Class 7 Social Science Part 2 Chapter 5: India, a Home to Many Notes

What is this chapter about?

In Class 6 you read that many Indians are migrants in a simple sense: they live away from their birthplace. This chapter looks at another kind of migrant: people from other parts of the world who moved to India, made their homes here and added to its diversity. It opens with a verse from the Hitopadesha. Narrow minds, it says, sort people into “mine” and “not mine”, while for the noble-hearted the whole world is family. The chapter picks a few communities as examples and asks three big questions: what made India a home for people from far away, why the persecuted sought refuge here, and what in Indian society lets newcomers belong.

Fleeing persecution: Jews, Syriac Christians and Parsis

Jews came to India in several waves, escaping persecution elsewhere. Some scholars say the Bene Israel reached the Konkan coast about 175 BCE, after a shipwreck; they grew into India’s largest Jewish community. Later groups settled near Kochi, where the Raja gave them land, and they built a synagogue. Syriac Christians, treated as heretics in the Roman Empire and suspected as Roman allies in Persia, sailed along trade routes to the Malabar coast from the 4th century CE. The Parsis, followers of Zoroastrianism, left Persia after its conquest by Arab armies in the 7th century and reached Gujarat between the 8th and 10th centuries. A legend says their wise man answered a full jug of milk by stirring in sugar without spilling a drop. Read more in communities who made India home.

Traders, the Siddis, Armenians and Baha’is

From the 7th century, Arab merchants made homes on the west coast, married local women and, in Kerala, joined the Mappila Muslims. The Siddis have a harder story: enslaved in Africa, they were brought to India by Arab, Portuguese and British traders, yet they built a culture blending African and Indian traditions. Armenian merchants dealt in spices, silk and gems; Akbar let them build a church in Agra, and they later settled in Surat, Kolkata and Chennai. Baha’is, branded heretics in Iran, began arriving in the late 19th century.

Refuge in the 20th century

During the Second World War, Maharaja Digvijaysinhji of Nawanagar (Jamnagar) sheltered about a thousand Polish orphans from 1942 to 1946, and a square in Warsaw now honours him as the Good Maharaja. In 1959, after an uprising in Lhasa against the Chinese presence there, the 14th Dalai Lama took refuge in India. Tibetans have since built settlements, schools and monasteries here, and their government-in-exile works from Dharamshala. See Polish children and Tibetan refugees.

The whole world is family

The chapter ends by asking how India earned a name for compassion. Its answer lies in old ideas: vasudhaiva kutumbakam (the whole world is one family), atithi devo bhava (a guest is like God) and sarve bhavantu sukhinah (may all be happy). Communities could keep their faiths here while becoming Indian. The book adds that Indians living abroad carry the same values, and that this idea of one human family can help the world face wars, climate change and inequality. Read vasudhaiva kutumbakam. Answers to every question are in the NCERT solutions for Part 2 Chapter 5.