Communal harmony and the question of cultural identity Essay

musical harmony and the co-existence of mutli-faceted elements are the two essential ingredients of any society which seeks sustainable longevity. In a pluralistic society the question of harmonious existence of its distinct structural units becomes all the more pertinent. An analogy can be ascertained with the human bole wherein the antithetic functional systems work in union to create a perfect coherence. Like in the human body where, different organs combine to form organ systems, in a human society smaller world groups combine to form socio- pagan entities establish on particular types of identification.Unlike their biological counterparts this parade of identification is non scientific and fully rational. The identification followed by human beings depends on ceratin social mores and socio-cultural guidelines which may vary from race, colour, creed, gender, class etc. to religion, region and nationality. This process is sometimes a skewed one as during the course of it a particular social grouping more than often identifies comparatively with revere to other grouping and instead of harmonising itself with other groupings differentiates with them.In case of India, the scenario is not only a peculiar one but is also intertwined with its socio-political realities. We support in a highly diversified pluralistic society wherein the add together of cultural elements outscore the structural ethos provided by any type of government. The different communities in India classify themselves according to different criteria which differ temporally as well as contextually.The classification process is so well differentiatied that some of the times, people originally belonging to a particular group father associating themselves with completely different groups in different contexts e. g. people belonging to a particular caste group may associate differently with severally other on the basis of economic class or educational standards. The concept of cultural identity is at the core of the Indian society. The diachronic formation of Indian society provides us with an mind of its multi-faceted diversity and non-inclusive cultural developments.Social history of India outlines how various indigenous as well as foreign elements reacted and intermingled in an undefined manner to produce newer cultural traits for the population to identify with. Religion, language, ideology etc. have, from time to time, given various convey for cultural identification. The communal formation of Indian society is to be observed in not a narrow way. Though religion provides the close simple way of communal identification in India, we must remeber that the idea of community is central to process of communalization