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Something to think about - Guest Editorial - May 2006 Celebrating Cultural Diversity - By Pranav M. Doshi Few countries in the world have such an ancient and diverse culture as India's. Stretching back in an unbroken sweep over 5000 years, India's culture has been enriched by successive waves of migration which were absorbed into the Indian way of life. Aryavrata, Bharatvarsha, Bharat, Hindustan, Hind, India are the many names of this land, a place of contradictions and surprises, a culture where tradition flourishes side by side with modernity, a country more pluralistic and diverse that any other, and a nation more democratic and united than many others. This is the country we belong to, a land whose glories are sung incessantly in all of Hinduism’s holy books and a civilisation whose glory remains unsung in the world, despite India’s enormous contribution to the world, an assertion of the traditional humble and self-effacing nature of the culture and the people. “India", a name given by foreigners to our country, is derived from the river Indus. The first evidence of human settlement in the Indian sub-continent dates back to 6000 BC, and these settlements expanded around 3000 BC into what is today known as the Indus valley civilisation. The Indus valley civilisation was highly urbanised, its cities marvels of town planning, based on agriculture and commerce and trading with contemporary Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Egypt, and even the Roman Empire. The social, economic and political change that the Aryans brought about is depicted in the two great epics of ancient India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The old Vedic religion, naturalistic and sacrificial, gave way to the pragmatism of the Upanishads, and this is turn, stimulated the rise of reformers like Vardhaman Mahavira and Gautama Buddha around the 5th century BC. Both Mahavira and Buddha sought only to reform Hinduism, but their reform attempts triggered the development of the two religious faiths known today as Jainism and Buddhism respectively. The multiplicity of religions in India is an important point to be noted. It is rare that a country accepted so many religions and allows them to flourish and even have an organic growth. Crusades and jihads are concepts still unknown to the Hindu mind, and thus the Indian psyche. Sarva dharma sambhavna is an apt description of the Indian religious attitude and an idea which is universal in its application compared to the European idea of secularism which forbids all display of religious faith and piety. India has always staunchly believed in the ancient Hindu dictum that says that each religion is just a particle of the truth, and are just different roads to the same destination. Knowing about other religions does not necessarily have to bring you into conflict with your own, it just raises your knowledge of the truth. With about 800 dialects and 15 officially recognized languages, several religions including Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism, various styles of art, architecture, literature, music and dance, and several lifestyles from the urban and rural to the tribal, India is a “thali” of cultural diversity where many a times interaction between the different components is limited, but each one of them is essential to complete the thali. The political history of India is the history of the rise and fall of many empires, some indigenous, some established by invaders who came to conquer and ended up by being absorbed into the Indian mainstream, contributing to the diversity of Indian culture today. From the Nandas (3rd century BC) who stopped Alexander the Great from entering the Gangetic plain (326-325 BC), to the Mauryas (2nd - 1st century BC) whose zenith was the empire of Ashoka, a convert to Buddhism who helped spread this faith throughout the Far East, and the Guptas (4th century AD) in whose time Kautilya wrote the famous Arthshastra. Cities like Magadha and Pataliputra developed into prosperous centres of commerce, culture and learning, and their fame spread far and wide. The last great empire in this period of Indian history was that of Harsha in the 7th century AD. What is known as the medieval age of Indian history can be loosely termed the age of invasions, beginning with the Turks in the 11th century. The ensuing onslaught of the Mongols led to the establishment of the Mughal empire (1526 to 1857). With Vasco de Gama's arrival at Calicut on India's western coast in 1498, the latter half of India's medieval era saw the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the British entering India from the sea, initially as traders and later as colonisers. Indian music spans various traditions, from folk songs and music, which varies from region to region, tribal music, classical and semi-classical traditions and popular music. There are two recognized styles of classical music - the Hindustani (northern India) style and the Carnatic style of South India. Each also has its dedicated instruments - to name just a few, Hindustani music has the sitar, sarod, sur-bahaar, bansuri, shahnai and the violin while Carnatic musicians generally use the veena, venu, nagasvaram, gottuvadyam or the violin as the main melody instrument. Percussion and other accompanying instruments are equally varied. Vocal traditions in both classical styles are also different. Broadly speaking, Carnatic music is devotional in nature while the Hindustani style is secular. Apart from these traditions, there are various semi-classical styles (such as ghazals and qawwalis) and also a rich vein of popular music typified in songs from Indian films which are generally musicals. Indian dance has an unbroken tradition of over 2000 years, with themes drawn from mythology, legends and classical literature. It also can be broadly divided into folk/tribal dances which have many regional variations, and the classical dances, which are based on ancient texts and have rigid rules of presentation. Some of the major classical dance traditions are Bharata Natyam, Kathak, Odissi, Manipuri, Kuchipudi, Mohiniattam and Kathakali. The Natya Shastra, written by Bharatha between second century BC and second century AD, is the source of all forms of Indian classical dance. It is regarded as the fifth Veda. Indian literature, ranging from the Sanskrit to English, goes a long way in portraying the openness of Indian character and the willingness to learn new and unique concepts, even though they might not be necessarily of our culture or religious inclination. It is symbolic of the Indian belief that knowledge is universal and must be searched and learnt from as many sources as possible. India literature can date its origins to the oral tradition of the Vedas and the great epics of India, which are still an integral part of daily life. Poetry, drama, fiction, non-fiction and all other literary styles have a substantial corpus in each of India's major languages and in quite a few dialects, while the oral tradition also continues through folk songs and dramas. Theatre in India also has ancient historical roots, though classical theatre is performed very rarely nowadays, having been overtaken by a vibrant tradition of folk theatre (including puppet and shadow theatre) and modern professional theatre, which draws not only dramas written in any Indian language but also on non-Indian theatre from Shakespeare to Chekov to Andrew Lloyd Webber, either in English or in translation. India presents to the visitor an overwhelmingly visual impression. It is beautiful, colorful, sensuous. It is captivating and intriguing, repugnant and puzzling. It combines the intimacy and familiarity of English four o’clock tea with the dazzling foreignness of carpisoned elephants or vast crowds bathing in the Ganga during an eclipse. India’s displays of multi-armed images, its processions and its pilgrimages, its beggars and its kings, its street life and markets, its diversity of people – all appear to the eye in a kaleidoscope of images.
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