East Meets West – A Gautami Tripathy Column

This column previously ran by Deepak Morris is now taken over by Gautami Tripathy.

The purpose of the column is to bring the culture and joy of mysterious and beautiful India to the world.

March 19, 2007

 
 Unity in diversity...Essay

India is a country of great diversity with a wide range of landform types, including major mountain ranges, deserts, rich agricultural plains, and hilly jungle regions. Diversity is also evident in the geographical distribution of India's ethnic and linguistic groups. India’s ethnic, linguistic and regional complexity sets it apart from other nations. To gain even a superficial understanding of the relationships governing the huge number of ethnic, linguistic, and regional groups, the country should be visualized not as a nation-state but as the seat of a major world civilization.

Living within the embrace of the Indian nation are vast numbers of different regional, social, and economic groups, each with different cultural practices. Particularly noteworthy are differences between social structures in the north and the south, especially in the realm of kinship systems.

We are a multidimensional country with different religions, cultures, castes, languages and ethnicity. We are a fairly tolerant society with vibrant intellectuality coexisting with age-old traditions and beliefs. India’s secularism is deeply embedded in its psych and civilization.

We have grown up in this land of diverse religions, cultures without questioning its ethos. Traversing all over India has never made us feel in any alien anywhere be it Orissa, Bengal, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Kashmir, Kerala or Delhi. We have always felt one with the people, differences in our languages or customs has never even have been any issue. It was and still is an irrelevant subject, we have always been able to bond wherever we have travelled and imbibed their culture along with our own.

I have never felt the need to flaunt my ethnic origins or be daunted by the others. That way I have been able to take the best of both worlds and leave out the redundant issues. This happens to be true for majority of Indian population, who are proud of their own religions and cultures and yet can respect the others religion and culture. That’s how it is and that’s how it should be.

National Integration is a much-maligned word. We have always been an integrated nation. We are integrated emotionally. We have the feeling of oneness, which transcends all groups or cultural differences and synthesizes the different religions, castes and languages.

We cannot know India without understanding its religious beliefs and practices, which have a large impact on the personal lives of most Indians and influence public life on a daily basis. Religious tolerance in India finds expression in the definition of the nation as a secular state, within which the government since independence has officially remained separate from any one religion, allowing all forms of belief equal status before the law.

Despite all this, the people of India share certain common objectives, purposes or ideas and giving them high places over sectional loyalties. These common objectives are mainly to do with the progress and prosperity of our country. The welfare of the country has to be placed over narrow considerations.

We need to build up a national mind curbing the religion, linguistic and communal aspects which tend to disunite us. Emotional integration has grown silently in the minds and heart of man. Thus we are able to broaden our outlook, foster a feeling of nationalism and spirit of sacrifice and tolerance so that narrow groups interests are submerged in the larger interest of the country.

We have to nurture national identity, which cuts across all barriers, and promote values such as India’s common cultural heritage, egalitarianism, democracy and secularism, equality of sexes, protection of environment, removal of social barriers.

India has been able to survive wars, floods, droughts, earthquakes, terrorism, fundamentalism, communalism, riots, Emergency, financial crunches and political upheavals.

We have achieved political freedom for a long time now and we are already on our way to economic freedom. We are a forward-looking nation, juxtaposed with our traditions and cultural beliefs. We are willing to take global risks and are prepared to be a force of reckoning in fields of politics, business and finances.

We are able to carry ancient, medieval and modern cultures all at the same time and balance them fairly well. We are able to survive any disaster because of our resourcefulness, endeavour, tolerance and autonomous views.

Creating manageable order from complexity, bringing together widely contrasting groups in structured efforts to benefit the wider society, encouraging harmony among people with divergent interests, knowing that close family and friends can rely on each other in times of stress, allocating different tasks to those with different skills, and striving to do what is morally right in the eyes of the divine and the human community--these are some of the great strengths upon which Indian society can rely as it meets the challenges of the future.

At the end of the day, I feel that we have only got to look forward and learn from our past mistakes. That way we imbue the best and leave out the rest. For any country to grow, getting ahead along with all its multicultural dimensions, balance has to be maintained. Despite all odds, we stand united. We have nothing to lose, everything to gain.

(c)gautami.tripathy

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