Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’

This is Chapter 8 of Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 6, the new 2024 book under NCF-SE 2023) and the second chapter of Theme C, ‘Our Cultural Heritage and Knowledge Traditions’. Chapter 7 (fees107) traced India’s cultural roots and ended with the banyan, whose branches throw fresh roots; this chapter looks at the branches — the diversity of everyday life — and asks what unites them. Its three ‘Big Questions’: what ‘unity in diversity’ means in India; which aspects of diversity are most striking; and how we make out the unity beneath. It is a short chapter (about ten pages of reading), so this page has seven concept sections and does not pad. The book’s two maps (Figs. 8.1 and 8.5) are turned into tables and a non-map ring; no outline or boundary is drawn. The book does not discuss the Constitution’s language list or census data; where this page adds them they are marked Beyond NCERT (†) with source and year.

• Links in this book: fees105 (the land and its names — Bhārata from the Himalaya to Kumari); fees107 (cultural roots, the shared trunk, tribal–Hindu exchange); fees103 (landforms and ways of life); the Governance theme that follows.
• Deeper pages: lesy106 (The Challenges of Cultural Diversity — community identity, regionalism, languages, the state); lesy101 and kesy205 (Indian sociologists: Ghurye, Srinivas and others); lehs103 (the Mahābhārata as a source); gess107 (the making of regional cultures — language, Jagannath, Kathak, miniatures); jess304 (Indian textiles and the world market); legy201 (language and religion in the census); keps207 and jess402 (federalism and language). This page links them and does not re-teach them.
• UPSC: GS1 ‘salient features of Indian society; diversity of India’ and ‘Indian culture’. Mains has asked about cultural elements of diversity and national identity (2015), regions as cultural units (2017), ‘small India’ pockets (2019) and what sustains Indian culture (2019); Prelims about regional Mahābhārata authors (1997) and saree-weaving towns (2014).

• Diversity: landscapes, dress, food, languages, scripts, customs; 1.4 billion+ people (≈ 18% of the world). People of India project (Anthropological Survey of India, late 20th c., directed by K.S. Singh): 4,635 communities, 325 languages, 25 scripts; many Indians are migrants.
• Unity in diversity: Vincent Smith’s answer to how India’s history can be written; ‘Many in the One’ — Sri Aurobindo (Swabhava and Swadharma) and Tagore (‘the touch of the one in the play of the many’).
• Food: staple grains common almost everywhere — cereals (rice, barley, wheat), millets (bajra, jowar, ragi), pulses; spices (turmeric, cumin, cardamom, ginger) — same ingredients (unity), endless combinations (diversity).
• Clothing: the sari — one unstitched cloth; silk saris Banarasi, Kanjivaram, Paithani, Patan Patola, Muga, Mysore; a Vaiśhālī relief a few centuries BCE; many drapes and uses. Chintz: so popular in 17th-c. Europe that England and France banned its import.
• Festivals: Makara Sankrānti, ~14 January, start of harvest: Pongal, Maghi/Lohri, Magh Bihu, Uttarayan, Khichdi Parv, Poush Songkranti, Pedda Panduga, Makara Sankramana, Makara Vilakku, Shishur Saenkraat…
• Literature: Pañchatantra (≥ 2,200 years; ~200 adaptations in 50+ languages); Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata retold for 2,000+ years, with folk and tribal versions (Bhils, Gonds, Mundas; Irula Pañcha Pāṇḍavar stone). UPSC: diversity and national identity (GS1 2015), ‘small India’ pockets (2019), Pampa’s Kannada Mahābhārata (1997).

Travel through India by train and you notice changing landscapes, many kinds of dress and food, familiar and unfamiliar languages, and different scripts; even in your own region you meet people from elsewhere with other customs. This diversity is usually the first thing visitors notice. With over 1.4 billion people — about 18 percent of the world’s population — it is not surprising. In the late 20th century the Anthropological Survey of India, a national organisation, carried out the ‘People of India’ project, a survey of 4,635 communities across all States; it counted 325 languages using 25 scripts, and observed that many Indians may be called migrants — people not living near their birthplace or with their original community. Making sense of all this is not easy: over a century ago the British historian Vincent Smith asked how, in the face of such ‘bewildering diversity’, a history of India could be written — and answered that India offers unity in diversity. The chapter sets out to show what that means, through a few dimensions of everyday life.

