Diversity in India-Unifying or Dividing, a Look

India is a country of diversity without any element of doubt about it. Much have been talked and discussed about multi-cultural, multi ethnic and multi-language issues and the very popular 'Unity in Diversity'. However, seldom the issue of multi-history has been brought to notice. When we discuss India as a country or rather the North and South India as singular entities, we have to keep in mind all the distinguishing factors, thereby highlight the immense hold that the uniting factors possess. Culture can be seen as a product of history if we add on the socio-cognitive progress of it. It implies that all the factors that 'divide' North and South of India are basically a product of historical dissimilarities along with the self-evident geographical differencargued that the people of the north and south belong to different ethnic groups. As it is claimed, South Indians are a product of African genes and the Northerners definitely Aryan. However, The Indian Council for Historical research, in its 2006 report shows that all Indians belong to the African genetic pool and not the Asian or European Aryan groups as it is claimed. The report also states that it was 60000 years before Christ when the human race started to spread from Africa and through the sea route they entered India. If we take it to be true, it leads to a rather intriguing question-if the people are of the same origin, why is it so that they are so different in nature?

While discussing this debate, we have to keep in mind that differences are always relative; it varies on the parameters that we take into account. We will start with mythology and then come to some historical facts to establish the differences. The 'Bindhya Parbat' has always been a divide between the North and South as evident in myths. We hear the story of Agastya who had to cross the huge Parbat to go to south. We also hear how difficult it was for Ram and his royal troop to go to south in their journey. People also link the infamous 'Ram-Ravana war' as symbolic of an ever-going north-south conflict. Now this is not history, (However, with the Ram Sethu controversy and the attempts to prove the Ramayana as a historical piece going on, we would not be surprised if someday it actually turns out to be history!) but myths are literature nevertheless and literature always portrays the contemporary socio cultural milieu. So we can see the North-South divide as an ongoing process from time unspecified. Historically also, the South was hardly related to the kingdoms of the North. Except from 273 BC to 232 BC when King Ashoka of the Maurya dynasty ruled over all parts of Indian sub-continent, the South never succumbed to any other unifying kingdom. The central Asian and European rulers ruled over the whole North coming from the North West (except for the North East) but could not penetrate the South. The Vijaynagara and other empires always denied the Mughals any chance of ruling over South India. After the Mughal rule was over and the British tried to 'form' a geographically huge colony, the north and south merged as a single entity. But the divisions remained. By increasing awareness about literature, the British installed (rather unintentionally) a sense of patriotism to the Indian minds and developed a common enemy in themselves. The British divided the South into the Madras Presidency that covered most of the place and a few other small parts as they did in North. It led to the freedom moment in 1947 when nobody demanded a different country for the Southerners.

Now we also have to look at the cultural aspect of the divide. Culture, the huge phenomenon that it is, includes a lot of things-right from language and dance forms to the ideas about beauty and nature. We will look at some of the aspects and try to derive more information about it. Indian languages are very interesting research subjects. It is commonly mistaken that since Sanskrit and Tamil are closest to each other, they belong to the same language group. But it is not so. According to linguistics all the south indian languages Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Tulu, Kannada, & Brahui (spoken in Balochistan, Pakistan) & few handful of lesser known languages fall under 'dravidian' language group.They are separate language group and very different from the Indo-European/Indo-Iranian/Indo-Aryan language groups. Sanskrit, Persian etc falls under Indo-Iranian sub-group && along with Latin etc falls under the very broad Indo-European language group. Borrowing vocalbulary from each other is a natural phenomenon and it has nothing to do with differnces or similarites. But in this context, we can refer to to the Tamilnadu riots of early 60s . When Hindi was declared the official national language, it led to a huge outroar exapanding all over South India. The impact was of such a great mreasure that after 1969 no national political party has been able to come to power in the state.

Now, culure refelcts in habitual behaviour of people. We can easily recognise the differene of North and South in their dress code, food habits and mostly in their language. But this doesnot mean they are sepearte from each other. They are not, yet the differnces are there. On November 1,2006, CNN-IBN aired a show which proved the prosperity of south over north which led to a major controversy as they tried to 'stereotype' the south. The show said that southern women are more conservative in their attitude to life. The example of Khusboo, the film star who talked about free sex in public and got a serious bash from the media was used to prove the conservative nature. But the literacy among women in the south remains distinctly ahead of north and the issue of the south being a safer place for women is still on. With the film star , we can also look at ideas of beauty and entertainment in south. We can see a striking contrast between the women as they are appreciated at both north and south.. The South Indian filmstars are more of dusky and voluptuous whereas the North Indians prefer slim and fair ladies as their favourites. This comparision is indeed very interesting. The movies which become huge hits in North are actually made in Mumbai. So when we talk about movies as a tool to analyse the North-South divide, we have to keep in mind that here the distinctions are based more on the places of business of movies rather than their factory places.

There is another very interesting aspect to the issue we are discussing. When we say north, we tend to include the North West and the North East also. Because of the geographical location, the South does not have a distinct South West or South East divide. It results in more varieties in culture as well as history in North India. On the other hand, the whole of South still retains their Dravidian culture to a larger extent as a uniting force. This sense of unified passion is a great leveler for the whole of South. The festivals in South stand as a proof of this. We can also look at another fact that South Indian culture is predominantly Hindu and even Matsya Purana states that Manu, the first man according to Indian traditional belief hailed from South India. Even in other fields like architecture, sculptures and philosophy, we can see a great fusion at both North and South.

Now, it is clear that despite the 'North South divide', India still has lots of unifying parameters to keep it bound together. Cultural values that come out of historical or rather historiographical facts definitely do leave some serious room for distinguishing measures. Yet barring some odd incidents like creating a Telegu speaking state or creating bridges and destroying mosques, the whole of India has stood together. If we leave out certain parameters, there is hardly any room to separate the North from the South. As we mentioned earlier, the comparison is hugely relative. Even though the differences are culturally distinct, culture alone can nullify all these issues and the 'Unity in Diversity' sentiments will never be hurt. With Cricket and Movies already playing a cupid between the two places, we can safely say that the North -South divide is not Historical or Cultural anymore, it is simply Geographical. And we cannot help it!