A rich diversity

The chapter opens with two prayers of a kind. Rabindranath Tagore: 'Oh, grant me my prayer, that I may never lose the bliss of the touch of the one in the play of the many.' And Sri Aurobindo: 'The principle of unity in diversity which has always been normal to [India]... The Many in the One.'

If you travel through India by train, you will notice not only changing landscapes outside the window but also many kinds of dresses and food; you will hear different languages, familiar and unfamiliar, and see different scripts on the signboards. Even inside one coach you may find passengers from different states, dressed differently and speaking different languages, opening their tiffins and sharing what they brought from home.

Even in your own region you will meet people from other parts of India with different customs and traditions. This is India's rich diversity, and it is usually the first thing visitors notice.

With over 1.4 billion people (about 18 percent of the world's population), such diversity is not surprising! Nearly one person in five on Earth lives in India.

Some numbers: in the late 20th century, the Anthropological Survey of India, a national organisation, carried out a huge survey called the 'People of India' project, covering 4,635 communities across all the states. It counted 325 languages using 25 scripts. Notice that 325 languages share only 25 scripts: even inside the diversity, something is held in common.

The survey also found that many Indians are migrants, in the sense that they do not live near their birthplace or with their original community. For example, someone born in a Haryana village may now work in Delhi, Mumbai or Ahmedabad.

Diversity is beautiful, but making sense of it is not easy. Over a century ago, the British historian Vincent Smith wondered: 'How, in the face of such bewildering diversity, can a history of India be written? … the answer to the query is found in the fact that India offers unity in diversity.' That is the question this chapter answers, dish by dish and story by story.