Q4 How India stands in the world in terms of biological diversity.
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There are three parts to it - geography enabled the diversity, religion, politics & culture preserve it and the refined elements of the culture help us cherish it.
1. We have an extremely diverse geography. From the 8000m+ peaks in the Himalayas to the plains the south, there are 100s of different landforms - islands, tropical forests, hot deserts, high altitude deserts, massive deltas - you name it.
Thus mountain people in Kashmir, desert people of Rajasthan and the plains people of Tamilnadu, eat and dress differently in a way that suits their geography. The nation is vast and given the poor transportation systems, each region evolved separately. Geography plays a large part in our diversity.
2. Now, you might think Russia, China and US also have extreme geo diversity. One difference India has is that, unlike Russia or China, most of the land is habitable and well populated. That gives sufficient size for each kind of demographic grouping. In contrast, a guy living in inner Mongolia might not have enough size to represent his grouping well internationally.
3. Our core culture - Hinduism - is extremely accommodating of diversity. When waves of Jews, Zoroastrians, early Christians and Muslims arrived in our shores we were not defensive. We not just accepted them, we also created a dozen variations of our culture - Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism and so on. We could live with 1000s of contradictory beliefs without being defensive or get an urge to move to a single faith. We were always a mosaic.
4. Europeans couldn't destroy our culture significantly, like they did in other big nations such as Australia, Canada, USA, Brazil. Thus, while the more homogenous English/Iberian people replaced the highly heterogeneous aborigines/native Americans, the same didn't happen in India.
5. India did not have the kind of homogenization wave post independence that took place in the rest of Asia, including China. Under Mao, China evolved into a nation with a single language and ethnicity and cultural diversity was thrown out the door. Similarly in Australia, the aborigines were forcefully integrated into the mainstream. In the Americans, native Americans were relegated to tiny reservations or massacred. In India, we successfully withstood any attempt to impose a common language or culture across India.
6. Although one has a million reasons to hate the caste system, the institution also helped preserve the diversity. There are a lot of traditions (from food, festivals to clothing and attitude) that are passed solely through caste and these were preserved by a strictly controlled marriage system. Now, as caste system wears off we also need to figure out how we should protect the lineage and heritage that was handed over the generations.
7. Over the past 5000 years we have so well practiced some of the cultural elements that they are well refined and look superior to us. A lot of us are indeed quite proud of our culture that we would not take the alternatives too much. Think of our cooking, music or temples. Thus, while we might feed on the occasional burger, nothing can soothe our tastes as much as a masala dosa or tandoor roti or gujarati thali. They are too good to leave. Thus, the cultural elements stay intact purely by being superior (in our eyes) to the alternatives.
1. We have an extremely diverse geography. From the 8000m+ peaks in the Himalayas to the plains the south, there are 100s of different landforms - islands, tropical forests, hot deserts, high altitude deserts, massive deltas - you name it.
Thus mountain people in Kashmir, desert people of Rajasthan and the plains people of Tamilnadu, eat and dress differently in a way that suits their geography. The nation is vast and given the poor transportation systems, each region evolved separately. Geography plays a large part in our diversity.
2. Now, you might think Russia, China and US also have extreme geo diversity. One difference India has is that, unlike Russia or China, most of the land is habitable and well populated. That gives sufficient size for each kind of demographic grouping. In contrast, a guy living in inner Mongolia might not have enough size to represent his grouping well internationally.
3. Our core culture - Hinduism - is extremely accommodating of diversity. When waves of Jews, Zoroastrians, early Christians and Muslims arrived in our shores we were not defensive. We not just accepted them, we also created a dozen variations of our culture - Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism and so on. We could live with 1000s of contradictory beliefs without being defensive or get an urge to move to a single faith. We were always a mosaic.
4. Europeans couldn't destroy our culture significantly, like they did in other big nations such as Australia, Canada, USA, Brazil. Thus, while the more homogenous English/Iberian people replaced the highly heterogeneous aborigines/native Americans, the same didn't happen in India.
5. India did not have the kind of homogenization wave post independence that took place in the rest of Asia, including China. Under Mao, China evolved into a nation with a single language and ethnicity and cultural diversity was thrown out the door. Similarly in Australia, the aborigines were forcefully integrated into the mainstream. In the Americans, native Americans were relegated to tiny reservations or massacred. In India, we successfully withstood any attempt to impose a common language or culture across India.
6. Although one has a million reasons to hate the caste system, the institution also helped preserve the diversity. There are a lot of traditions (from food, festivals to clothing and attitude) that are passed solely through caste and these were preserved by a strictly controlled marriage system. Now, as caste system wears off we also need to figure out how we should protect the lineage and heritage that was handed over the generations.
7. Over the past 5000 years we have so well practiced some of the cultural elements that they are well refined and look superior to us. A lot of us are indeed quite proud of our culture that we would not take the alternatives too much. Think of our cooking, music or temples. Thus, while we might feed on the occasional burger, nothing can soothe our tastes as much as a masala dosa or tandoor roti or gujarati thali. They are too good to leave. Thus, the cultural elements stay intact purely by being superior (in our eyes) to the alternatives.
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