The unity of indian culture

Till recently, the Aryans were regarded as the earliest invaders of the land. It was thought that they come to a country which was uncivilised and barbarian, but modern research has proved that there were invaders even before the Aryans poured into this land. They had evolved a civilization higher than that of the Aryan hordes who came in their wake. These Pre-Aryans had displaced still earlier people and built up new civilization which has astonished modern scholars by its extent and depth. The Aryan invasion repeated the process and led to fresh infusion of the old with the new. This continued with the successive inroads of fighting races who came to conquer but remained to lose themselves in the Indian racial cauldron. The Greek invaders were followed by Sakas and Huns and a hundred other nameless tribes. they all appeared on the scene as victors but were soon absorbed in the ranks of the vanquished.

Today, whatever is Indian, whether it be an idea, a word, a form of art,a political institution or a social custom,is a blend of many different strains and elements.

In spite of this derivation from many sources and the consequent variety of forms and types we find  a remarkable unity of spirit informing Indian culture throughout the  ages. In fact, it is this underlying unity which is one of the most remarkable features of Indian culture.  In volume and duration no civilization (with the possible exception of the Chinese) can bear comparison with civilization of Indian. The area of the land, the number of the people, the variety of the races and the length of the Indian's history are hardly repeated elsewhere. The vitality of Indian culture is equally amazing.In spite of a thousand vicissitudes, it has survived to the modern day. This has been possible only on account of a sense of a sense of Indianness which imposed unity on all diversity and wove into one fabric of national life the many strands of different texture, colour and quality which have entered here.

The ancient world threw up fine flowers of civilization in many lands. With the exception of Indian and China, they are all dead and gone.It is only in Indian and to extent in China that old civilization and culture have grown and changed but never grown or changed at the expense of an underlying unity. This has been possible only through the capacity of readjustment exhibited by the Indian society.

One ground of this adjustment is found in the spirit of toleration that has characterised Indian history through out the ages "Live and let live" has been the policy of the Indians in all spheres of life. Sometimes this has been carried so for that contrary, if not contradictory, attitudes have been allowed to survive simultaneously. Toleration had led to the sufferance, of civil and even indifference to the values of life. This however, is at worst the defect of a virtue. Such toleration is perhaps preferable to the fanatic devotion which leads to the denial and persecution of all other values but its own.

Throughout the changes of Indian history we therefore find a spirit of underlying unity which informs the diverse expressions of its life, but the unity was never a dead uniformity, a living unity never is.

Unity and university must belong to any culture that is true and vital. Now cultures is a concept which cannot be simply or unitarily defined. There is no single character or mark which can be regarded as the essence or distinctive feature of culture. It is always a complex of many strands of varying importance and vitality. If we attempt to differentiate between culture and civilization of life which makes civil society possible, culture, on the other hands, is the resultant of such organisation and expresses itself through language and art, through philosophy and religion, through social habits and customs and through political institutions and economic organisation. Not one of them is separately culture, but collective they constitute the expression of life which we describe as culture.Culture is the efflorescences of civilization. Civilization is the organisation of society which creates the condition of culture. There can, therefore, be no culture without civilization, but there may be civilization which have not yet developed their culture. Perhaps what is more often the case is that there are civilised people among whom only a small section has achieved culture. We have, therefore, had and still have races and nations that are civilised; but, except for Indian, we have not yet had any nation or race that could be regarded as cultured in all its sections and classes, for here in India, culture is almost as extensive as civilization........