What is unity in diversity in India?

What do ‘diversity’ and ‘unity’ mean?

Diversity means variety: many different kinds of something. Unity means a common thread that connects things. Put together, unity in diversity means that many different forms share one common base. The chapter calls this the Many in the One.

Think of a rainbow. It has many colours, yet it is one rainbow. India is a bit like that.

How diverse is India?

Travel across India by train and you notice it at once: the landscape changes, people dress differently, the food changes, and you hear new languages and see new scripts at stations.

• India has over 1.4 billion people, about 18 percent of the world’s population.
• The People of India project of the Anthropological Survey of India studied 4,635 communities across all States and counted 325 languages using 25 scripts.
• Many Indians are migrants: they live away from their birthplace or their original community.

So where is the unity? The chapter finds it in four everyday places.

1. Food

Thousands of dishes are cooked across India, yet most of them use the same staple grains: rice, wheat and barley; millets such as bajra, jowar and ragi; and pulses such as dals and rajma. Common spices like turmeric, cumin, cardamom and ginger are used almost everywhere. The ingredients are shared (unity), but the combinations are endless (diversity).

2. Clothing

The sari is a single unstitched length of cloth worn in most parts of India. It is made of cotton, silk and, nowadays, synthetic fabrics, and famous silk saris include Banarasi, Kanjivaram, Paithani, Patan Patola, Muga and Mysore. It is draped in many regional styles, and new styles are still being invented, but it remains one dress. Its history is long: a stone relief from Vaiśhali, in today’s Bihar, shows a sari a few centuries BCE.

India once made the finest cotton in the world. A printed cotton called chintz became so popular in 17th-century Europe that England and France banned its import to protect their own cloth.

3. Festivals

On or around 14 January, many parts of India celebrate the start of the harvest season. It is the same festival, Makara Sankranti, with many names: Lohri in Punjab, Magh Bihu in Assam, Uttarayan in Gujarat, Poush Songkranti in West Bengal and Pongal in Tamil Nadu, among others.

4. Stories

The Panchatantra, a collection of animal stories that teach life skills, was written in Sanskrit at least 2,200 years ago. It has been retold in almost every Indian language and has about 200 adaptations in more than 50 languages, from Southeast Asia to the Arab world and Europe.

The two epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, have been told and retold for over two thousand years. Many communities, including tribal communities such as the Bhils, Gonds and Mundas, have their own versions and legends linking the heroes to their own lands.

Why is diversity a strength?

Each region adds its own flavour, fabric, festival name and story. Instead of pulling people apart, these differences make the shared culture richer. That is the chapter’s big idea: diversity does not divide; it enriches, and underneath it there is a unity that holds everything together.