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People of North India
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Two basic components of this
heritage, which have at the same time shaped this
heritage, are the land, the natural and physical
environment of India, and the people who have
inhabited this land. The generations of people who
have inhabited India during various periods of her
history have interacted with their physical and
natural environment. They have also interacted
among themselves. Through these processes of
interaction – between people and their natural and
physical environment and among themselves - the
people have created their history, their social,
economic, cultural and political life. These
processes of interaction have been going on for
thousands of years, bringing in changes in the
life of the people. The world of man, therefore,
has never been stationary.
India is a vast country. It
extends for nearly 3000 kilometers from Kashmir in
the north to Kanyakumari in |
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the south and for the same distance
from its western-most parts to its eastern-most parts.
Nature has made it into a distinct geographical entity.
The Himalayan ranges in the north and the sea in the
east, west and south separates it from the rest of the
world. The people inhabiting the country from very early
times as well as people of other parts of the world have
viewed it as a single integral and distinctive unit.
These geographical features, however, while making her a
well-defined unit separated from the rest of the world,
have not become a barrier to contacts with the rest of
the world. Since the time of the Old Stone Age, people
from neighboring as well as distant regions have been
coming into India through the mountain passes and the
seas and making India their home. The people of India
have been formed as a result of these migrations over
thousands of years. They are the descendants of groups
of people belonging to almost all the ‘racial stocks’
which have gone into the making of the Indian population
are the Proto-Australoids, the Palaeo-Mediterraneans,
the Caucasoids, the Negroid and the Mongoloids in their
varying degrees of mixtures. In historical times, the
ethnic groups which have come to India and made India
their home include the Indo-European speaking people
(the Indo-Aryans), the Persians, the Greeks, the
Kushanas, the Shakas, the Hunas, the Arabs, the Turks,
the Africans and the Mongols. During the past few
hundred years, many Europeans have also made India their
home. All there ‘racial’ and ethnic groups have
intermingled with one another and few of them can be
recognized in their original form. Thus, India has been
a crucible of various ‘races’ and ethnic groups. They
have all contributed to the making of Indian history and
culture.
The migration of people into India
has been a major factor in the development of various
aspects of India’s life and culture since pre-historic
times. In historical times, the importance of this
factor is conspicuous in almost every period of India’s
history. The people from other cultures and
civilizations have brought with them their own
traditions, which got intermixed and integrated with the
pre-existing traditions. Similarly, people of India have
gone to other parts of the world and various elements of
culture carried by them have intermixed and have been
integrated with the pre-existing cultures there. During
the past 2000 years, the influence of various elements
of Indian culture has been particularly evident in many
countries of Asia.
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The vastness of the country and the great variations in
its geographical features- land forms, natural
recourses, climate and others – have provided the bases
for a great variety in ways of living from very early
times. The mountains and the river systems have been an
important factor in the emergence of a number of
distinct cultural zones within the country. The Vindhya
ranges, for example, divided India into north and
south with the people of the Indo-European family
of languages predominating in the northern, and
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those of the Dravidian
family of languages in the southern parts of the
country. These factors, however, have not made any part
of the country isolated from the other parts. The
physical barriers between different parts were not
insurmountable even in early times when means of travel
were not developed. They did not prevent the movement of
the people from one part of the country to another.
Despite the Vindhya ranges, for example, the movement of
people from the north to the south and vice versa has
been going on from very early times. Thus while
geographical factors have deeply influenced the
emergence of distinctive ways of living of people in
different parts of the country, the interaction between
them has been going on. The availability of different
natural resources in the country has also furthered
links between its diverse parts. These factors have
helped the processes of both unity and diversity. The
historical development of the country has brought the
people together and has led to the growth of a common
culture to which all parts of the country have
contributed. At the same time, each part of the country
has developed its own distinct identity. Because of
this, the historical and cultural development of India
is often described as one of unity in diversity and the
culture of the country as a whole a composite one
comprising distinct parts. It has never been a monolith.
As mentioned above, people of all parts of the country
have contributed to the emergence of a common culture.
No particular part of region of the country has been the
main center or source of Indian culture, and different
regions during different periods have played a leading
role-setting new trends and influencing developments in
other parts of the country. This has been true as much
of political history as of other aspects of historical
development. The first major political power arose in
northern India with its center in the region around
modern Patna. In the subsequent centuries, powerful
kingdom and empires were built in north-western India,
the Deccan and the south. The Turkish Sultans and the
Mughal emperors ruled over large parts of India with
their center at Delhi and, for some time, at Agra. In
the eighteenth century, the Marathas, after settings up
their kingdom in western India, built a vast all-India
empire. In this context, it is important to remember the
concept of the chakravarti ruler which was developed in
India in ancient times. This ideal envisaged political
unification of the entire country.
Another feature of India’s culture has been that it did
not develop into a finished form in any period.
Throughout her long history, India’s culture has been
changing and developing due to internal factors and
contacts with other cultures. This process of change and
development continues. The culture of India, as of any
other country, is not a fixed entity. Many aspects of
culture, if they retard further progress, get discarded,
others are changed, sometimes beyond recognition; some
others continue to survived remain important, while many
new elements are added.
A remarkable feature of Indian historical and cultural
development has been its continuity. This continuity has
few parallels in the history of other civilizations. For
example, the cultures of some of the earliest
civilizations in human history left little evidence of
their influence over subsequent cultural developments of
the countries in which they had developed. In India, on
the other hand, some elements of the Harappan culture
continue to exist to this day.
It is interesting to know the story of the name of our
country. The ancient Indians referred to their country
as ‘Jambudvipa’ or the continent of the Jambu tree. The
ancient Persians referred to our country as the land
beyond the river Sindhu (Indus). They, however,
pronounced it as ‘Hindu’. The word spread westward and
the whole country came to be known by the name of its
river. The Greeks called it ‘Inde’ and the Arabs ‘Hind’.
In medieval times, the country was called ‘Hindustan’
from the Persian word. The English called it ‘India’
from the Greek ‘Inde’. The present name ‘Bharat’,
derived from the ancient usage, means ‘the land of the
Bharatas’, an ancient Indian tribe. |
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