Burden of unity

I recently made a short trip to Canada. What struck me was the homogeneity of Ottawa, the capital city. Everything was organised and structured and clean. It make me extra-sensitive to the heterogeneity of Mumbai: on one side you have tall, fully air-conditioned high rise buildings and on the other side lie slums and garbage piles. No wonder in Hindu mythology, we have the idea of many Lokas, or realms, some occupied by various children of Prajapati, Devas, Asuras, Rakshasas, Yakshas, Apsaras, all existing simultaneously and (almost) harmoniously.


Illustration/Devdutt pattanaik

There are many Indias that exist simultaneously. There is rich India and poor India. There is Hindu India and Muslim India. There is English India and Hindi India. There is Bengali India and there is Tamil India. The Canadians found it amusing that every Indian needs to know at least two or three languages in order to survive, and not the same two or three languages (Canada has two languages ufffdEnglish and French). In fact, just to help foreigners understand the complexity of India, I tell them to count the many scripts in an Indian hundred rupee note. That one exercise silences all arguments on diversity. They realise how difficult it is to come up with a single blueprint for India.u00a0

India's diversity is most evident in Bollywood films. The world of Karan Johar (KJ) is so different from the world of Ram Gopal Varma (RGV) which in turn is so different from the world of Vishal Bhardwaj (VB). Their stories reveal their respective subjective truth. In the KJ mythosphere, there is no poverty and everything is spotlessly clean, designer labelled and delightfully shallow. In the RGV mythosphere, there are only angry gangsters, and corrupt politicians and policemen. VB's mythosphere is gritty, dirty and feudal.u00a0 Which is the real India,
I wonder?

During the festival of Navaratri, in many parts of South India, there is a ritual when clay and wooden dolls of various gods and goddesses are placed on a many tiered platform. I wonder if the ritual was aimed to sensitise children to the idea of diversity. Gods come in all shapes and sizesu00a0-- fat, thin, blue, green, male, female, tree or monkey. Were these rituals designed to make Indians more tolerant? It is something to think about.

While linguistic, economic and religious diversity is seen in every part of the world and is rising in first world countries with increasing immigration, what makes Indian diversity unique is the idea of caste. And members of different castes differ remarkably in social habits. Members of one caste may have more in common with members of the same caste in another part of the country than with their neighbours in the same village.

Until the British, no one bothered to unite India. It was not required. Diversity was allowed so long as the taxes were paid. The British needed to unite India and they worked very hard to create this one Indiau00a0-- railways, law, police, postal services. We have inherited the British burden to unite India but we also want to be democratic. A democracy necessarily allows diversity.
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Different people therefore align themselves not to one national party but to regional parties and parties that create vote banks using religion and caste as the lever.

This heterogenous nature of India, I believe, has its roots in the belief in rebirth. When one does not live only one life, there is no right way to live life. Everyone can live different kinds of lives in different lifetimes. So why bother trying to homogenise society? Let diversity prevail. Only the modern mind, conditioned by ideas that have their roots in America and Europe, carries the burden of homogeneity, hence unity.

Devdutt Pattanaik is a Mumbai-based mythologist who makes sacred stories, symbols and rituals relevant to modern times.