Chapter 8 — Unity in Diversity, or Many in the One

'Unity in diversity' means that despite India's enormous variety in languages, food, dress, festivals, and traditions, there is an underlying oneness that connects all Indians. The chapter shows this through examples like common staple grains used across regions, the sari worn throughout the country, and epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata shared by communities everywhere.

The 'People of India' project was a massive survey conducted by the Anthropological Survey of India. It covered 4,635 communities across all States and counted 325 languages written in 25 scripts. It also noted that many Indians may be called migrants, meaning people not living near their birthplace or original community.

The chapter lists staple grains as cereals such as rice, barley, and wheat; millets such as pearl millet (bajra), sorghum (jowar), and finger millet (ragi); and pulses such as various dals, rajma, chickpea, and gram. These are basic foods for most Indians and are used throughout the country.

The chapter mentions turmeric, cumin, cardamom, and ginger as common spices used throughout the country. These shared ingredients show unity, even though the final dishes prepared with them vary widely from region to region — illustrating diversity within unity.

The sari is a single unstitched length of cloth worn across most parts of India, yet it comes in hundreds of varieties — Banarasi, Kanjivaram, Paithani, Patan Patola, Muga, Mysore silk, and many cotton kinds — produced by different weaving methods, designs, and colours. There are also many different ways of wearing it. So one garment (unity) is expressed in countless forms (diversity).

Chintz is a type of beautiful printed cotton that India produced and exported. It became so popular in 17th-century Europe that sales of some European dresses dropped sharply. To protect their own industries, England and France decided to ban the import of chintz from India. This shows how highly regarded Indian textiles were around the world.

Makara Sankranti marks the beginning of the harvest season in many parts of India on or around 14 January. The same festival is celebrated under different names in different regions — it is called Pongal in the south, Lohri or Maghi in the north, Magh Bihu in Assam, Uttarayan in Gujarat, Khichdi Parv in some areas, and Makara Sankramana in Karnataka, among others.

The Ramayana and Mahabharata are two long Sanskrit epics that together fill about 7,000 pages. In the Mahabharata, the Pandavas, with Krishna's help, fight their cousins the Kauravas to recover their kingdom. In the Ramayana, Rama, with his brother Lakshmana and Hanuman, defeats the demon Ravana who had kidnapped his wife Sita. Both epics contain shorter stories that focus on values and questions of right and wrong.

For more than two millennia, these epics have been translated or adapted into regional literatures across India. A scholar in Tamil Nadu alone counted about a hundred folklore versions of the Mahabharata. Many tribal communities — including the Bhils, Gonds, Mundas, and tribes of northeast India and the Himalayas — have their own oral versions and legends connecting their history to the epics' heroes.

The Panchatantra is a Sanskrit collection of stories, with animals as the main characters, that teaches important life skills. The original Sanskrit text is at least 2,200 years old. Its stories have been adapted into almost every Indian language and have travelled to Southeast Asia, the Arab world, and Europe, inspiring new collections. About 200 adaptations of the Panchatantra exist in more than 50 languages, showing how one text (unity) became many (diversity).

Vincent Smith was a British historian from over a century ago who wondered how a history of India could be written given its bewildering diversity. He concluded that 'India offers unity in diversity.' K.S. Singh was the anthropologist who directed the 'People of India' project. He observed that 'there is hardly a place in the country which the epic heroes such as the Pandavas did not visit according to folklores,' showing how the epics connected all of India.

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