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Keywords

family, Indic civilization, absorption, localization or rejection, new norms

Abstract

Contrary to the common view that the family socializes the individual into a given culture, this paper insists that the family performs a far more profound, indeed, a constitutive function. It is not simply the first school of civilizational values; it is the primary institutional site through which a civilization reproduces its symbolic order and, in so doing, acts as the gatekeeper of civilizational continuity and change. It is here that a civilization’s foundational principles are first internalized; and it is here, too, that modern values, or new norms thrust upon it by encounters with alien civilizations ⎯ are first evaluated. I argue that external norms are neither automatically adopted nor uniformly resisted. Their fate is determined, rather, by their relationship to the civilization’s first principles. Norms that fulfil an existing civilizational need are absorbed; those compatible with the prevailing symbolic order are localized; but those that violate foundational principles are categorically rejected and can be termed unabsorbed norms. The consequences are stark: depending on the outcome, the encounter either reinforces the stability of the family or generates profound disorientation within it. Drawing on contemporary evidence from India, this paper perceives the family not as a passive vessel of tradition, but as a living mechanism of civilizational continuity and, I submit, the very pivot upon which civilizational survival turns.

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