The number of dishes in India must run into the thousands, if not lakhs. Yet certain food grains are common to almost every part of the country — cereals such as rice, barley and wheat; millets such as pearl millet (bajra), sorghum (jowar) and finger millet (ragi); and pulses such as various dals and grams. These are staple grains, the basic food of most Indians. Common spices — turmeric, cumin, cardamom, ginger — are used across the country, and the list could go on with vegetables and oils. So the same ingredients (unity) are used in many combinations (diversity) to make an endless variety of dishes.

Every region and community has its own styles of dress, yet some traditional Indian dresses share a common form. The obvious example is the sari, a plain length of cloth worn in most of India, made of different fabrics — mostly cotton or silk, now also synthetics. Famous silk saris include Banarasi, Kanjivaram, Paithani, Patan Patola, Muga and Mysore, and there are many more cotton saris; altogether this unstitched cloth comes in hundreds of varieties, made by different methods of weaving and design — some designs woven into the cloth, others printed after weaving — in endless colours from many pigments. The sari has a long history: a stone relief from Vaiśhālī (Bihar) of a woman in a sari goes back a few centuries BCE. There are many ways to wear it, by region and community, and new drapes are still invented — but it remains a single dress. Travellers marvelled at its simplicity, economy and variety, and women put it to many uses beyond dress. India also long produced the finest cotton in the world, exported as far as Europe: printed chintz became so popular in 17th-century Europe that sales of some European dresses fell sharply, and England and France banned its import to protect their own products.

India has an immense variety of festivals, and some common ones fall at about the same time across the country under different names. The book takes one example: Makara Sankrānti, which marks the beginning of the harvest season in many parts of India, on or around 14 January. Fig. 8.5 shows its regional names — among them Pongal, Maghi/Lohri, Magh Bihu, Uttarayan, Khichdi Parv, Poush Songkranti, Pedda Panduga, Makara Sankramana, Makara Vilakku and Shishur Saenkraat. The second ‘Let’s explore’ points to October–November, when many major festivals take place.

Literature is another fine illustration of unity in diversity. Indian literatures are extremely diverse — and among the most abundant in the world — yet, despite differences of language and technique, they share themes and concerns. Take the Pañchatantra, a collection of delightful stories with animals as the main characters, teaching life skills. The original Sanskrit text is at least 2,200 years old, and its stories have been adapted into almost every Indian language; they also travelled to South-east Asia, the Arab world and Europe, inspiring new collections — an estimated 200 adaptations in more than 50 languages. ‘One’ collection has become ‘many’.

The most striking case is that of India’s two epics — the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata. In their original Sanskrit they would fill some 7,000 pages, and they narrate heroes who fight to re-establish dharma: in the Mahābhārata the Pāṇḍavas, with Kṛiṣhṇa’s help, fight their cousins the Kauravas to recover their kingdom; in the Rāmāyaṇa Rāma, helped by his brother Lakṣhmaṇa and by Hanuman, defeats Rāvaṇa, who had kidnapped Sītā. They contain many shorter stories about values that keep asking what is right and what is wrong. For more than two millenniums they have been translated or adapted into regional literatures in India and beyond, and there are countless folk versions: a scholar surveying Tamil Nadu alone counted ‘about a hundred versions’ of the Mahābhārata in folklore forms. Many communities have their own versions and legends linking their history with the epics — especially tribal communities such as the Bhils, Gonds and Mundas; most tribes of the north-east and the Himalayan regions, including Kashmir, have had their own version of one epic or both, passed on orally with legends of how the heroes — any of the five Pāṇḍavas, Draupadī, sometimes even Duryodhana — visited their lands. The anthropologist K.S. Singh, who directed the People of India project, observed that there is hardly a place the Pāṇḍavas did not visit according to folklore, and the same may be said of the Rāmāyaṇa. Perhaps more than any other texts, the two epics created a dense web of cultural interactions across India and much of Asia. The book adds that classical arts and architecture show the same unity and diversity (taught in the Art curricular area), and ends: Indian culture celebrates diversity as an enrichment but never loses sight of the underlying unity that nourishes it.

