Diverse culture of India – an overview by a native Indian

Foreigners, particularly Westerners know little about India, its people, the customs and culture of this vast country – second only to China by way of population figure, but bigger in land area. Even those who have studied about India may not know the in-depth details of the diverse cultures prevailing among Indian people, living in the northern and southern States – bifurcated by languages in 1956.

This being a very wide subject for stuffing inside this limited space, an attempt is being made here to bring forth at least the differences in cultures of people of North India and South India, but it should be remembered that as an Indian, all the people of India, irrespective of regional and territorial barriers, have several aspects in common.

The virtues one can find among all Indians are – Faith in God – whether it is one of the many Hindu Gods, Allah or Jesus; respect to elders of the family; traditional values of life preserved for generations and preached to children when they are kids; shunning evil deeds and beholding good deeds fearing justice by destiny; forbearance of life’s challenges with courage and simplicity.

True – India is plagued by poverty, illiteracy and superstitions leading to castism etc., but the binding factor from Kashmir in the North end to Kanyakumari in the South end is unity in diversity, when the nation faces any peril like war or foreign invasion. And this has been proved beyond doubt many times before.

On the cultural aspect, broadly the country can be divided into North India – those States falling north of Vindhya Hills running in the centre horizontally and those falling south of it. Excepting States of Andhra Pradesh; Karnataka; Tamilnadu and Kerala, all other States are considered North India.

Language is the predominant divider here. All North Indian States generally speak Hindi, the National Language, and its derivatives like Bhojpuri, Urdu, Gujarathi, Marathi, Bengali, Oriya and the like. Again, the basis for Hindi is the ancient language (but now extinct) Sanskrit.

South Indian States speak the derivatives of the ancient language Tamil (which is the official language of Tamilnadu) such as Telugu (Andhra Pradesh), Kannada (Karnataka), and Malayalam (Kerala).

But in all the States of India, English is used as the common language and is also recognized as the official language of India. Thanks to 300 years of British Rule, Indian Schools, Colleges and Universities are teaching for generations, impeccable British English. Indians speak and write good and chaste English as taught by text books – not the slang used by native British people by repeated usage in conversations. So any foreigner with English knowledge can comfortably tour all over India.

Ancient India, prior to Independence from British Rule, was largely scattered as separate Kingdoms and Indian history shows many rulers including great Muslim Emperors like Baber. The whole country had its capital – mostly Delhi – in North India for these native as well as alien rulers. Inevitably the cultures of North India were greatly impacted by Muslim rulers and Emperors.

But South India was comparatively peaceful during invasions, blood-shed wars and turmoil, even at the time of separation of Pakistan from India. This explains the flourishing of fine arts in whole of South India, especially Tamilnadu, with peace and harmony prevailing for centuries.

Even today each Indian State is identified in this background for diverse cultures. Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Maharashtra for their bravery. West Bengal for its literary works, emotional poets like Rabindranath Tagore, simple lifestyles following communism. Orissa for its sculptures and mountain tribal lives. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar for density in population, poverty, illiteracy and ignorance.

Food habits differ only in two ways – whole of North Indian people eating wheat and its products as main course and South Indians would not miss rice and its derivatives for anything. As for vegetarianism, the South Indians are up-front although non-veg items are taken, but not as popular as North Indian varieties.

The entire of South India consists of most Hindu temples in the country, including the monumental Tanjore Bragadeeswar Temple located in Tamilnadu, largest in size of Temple Towers.

For South Indian culture alone one can write volumes.