Shri. P.M. could have spoken out more on the need to uphold India’s secular and plural fabric. After all, it is not an issue of the individual States, it is a National one! The recent incidents that reflect an intolerance towards individual liberties have lead to much debate on the pluralism of India.
India is a melting pot of cultures. To think of it, we enjoy our idly-sambar as much as we do the dal makhani, pasta or steak; we wear sarees when the occasion demands it, but slip effortlessly into a pair of jeans to beat the trek trail or a salwar-kameez for the in-between occasions; women love to own a collection of Kanjeevaram, Banaras, Ikat, Patola, and Tanchoi sarees; you’d still find a Hindu bride from the state of Uttar Pradesh adorn her hair with the ornate ‘jhoomar’ and a listener would be as spellbound by Ustad Rashid Khan’s rendition of the composition ‘Kanha re, Nanda-nandana’ (Raga Kedar) as s/he would be by Pandit Bhimsen Joshi’s rectal of the lovely composition ‘Kareem naam tero’ in Raga Miyan Malhar.
The music that we take pride in as a part of our rich culture, itself, has much influence from Persian and Arabic music - Raga Zila Kafi has flavours of the Persian Zila, the tabla is believed to be a contribution of Amir Khusrou’s musical creativity and the sarod is not an instrument of Indian origin and neither are the harmonium and the sarangi.
All these aspects have been woven into the warps and wefts of the social and cultural fabric of our country. It beats me why anyone, ‘fringe elements’ or others, would want to destroy a fabric so beautiful! And this is something that must be, strongly and vehemently, opposed.
As I read about pluralism under attack in India I wonder how life might have been in ‘singularism’* ! I look at myself - my father is a Maharashtrian from Tamil Nadu, my mother a Kannadiga from Tamil Nadu though brought up in Delhi, and I have been brought up primarily as an Indian, given my father's choice in career that took me all over the country (and abroad). I speak a smattering of Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and Marathi, reasonably good Kannada and Hindi and do my math. in English.
I might have been really boring, being ' singular' !!
(*the opposite of pluralism is totalitarianism. I have taken some creative liberties here)
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