would like to see the delight on my daughter’s face — the same glee I had as a child — while bursting atom bombs and laris, it is the present scenario and not nostalgia that must dictate my actions. If even doctors welcome the ban as they feel fumes from firecrackers take pollution levels beyond safe limits, then perhaps we need to change our traditional values and create new ones. If saying that makes me a bad Indian, then so be it.
One of the greatest privileges I have — in fact because of the very background that they are trying to smear — stems from the fact that I was lucky enough to have a mother who has raised me to believe that equality isn’t one of my privileges but it is my right. One that was hard won by some brave and fearless women, women who set the right precedent for other women by standing against inequality.
The flailing trollers do not realize that you cannot shame us by pulling down our mothers, those fiercely independent women who have lived life on their own terms, who have not just talked the talk but walked the walk. Yes, you can reason with us by presenting a logical argument but this seems to be beyond the resources of these anonymous creatures hiding their faces in the mud.
And yes one last thing, for all those claiming to be the flag-bearers of ancient traditions, it would be lovely if you adhered to your so-called traditional ways completely. Why do you write open letters, tweet and troll in the language of the Brits? Why not go traditional there as well, use only our ancient languages and spare us your venom-filled and grammatically incorrect English?

Question 125

What according to the author should dictate his/her action?


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