SOCIO-CULTURAL CONFIGURATION OF CONTEMPORARY INDIA: UNITY,

DIVERSITY AND MULTICULTURALISM

The dictionary defines a nation as a stable community of people formed on the basis of
common language, territory, economic life, ethnicity, or psychological makeup manifested in
a common culture.

With an area of 3.28 million km2 and a population of 1.3 billion as of 2018, India is
considered the world’s most populous democracy. With such a large number of citizens,
India can also be called the land of diversity with its vast population being composed of
different religions, ethnicities, creeds, customs, and culture, some forms of diversity found in
India are discussed below;

 Linguistic Diversity
In the words of A.R. Desai, “India presents a spectacle of the museum of tongues”.
With 22 languages recognized under the 8th Schedule of the Constitution of India

which are, namely, (1) Assamese, (2) Bengali, (3) Gujarati, (4) Hindi, (5) Kannada,
(6) Kashmir. (7) Konkani. (8) Malayalam. (9) Manipuri, (10) Marathi, (11) Nepali.
(12) Oriya, (13) Punjabi, (14) Sanskrit. (15) Tamil, (16) Telugu, (17) Urdu, and (18)
Sindhi, (19) Santhali, (20) Boro, (21) Maithili and (22) Dogri. Other than these, there
are also as many as 1,652 other languages and dialects spoken in the country.

 Religious Diversity
India as a country is notable for having 6 major religions, namely, Hinduism,
Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, and Jainism, out of which it is the birthplace
of 4 (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism) and also having various other
minority religions being practiced within the State. Throughout India's history,
religion has played a major role in shaping the country’s culture. Religious diversity
and tolerance are both established in the country by Article 25 – 28 of the Indian
Constitution, which has declared the Right to freedom of speech and expression to be
a fundamental right where the people of the nation have the freedom to practice any
religion they wish to and has anti-discriminatory laws and social welfare initiative in
order to protect the minorities and prevent religious discrimination in the country.
  Caste Diversity

India is a land of castes. Caste or Jati refers to a hereditary, endogamous status group
practicing a specific traditional occupation. It is surprising to know that there are more than
3,000 Jatis in India. These are hierarchically graded in different ways in different regions. It
may also be noted that the practice of caste system is not confined to Hindus alone. We find
castes among the Muslims, Christians, Sikhs as well as other communities.

 Physical Diversity

Being the seventh largest nation in the world the territory of India spans across
various kinds of physically diverse areas, from the Himalayan mountain range in the
north to the coastal plains in the south. The Thar desert, the peninsular plateau, the
Indo-Gangetic plains, the multiple islands, all show the diversity that is present even
within the land we live on.

 Racial Diversity
A race is a group of people with a set of distinctive physical features such as set skin,
color, type of nose, a form of hair etc. A.W. Green says, “A race is a large biological
human grouping with a number of distinctive, inherited characteristics which vary
within a certain range.” The Indian sub-continent received a large number of
migratory races mostly from the Western and the Eastern directions. Majority of the
people of India are descendants of immigrants from across the Himalayas. Their
dispersal into sub-continent has resulted in the consequent regional concentration of a
variety of ethnic elements.

That being said these are in no way the only forms of diversity present within the nation but
the more prevalent ones. With these many diverse types of people co-existing, the society of
the Indian sub-continent is very multicultural. Multiculturalism can be defined as a situation
where different cultural or racial groups in a society have equal rights and opportunities, and
none is ignored or regarded as unimportant. With diverse cultures, languages, religions, and
communities, multiculturalism has its reflections in every sphere of social life in India.

With such a diverse and multicultural society India as a country promotes and believes in the
ideology of unity in diversity to its core, some examples of which would be;
 The people of the nation coming together during wars (Eg. The Kargil War) and stand
united as a nation against any threat to their homeland.
 The united efforts of the people of India to gain freedom from the British

With this, we can clearly see that the people of India, no matter how diverse or different
from one another they may be are still one as a nation and that itself is India’s biggest
asset, through which the country will continue to grow.