India: All it is cracked up to be

Modern India swears on its Constitution, taking its history in tow. A history which had been marred by what can be termed "non-assimilative" abuse by non-native cultures along with their religions, most of which came with rulers and oppressors, who did exactly that through them. State sponsored conversion, law measures like jizya and allowance of certain things that were not allowed and accepted in Hinduism include some of their methods that took the India of the time away from its original way of living.

This, being done through centuries, left behind Indians who made that them (the new culture) their way of life without stepping on others'. They're root-Indian every way, except for a small portion that may include some or all of the clothes they wear, food they eat or values they allow (among other things). English speaking but live on rasam. Western fashion but will only accept marriage with their parent's blessings... there are a gazillion of seemingly contradictory sets of characteristics you'll find. The Constitution puts all of them under an umbrella of being perfectly and legitimately Indian without having to be culturally verified and allowed by a majority, instead pre-verified through a simple blood connection to the land. More like, if this is truly your birth home, you should be allowed to make it so without anyone's authority.

While we are accorded this now freedom, a lot of people didn't take to India's early modern transformation into a multi-cultural society. This story starts when you go levels down each culture, into its deepest units, you'll find the secret of cultural survival (or downfall): (in most cases) the home. However wide lifestyles and values spread, they always start at this unit.  

Here is where each individual from their respective societies learn and adapt what makes their way of life separate from the different ones around them. It is also where their lifestyles and values live, thrive and die. Where we learn our mother tongues, are handed down food habits, values we're taught, dos and don'ts...everything that makes us Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Buddhist, Anglo, Tamilian, Bihari, Kannadiga, vegetarian, non-vegetarian and everything else we may be... whichever of these we ar (more than one simultaneously too). Because we are so diverse (even with our subsets), each such corner is a different one. They all simply can't be brushed with the same colour. If you do map it, you'd have a complex system with strangely uncanny combinations, defining which would be a nightmare. And if you were to colour and widely tag them with a system that even remotely starts to blanket define them, it would become a big, massive misrepresentation. You'd substitute all its colours for just a handful of them.

Anyone observing all the details will be able to see a pattern in the different types that are evident. People who keep their religion, lifestyle and devotion pure and harmless. The same ones who display its negative stereotype perfectly. Also ones who are so devout that they look down on everything else but theirs without question. And those who hold fast to a mainstream culture but refuse to identity with it saying they are a "different kind" still within it. You'll see all sorts and more.

Its, but, evident that the soul of this country is hardly homogenous. And it's each of these isolated, insulated corners of culture that define and add to what we celebrate and see under the big umbrella of modern contemporary Indian culture. Each one. And you can't simply assimilate them either, like how it all started. They're nothing like most things around them, but all of them strangely fit into this crazy jigsaw puzzle we know and celebrate as Modern India.

This binding, contrast that makes it beautiful spurns a bedrock of many, many sub-narratives which shows our ugly side and fuel our ugliest moments as a country and people. In one of these corners, it's driven into the head that someone is a higher caste and born/is above every other kind of person from another sub-narrative where one is told that they won't get more that they have from life because they are a lower one. One informs its people that their food, God or way of life is above everyone else's and they can thereby hold that right over them. These and more like them over every aspect of life that they can touch.

In between the cracks in this unlikely puzzle, these ideas brew and sustain, eventually to the disadvantage and oppression of one or more other groups. This sets a clear heirarchy and discrimination that is, somehow, now normalized. With these dominant sub-narratives, the table turning becomes official and the others become ploys of majoritarianism and, for all practical purposes, second class. Hopefully, these cracks of beauty don't become the crack that breaks us more than they do and have been doing.