If you mean the issue of identity vis-a-vis India then I have to simplify it right now (I may treat this concepts rigorously at a later date)
1) the first and most important pillar of identity is land since humans are land based creature. What constitutes India as a land has been well known even by ancient explorers for the last 2,300 years. Megasthenes's Indica, describes India as the land between Indus and the Eastern promontory (Manipur mountains jutting into Bay of Bengal), from the Indian Taurus (Himalayas) to the ocean ...This is what would be considered India as well by inhabitants of India today...Republic of India occupies around 80 percent of the historical defintion of India
2) Second would be shared cultural and religious practices since the hoary past ....Well an Assamese of Indic faith will feel same reverence for a Jain Temple in Rajasthan or a Hindu Mega Temple in Tamil Nadu or a Buddhist Stupa in Sanchi, the way he feels reverence for Kamakhya Kali...He may not feel the same reverence towards his neighbourhood mosque though...I know this is primitive...but who are we kidding? This is not the West..This is deep South Asia..religion constructs narratives of identity here..even I as a non-theist and a functional atheist have made peace with that ...This is the point of Hindutvabadis..."
we made and remade this land through the tools of self-created philosophies-----Brahmanism,Buddhism,Jainism,Ajivika,Sikhism etc. We cannot be guided by foreign philosophical streams" ...Even though I have no love for Hinduism, I am a staunch Hindu nationalist
PRECISELY for this reason. If there are any shortcomings in Indian society, we can ditch Hinduism and seek the foundational inspiration from Buddhism or the severely atheist Lokayata/Charvaka schools of thought..This is also the reason Ambedkar chose an Indian religion when he wanted to reject Hinduism....Rejecting Hinduism doesnot amount to rejecting India, but rejecting India means rejecting all the perfectly good schools of thought that blossomed "in-situ" despite Hinduism...So my plan of making viable modern sewage treatment companies, inviting all castes to a year of voluntary sewage work (in sewage Batman suits) has its root in Buddhist Sutra stories ...
3) Shared Language---------->Total Fail....Though there is chance North may be connected through Hindi and a couple of states of south through Tamil... I feel Language has the biggest impact when it comes to modern Westphalian Nation State concept, that's why multi-ethnic states like India,Pakistan,Indonesia seem oxymoron ....on top of that Indian languages have very specific scripts---a mark of high civilization...not a single one of them will give up their script
4) Shared history------------->Tricky this one...80-90 percent of Hindus staunchly believe that Ramayana and Mahabharata actually happened. May be not in over the top Ancient Aliens tech sort of way, but nevertheless they happened...On top of that even Buddha believed in Ramayana but in a corrupted form from the classical one..So even Buddhists believe in Ramayana...The TV serials of late 80s and early 90s cemented those stories as canonical history in the minds of Hindu Indians (even BBC was drawing in over a million viewers each week in UK from Indians then during the telecast)...Absolutely nothing is going to dislodge these stories from their minds..they draw their daily sustenance from these stories .....So yes Indians do believe in a false history, but it as strong as the belief in resurrection in the Christians....All film industries of India make a Ramayana or a Mahbharata based film every two decades or so.....The popularization of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata happened with the establishment of Gupta Empire and has been going on strength to strength ever since ...So even this tradition of "false history" has been going on for 1700 years...it has an inertia of its own, and is starting to take a new shape after contact with Western Conspiracy theorists (Vedic Vimana ´,Atom Bomb BS)
Indians to this day spent huge money to make these stories come to life..and even young 20 something Indians are interested to animate these stories with full gusto
As for real history, a huge chunk of present day India saw rule of the Mughals,Marathas and British. I of the John Baggot Glubb school of thought--------->That it is at maxxxx the last 300-350 years of history that has any bearing on the present age...from a Hindu perspective........around 150 years of those 300 years were spent under a sympathetic rule (Maratha,Sikh,RoI) ---> good enough for them
I personally see Indian identity being formed in the crucible of the Independence struggle...the first 50 years of 20th century is what made solidified Indian identity.
This is what I wrote yesterday and sums up my thought regarding present Indian identity:
"
I personally feel that the modern Indian nationhood was forged during the Independence struggle. Now there are also various other logic to Indian nationhood, but this is the most obvious as well as the most ignored.....People in their eagerness to explore medieval and ancient history, tend to forget the enormity and significance of the Independence movement...Churchill still thought that a Janissary corp ,comprising of his sworn enemies, the Germans,was a better fit to rule India than Indians themselves
Even in the late 90s, there was a visceral dislike of the British in the education system and the depradations they brought upon the Indian subcontinent.....Each year of the independence struggle would be covered with as much scrutiny as entire centuries of the medieval period, or entire epochs of the ancient period......the anti-Islam vibe is a recent phenomenon of the 2000s, after many Indians started appreciating the great civilized countries that the Anglo-Saxons created for themselves across the entire planet..."
As for Indian Muslims, I donot see any other option than thorughly Indianizing Islam. Problem is in British India counter-movements were launched like Tableeghi jamaats to de-Indianize Islam
5) Well There are no pure races in India...Some may look more Australoid, Same more Dravidian, Some Mongoloid ...but overall the defining characteristic of Indians is the shared AASI (Andamanese) genetic ancestry...everybody till even Assam has some sort of steppe ancestry or W.Asian farmer ancestry...
If we are really going to talk about race, then let's be realistic
There are basically 4-6 Main races
1) Caucasoids (both Indo-Aryans and Dravidians come under this grouping)
2) Australoids (again Indian australoids have heavy mixture and are not pure like Australian aborigines, they follow animism which is perfectly compatible with Hinduism)
3) Negroids (Siddis not in enough numbers to be cosequential)
4) Mongoloids (many are Gurkhas, fierce Hindus which paves the way for integration of all mongoloids of the subcontinent into the Indic fold)
5) Capoids ---not present
6) Amerindians----not present
Full disclosure: I am not into any sort of racial supremacy (as if Indians have the luxury of that..LoL) or casteist supremacy..Even if my present choices may indicate that I have a preference for Caucasoids, one of my first loves in my life with whom I shared intimacy was Papua New Guinean biologist and gloriously jet black at that. I regularly found Serena Williams more attractive than Maria Sharapova, even though many at PDF would turn up their nose at that notion...I frankly love strong built women who seem like they can easily compete for Olympic try-outs...The few women whom I had the good fortune of making a home with were all 5'8s and above
Key concepts that make a nation:
shared History-------->Tackled
Geography----->Tackled
Religion--------->Tackled (Indian religions and cultures cannot be seperated)
Language------->Tackled
Culture---------->Tackled
Race------------->Tackled
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