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The Concept of India

People all over the world have misconceptions about India including Indians. Unlike countries like Germany, Japan, Thailand, Bangladesh, India is not a nation-state. But we present her as a nation-state just because we compare India with other countries. But that's not true.

Nation State

Nation-State is a concept in which "nation" means people (ethnic group) and "state" means government or rule. In the old ages there use to be city-states, kingdoms and empires, which had nothing to do with culture or geography. All the lands possible to conquer were conquered, irrespective of culture. Nation-state emerged as a concept in which a country is a homeland of an ethnic people. Hence,  Germany (German people, German language, German cuisine, German culture), Italy (Italian people, Italian language, Italian cuisine, Italian culture), Japan (Japanese people, Japanese language, Japanese cuisine, Japanese culture.) But there are some countries  which do not fit in the concept of Nation-State.  One of them being India.

Multi-nation State

Technically there is no "Indian" about the people, language, cuisine and culture. It's actually amalgamation of people, languages, cuisines and cultures of its states. India is a 'Multi-nation state'. But to the world we present ourselves as one people(Indian), one language(Hindi), one cuisine(mostly-Punjabi) and one culture(Hindu). But that's not true. Let me explain...

Hindi is not spoken or understood by many states. Native speakers of Hindi lies in the 'Hindi-belt' which itself is a vernacular language. Every state of India has its own language, cuisine and culture. Every Indian language is as important as Hindi because it belongs to India. In this case, India is like Europe, with every state speaking different languages. One cannot claim Hindi as the national language because it is not (as per Constitution of India.)

Indo-Aryan languages

Dravidian languages


Similarly every state has its own cuisine and culture. For eg: you can see the difference between a Bengali wedding, a Tamil wedding, a Punjabi wedding and a Maharashtrian wedding.
But are we the same people? No, Punjabis look different from Biharis, Gujaratis look different from Malayalis and people of Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh look completely different altogether. Then, what is common among us? Religion? No, Kashmir is Muslim majority, Punjab is Sikh majority, states like Mizoram and Nagaland are Christian majority and the rest of Indian states are Hindu majority . Well...

Then is India a remnant of the British Raj?  Not exactly, many of Indian states were not directly  part of the Raj, many were princely states with its own monarch and government, and many were colonies of other countries; Goa, Daman-Diu, Dadra-Nagar Haveli were Portuguese territories and Pondicherry was French territory.  Andaman and Nicobar islands were always isolated.


Wait a second, are we unification of a civilization?  Then why didn't India annex Nepal and Maldives? We don't intend to do that even in future.  India is a multi-nation state which has no identity of itself separately. India's identity is the collective identities of its states.  So it is a misconception that we have one thing as national and other thing as vernacular.  Hindi was never lingua-franca of India before British rule, it was the Persian and before that it were Sanskrit & Prakrit. Unlike countries like Russia and the UK, we do not have one major ethnic group which dominates the culture (Russians and Englishmen). Unlike countries like USA and Indonesia we all don't have a lingua-franca (English and Indonesian). Technically we are one of a kind country which is so diverse that we can't even think of something common to us all.

Conclusion

So, the concept of 'India' is much broader than religion, language, ethnicity, culture and history. It is 'the amalgamation', and when we understand that and accept that there won't be communal problem which arises every now and then. There are some boundaries which should not be crossed. 
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