The book’s conclusion is stated plainly: Indian culture celebrates diversity as an enrichment but never loses sight of the underlying unity which nourishes that diversity; ‘Before we move on’ adds that India’s unity celebrates diversity because diversity does not divide — it enriches. The idea has a long history in Indian thought and scholarship, and sociologists and historians have described the unity — and its limits — in different ways. Their readings are set out below beside the book’s, with who holds each, and no verdict.

The chapter’s activity boxes, in page order.

Numbers

One-liners

• ‘Unity in diversity’ is Vincent Smith’s answer to how a history of India can be written.
• ‘Many in the One’ is Sri Aurobindo’s phrase.
• The People of India project was run by the Anthropological Survey of India, directed by K.S. Singh.
• Many Indians may be called migrants — not living near their birthplace or original community.
• Bajra is pearl millet, jowar sorghum, ragi finger millet.
• Same ingredients (unity), many combinations (diversity).
• The sari is an unstitched length of cloth.
• Patan Patola is a silk sari; Muga silk is from Assam †.
• Chintz is a printed Indian cotton.
• Pongal, Lohri, Magh Bihu and Uttarayan are regional names around Makara Sankrānti.
• The Pañchatantra’s main characters are animals.
• In the Mahābhārata the Pāṇḍavas fight the Kauravas with Kṛiṣhṇa’s help.
• Irula tribals keep the Pañcha Pāṇḍavar shrine in the Nilgiris.
• Indian culture celebrates diversity as an enrichment (book).

Traps to avoid

• 325 languages is the People of India count — not the Census (121) or the Eighth Schedule (22) †.
• Makara Sankrānti is about 14 January, not the winter solstice †.
• Lohri is Punjab’s; Bihu is Assam’s; Uttarayan is Gujarat’s kite festival.
• Arhar dal and pigeon pea are the same pulse (Fig. 8.1 lists both).
• Chintz was banned by England and France — not by India.
• Pampa wrote the Kannada Mahābhārata; Sāraḷā Dāsa the Odia; Kāśhīrām Dās the Bengali †.
• Kalīla wa Dimna is the Arabic Pañchatantra, not a Jātaka †.
• Fig. 8.6 is by Sahibdin of Mewar (1652), not a Mughal painting.
• ‘Many in the One’ is Sri Aurobindo; ‘the one in the play of the many’ is Tagore.

Prelims — what UPSC asks

• From this chapter: regional authors of the Mahābhārata (1997 — Pampa–Kannada; the book teaches regional adaptations, the names are in section 6); towns famous for traditional saris (2014 — Chanderi and Kancheepuram; the book teaches Kanjivaram among silk saris). Both keys verified.
• Related but taught elsewhere: the Eighth Schedule (1979, 1985, 2008, 2024 — jess402, legy201), classical languages (2014, 2015), the GI tag for Banaras saris (2015), composite culture as a fundamental duty (2012, 2025 — keps202). These need the Beyond-NCERT boxes here plus those pages. Method: learn festival–region, sari–place and epic–author–language pairs.

Mains — where it appears and how to answer

• GS1 (salient features of Indian society; diversity; Indian culture): 2015 — describe four cultural elements of diversity and their role in national identity (use the chapter’s language, food, dress, festivals and epics, with the sociologists’ table for balance); 2017 — do regions rather than States form cultural units (Sankrānti’s regional names and textile traditions cut across State lines); 2019 — ‘cultural pockets of small India’ across the nation (migration, the People of India finding); 2019 — what makes Indian society unique in sustaining its culture (oral transmission, epics in many tellings, festivals). Present the unity thesis beside Srinivas, Marriott, Dumont, Bose, Thapar and Ramanujan, and keep it free of present-day framing.

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