Diversity of India - Introduction, Definition, History, Advantages & Leadership

Diversity of India - Introduction, Definition, History, Advantages & Leadeship

Diversity Of India - Introduction

India is known across the world for its diversity. It is home to the largest number of different sociocultural groups based on race(refers to an individual's race, colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins) religion, language etc.
When India got independence, many political thinkers had commented that democracy in India will not survive because it’s too diverse to be united as a single nation.
What distinguishes India from other diverse nations is its unity that has stayed despite various conflicts that exist in society.

Basis of diversity and its distribution

1. Language:

   It is the most prominent feature of India’s diversity and in past has been a majorsource of unrest. There are more than 1600 languages spoken in India. Of then 22 are the official languages that have been recognized as official languages under 8th schedule and about 197 are endangered. Indian languages are broadly classified under the following families:
   Indo-Aryan language family: Languages like Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Bengali, Kashmiri, Marathi etc. are part of this family and are spoken in most of the part of North India
   Austroasiatic language family: most of the tribal languages spoken in Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha are part of this family e.g. Khasi, Santhali, Meitei
   Sino-Tibetan language family: Languages of the north-eastern state like Assamese, Manipuri etc.
   

2. Religion:
   • The distribution of the Indian population as per religion. India has the highest diversity in terms of religion.
   • Hinduism is the main religion of 81% population, Islam by 13% people, Christianity by 2%, Sikhism by 2.5%, Buddhism by 1% and Jainism by 0.4%.
   • Hindus and Muslims are found all over India whereas other religions have their concentration in different religions.
3. Geography:
   • India is divided into 5 major climatic groups (shown in the image above) based on moisture and temperature.
   • Monsoon acts as the binding thread for India since it is the main source of irrigation for agriculture.
   • This geographic diversity then becomes the basis for diversity in festivals, cuisines, dresses, handicrafts, art etc
4. Caste:

   The Hindu society in India is divided based on the caste system. This has been a source of division and separation within the Hindu community leading to the emergence of diverse cultural groups within the Hindu religion. Thus dance, food, festivals differ across the caste groups.

   This system consists of four varnas or social groups namely:
   • The Brahmins constituted of the learned people.
   • The Kshatriyas were the warriors.
   • The vaishyas were the traders.
   • The Shudras included the menials and the lowest.

Reasons For Diversity In India

Historical Reasons

• Different small empires were established in ancient India with independent territories and political system.
• The abundance of natural resources and the moderately warm climate was a great impact on the foreigners as it was regarded as “ Sone ki Chiriya”.
• Multi religion has always prevailed in India.
• Trade, especially on the western coast was a major contributor.
• Caste structure and reservations about interreligious are still relevant.
• Historically there has been a mixing of the different religions, languages and ethnicities due to invasion by foreigners who settled here like Mughals.

Geographical Reasons

• The Population of India depends upon land for food because of their immediate environment.
• Natural sources of food would vary with the season necessitating a movement from one place to another.
• The physical feature like hills and rivers would have at times, imposed natural limits on their movement.
• Vastness of India’s Land

Concept Of Diversity

• The concept of diversity means understanding that each individual is unique, and recognizing our individual differences.
• These can be along the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies.
• It is the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment.

Concept of Diversity Is divide into four parts

Counting diversity: Counting diversity refers to empirically within a given population. For this social scientists take a particular population and simply count the member to their criteria like race, gender and caste.

Cultural Diversity: Cultural Diversity refers to understanding and appreciating the cultural differences between race and gender groups.

Conflict Diversity: Conflict Diversity is understanding how different groups exist in a population of inequalities because of differences in their status resulting from power and resources.

Celebrating Diversity: Celebrating Diversity in business means that businesses will be more profitable and efficient when diverse labour forces from different disciplines and cultural and ethical backgrounds can contribute a lot to the business.




Advantages of diversity:

• It helps in strengthening love and tolerance promoting amity and unity and openness to other diverging views.
• It is the identity that India had asserted for long in three international forecasts.
• Diversity of culture translates into diversity of ideas and innovations.
• The rich heritage and culture resultant of this diversity has enormous potential for tourism capable of creating large scale employment.
• Geographical diversity creates rich reserve of flora and fauna benefiting the environment, tourism, pharmaceutical etc.

CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

• Creativity is related to ‘imagination’, but innovation is related to ‘implementation’.
• The quality of thinking about new ideas and putting them into reality is creativity.
• The act of executing the creative ideas into practice is innovation.
• Creativity is an imaginative process as opposed to innovation is a productive process.
• Creativity can never be measured, but innovation can be measured.
• Creativity is related to the generation of ideas which are new and unique. Conversely, innovation is related to introduce something better into the market.

DARWINIAN PERSPECTIVE ON CREATIVITY

• According to Darwinian perspective, creativity involves the following 3 conditions
• There exists some process that generates variations.
• These variations are subjected to some consistent selection mechanism.
• There is some retention procedure that preserves and reproduces the variations so selected.

ADAPTIVE LEADERSHIP

• To harness creativity and innovation in the organization, we can learn through the practice of adaptive leadership. It was advocated by Ronald Heifetz.
• Dictatorial leadership style – which sees only to their perspective
• Transformational leadership – based upon ethics and spiritual promises.

What has ensured Unity in diversity?

• Historical factors have helped strengthen and sustain the values of mutual existence.
• Freedom the movement united India politically (INC, press) and economically (railways, post) and created the basis for social unity.

Following provisions of the constitution have helped rein in the divisive tendencies:

• Fundamental rights (equality, against exploitation, religion, cultural and educational freedom, freedom of movement and residence)
• Directive principle (provisions related to SC/ST, protection of Heritage, socio-economic justice, Panchayat etc.)
• Fundamental duties (uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity, promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood)
• Freedom of inter-state trade and commerce

Following government measures ensure unity and integrity:

• Laws such as prevention on atrocities act, protection of civil rights act, forest rights act
• Policy of reservation to ensure political and economic justice to the downtrodden
• Schemes like standup India, Padho Pardesh, Nai Manzil etc. for minorities and oppressed sections.
• Events that celebrate this unity and diversity such as republic day parade, Bharat parv