‘Atithi Devo Bhava’ – the most famous saying means guests are like God and it is the spirit of the Indian tradition and culture when they welcome their guests. It truly reflects the rich and cultural heritage and warm hospitality of the people of India. With a civilization of more than five thousand years old, India is a country with an amazing wealth of diversity. India stretches from the eternal snows of the Himalayas in the north to the peninsulas of the south from the arid desert of the west to the humid deltas of the east from the dry heat and cold of the central plateau to the cool forest foothills and the golden beaches. Thus, it offers an incredible choice of destinations for a visiting tourist to relish and enjoy.
India’s civilization is more than five thousand years old. India is the largest constitution and the biggest democracy in the world. India is a country that takes pride in having diverse religions, languages, races, cultures, flora and fauna, etc. The second most populated country in the world after China has twenty-nine states, twenty-two languages, many religions and a number of rivers flowing through it like the famous Ganges, the Indus, the Brahmaputra, etc. Its diversity is the essence of the country.
Lotus flower is the National flower of India. Tiger is the National Animal and the elegantly beautiful Peacock is the National Bird. India has given birth to religions such as Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism. One can find many multiple foreign religions that are flourishing in the country like Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. Each religion has an influence in shaping the culture and architecture of the country, for example, Goa has a Portuguese culture with churches all across the city. Similarly, there are many towns in the state of Uttar Pradesh that boast of an Islamic influence.
The Sun temple, the Khajuraho temples and many more are all the ancient Hinduism imprints of the country. With this large diversity in religion, India celebrates numerous festivals each year like Holi, Diwali, Eid, Christmas, Guru Nanak Birthday, etc. Each festival celebrated by different religions paints the entire country in its bright shades of colours. India’s constitution recognizes twenty-two languages. These languages further have sub-languages. The state recognizes Hindi as the official language of the country to bind the prolific linguistic diversity into one.
India is also proud of its geographical diversity. Where a northern state like Jammu and Kashmir is all Himalayan mountainous regions, the state of Rajasthan is all desert regions. The states of Kerala and Goa are coastal areas and Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and many other states are all plains.
Racial diversity is another feather in India’s cap. We all know about the Indo-Aryan race migration but besides that, we have the Mongoloid race in the Northeast, the Dravidian race in the South and a fraction of Iranian race too as India is home to a considerable population of Zoroastrians.
India is also a land of diverse climatic conditions. The four seasons of summer, autumn, winter, and spring prevail throughout the year in most parts of the country. Places like Cherrapunji and Mawsynram receive maximum rainfall throughout the year. Then we have the Himalayan region in the north of the country, which serves as a border as well as a natural barrier to the bitterly cold Siberian winds. The coastal areas like Mumbai, Daman and Diu and Kolkata have tropical warm climates throughout.
The Indian Ocean on the South, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the Eastbound mainland of India. The country is bordered by Pakistan to the west, Bhutan, the People’s Republic of China and Nepal to the North, and Bangladesh and Burma to the East.
Diversity can also be observed in food habits and clothing. We have many cuisines like North Indian cuisine, Mughlai cuisine, South Indian cuisine, etc. Gujarati food is vegetarian whereas Bengali food mainly comprises of fish curries. People hailing from North India eat mainly wheat and those in the South are rice-consuming people.
Besides all this variation, all Indians sing the same National Anthem, rejoicing together when the country wins a cricket match. Even the history of Independence has proved that people of all different cultures and religions participated in the country’s freedom struggle.
Conclusion
This unity in diversity is the hallmark of India’s uniqueness. The very fact that India absorbs all this variation into itself is very mesmerizing.