Sanjose A Thomas

We speak almost every now and then of being an Indian and of living our Indian identity. Many often when a question is raised as to ‘what is being an Indian?’ we may at first speak of our regional identity or we may speak voluminously about our linguistic affinity or about our ancestral bonds and about our cultural roots and many other similar things. Further if a question is asked about our ‘Indianness’ we may probably fall into a meaningful silence pondering over it without a concrete answer. Because beyond our language, beyond our race/ethnicity, beyond our cultural roots we may rather have no better idea of what make all of us Indian and how the very conception of India got shape especially in the past many centuries of becoming.
The word Indian at least in an abstract manner got some primary shape during the days of Indus valley civilization when we had a first taste of a grant civilization in our soil extending from UP on one side to parts of modern Pakistan on the other even touching present day Afghanistan. Then we saw the same ‘Indianness’ running across our continent with the Aryan invasion (most likely from Central/Western Asia) who came from outside and inhabited the Ganges fighting and mixing with the local population and gradually becoming part of the Indian cultural identity. This process continued through the days of Chanakya and Chandragupta Maurya and finally the great Ashoka witnessing a Buddhist and Jain upsurge through the Gupta Ages and reached the medieval phase heralding the beggining of sultanate rule in India and the age of advent of Islam. The mughal phase particularly had that deep Indian touch (though they originally came from outside) and took shape and a definite form in India. Through Akbar and Shah Jahan and through many other stalwarts who adorned their courts we rediscovered our Indian Identity and marched forward into the European era marking our slow exposure with the Portuguese, English, French and the Dutch. The taking over of Indian soil by the Union Jack introduced the beginning of an Anglo – Indian cultural synthesis which transformed almost everything including food, language, attire and lifestyle and again refurbished our very idea of ‘Indianness’. This process in one or other form continued into the Post Independent phase till date helping us rediscover ourselves again and again and converting our identity into manifold ones almost every now and then.
The ushering of the era of liberalisation and globalization again brought in a new opportunity to come in closer contact with various cultural mosaics of the world which further got deeply ingrained into our cultural complex and slowly transformed us from within. Today when we look back in 2022 these 22 years in the 21st century or the new millennium were years of discovery and rediscovery and cultural adaptation and re-adaptation which helped us to renew ourselves and to freely adapt from many sources and grow from within adding more and more dimensions to our ‘Indianness’ in the real sense of the term. We now eat globally, think globally, dress globally and ideas from around the world touches us almost like an unending sea of notions helping us to discover ourselves better.
It is in this context we must seriously think of what makes us Indian right from the Indus valley to this new millennium. As a Sociologist I must say that it is an evolving culture adding and subtracting many things from it and learning many new things almost tirelessly in this journey. We experienced a confluence of various cultural invasions right from the Aryans and this process goes on bringing in lot of demographic changes including what is going on in Kerala with the large influx of North Indians whom we call ‘Bengali’ though many of them hail from other northern states too. Yes, let this happen again and again helping us to rediscover ourselves and to grow internally stronger making us better Indians than what we are today. Finally we see one more process of international out migration which is now the trend where our youngsters prefer to move to any part of the world, to settle there, work there and at the same time maintaining their roots and ties here. Let mother India evolve herself and add more dimensions to it.