Perhaps India is only country in world where almost all the faith and belief of the world exist. Where for every faith, belief and culture, there is considerably a good number of citizens living in different slices of the geo. All are existence are amalgamated in such a way that it has been believed that India is a melting pot of various cultures and all exists in a way that looks inseparable. Then came a though that we aren’t melting pot of culture but a salad bowl where we could taste good only if a wholistic consideration is there but have a clear distinct identity of all the cultures. These days, it is more visible when the content of this salad bowl at times are trying to show their presence felt. At times is giving a bitter taste to us. Although my take is a bit different over this bad taste. We still are the melting pot of cultures but somewhere few are pushing us to start talking about salad bowl and keep talking about the ingredients one culture don’t like or rather a thought is being instilled continuously in the consciousness of different culture people around what is right and what is not for one’s cultural identity. And in this entire thing, two major culture that are on the target are Hinduism and Islamism.
But why this need to cultural melting or mixing is coming
into the context, especially these days?
If we go back to the history, it was all about the strength
and land in India. The ancient history of India speaks about the vastness of the
boundaries of the country. But eventually that wasn’t called India but was
hundreds of small princely states. The one who was spreading their boundaries were
naming the piece of the land won. The concept of India started coming in after
the first foreign invasion happened in this part of the world in around 518 BC
by Iranians. Though this invasion wasn’t to rule this part of the land but was
more had commercial aspects. This helped establish the trade relations between
two different cultures. Another invasion happened in around 326 BC by
Macedonian in the leadership of Alexander. There are many explanations of this invasion
where one sect of historians believe that this was being won by Alexander over
Porus but since his army was so tired, it refused to rule the won territories
and further expand. The other sect believe that it was a clear defeat of
Alexander across the Jhelum and Porus won this battle. But out of these two
major invasions in Indian subcontinent, there was a need to unite all the
princely states against any such invasion since it would not only take away the
ownership of the land but also try invading the culture of the states. During
that time, Maurya Dynasty was in formative state and Chandragupta Maurya was rising
as one big leader in the subcontinent. He took steps towards uniting the entire
subcontinent and developed the thought of India among all. He was knowing the
fact that the entire subcontinent is sharing the same ethnicity called Sanatan
and hence is not difficult to unite them. He started promoting and influencing
the architecture, coinage, and astronomy.
For around next 1200 years, the culture was getting
strengthened and architecture is being promoted. While the style of the
structures was changing across the length and breadth of the subcontinent, the
basic soul remained same to promote the sanatan dharma and all the in-scripture
were made telling stories about this.
Things started changing when India again started seeing many
strong kings or rather many kings with different ways of ruling. This started
spreading after the death of Harshavardhan in 647 AD, who was considered as
last King who united ancient India. During next few hundred years, around 900
AD when slowly the borders were getting fragmented and rulers started changing the
coinages as well according to their territories. However, one thing remained
same was following the sanatan processes and no one were trying to deviate from
that. Many neo religions were also spreading slowly but these had never tried
detaching themselves from the ancient Sanatan culture very prominently.
Around 998 AD when Arab and Mongols invaded the territories, the
fragmented geo of India helped them enter into this part and establish and
spread their territories. Surprisingly it was so very easy for them to spread
that they haven’t much faced the resistance. The only reason was while Rulers
those days were strong in India but were more working towards their own
territories and weren’t much concerned about the other territories as not much
of the business relations and political tie up were there between each other.
This gave Mongols a clear pass to pick and choose states and rule them.
These Mongols knew that if they need to rule India, they need
to destroy the cultural heritage since this could play a role in uniting all
these princely states. Since most of the invasion has happened through the
Hindukush hence, they popularly started calling it Hindustan. However, this is
another debatable topic where different historians have different viewpoints.
Mongols slowly stared establishing their culture and weren’t trying to infuse
it, as it is popularly said. They were ensuring all the references of ancient
India should be destroyed since they saw this piece of land a potential to rule
for longer period of time. It was one rich place that could even help them in
spreading across. Few princely states haven’t much agreed with these invaders and
refused to be part of their territories hence some of the ancient heritages were
still intact in some part of the land.
During these times, there was a risk of holding the
intellectual groups of India and it was required to put a stall over them. Hence
these unity in diversity things had been spread. They were trying to spread the
thoughts of coexistence and respecting each other, while lot many were happening
towards destroying the culture. This is when the Melting Pot concept started
spreading.
While Christianity had reached India during 1st AD
but they were much restricted towards the Kerala and weren’t much into invasion
but was spreading through saints here.
In current times, a discussion is there on redefining the
melting pot concept or rather a redefinition of melting pot is happening with completely
different processes where one side is stating that the pot belongs to them while
other is stating that they are inseparable, and efforts are being made to
separate the ingredients of the melting pot.
कोई टिप्पणी नहीं:
एक टिप्पणी भेजें