Sare Jahan Se Achcha

sāre jahān se acchā hindostān hamārā

ham bulbulain hai is ki, yeh gulsitān hamārā

These are the words of famous poet Sir Allama Muhammad Iqbal, which I am sure all Indians would have heard. I had heard and sang this song a number of times, especially in my school days but never thought about it. That time I sang in praise of India just because I am an Indian and like everybody I was showing my patriotism. Today again I want to sing this poem not just because I am an Indian but because I really mean it.

I was thinking of writing this entry just after returning from Germany that is August 2006 but somehow I couldn’t. Last summers when I was in Germany, for a research project, I got a chance to observe a society other than India. It was at this point that it occurred to me what is so special about our society, our culture and this country India.

This Indian society is so diverse that people in other countries cannot even imagine. India is home to largest population of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Zoroastrians, Bahá'ís, second largest population of Muslims in the world. Other religious groups, which include Christians, Buddhists, Jews and Ahmadis also, have a significant population. While growing up an average Indian is exposed to such a number of religions and communities that is simply not possible in any other part of world. This exposure is what teaches an Indian to respect religious beliefs, traditions and culture which may not be followed in his own house. Besides variation in religious beliefs and traditions, physical features of Indians also vary specially with their geographical location. Indians can have features from Middle Eastern to Asian (I find it funny that people in west call east Asian features as Asian.), we have all shades of skin colors, from much fairer to much darker one. This is the reason why an Indian would never judge a person on the basis of his religion or color. And it is this multicultural and pluralistic society which I love most about this country.

Please note that I am talking about a normal majority of population leaving aside some negligibly small percentage of people who preach hatred towards other religions, such people constitute an insignificant percentage of population and are motivated by political reasons rather than religious.

Right from my school days I have had friends from really diverse cultural backgrounds. They followed different religions, castes and communities. But I don’t remember even a single incident where our cultural background became a point of conflict. We studied together, played together shared our lunches without ever thinking about any difference. Why? Because a child growing up here gets it as a common knowledge that there are people following different path than his own family and they are as much human as he is. All major festivals, of different religions, were celebrated in my school. We visited friends from other community to greet them on their festivals. Festivals in this country are what they should be for, creating festive mood, enjoying,

Just compare this situation with that in any other country in world. How many religions live there or how many religions do people living there know about, how many places of worship can they name? I am confident no country can parallel India in these grounds. Most western countries have a history of religious intolerance whether it is massacre of Protestants or anti-Semitism or racial discrimination of non-whites. In Germany, I felt that even now there is a small wall between Protestants and Catholics, although it’s not as high as earlier but still if you talk to locals about it you will find that it’s also not completely gone. As for the racial discrimination, last few months we can see our newspapers, which are reporting more and more incidents of attack on non-whites, especially in Britain. However now you won’t find anti-Semitism in Europe because now there are no Jews left for them to hate. In recent years there has also been a rise in anti-Islamic views in west. The west has also been very intolerant in dealing with turban issue of Sikhs. Condition in Arab countries is even worse, where they don’t even allow people to follow their religion freely, they can’t build their worship places, they can’t celebrate their festivals, etc, etc.

But in India also there are a few organizations and groups which are threatening the secular fabric of society. There have been a few cases which show an alarming similarity with the examples from other countries that I cited, be it communal riots in Gujarat, be it violence against Biharis in northeast and vice versa or be it demand of Shiv Sena to draw out all non-Marathi people from Mumbai. We should learn a lesson from these countries and try to control such non-tolerant elements of our society otherwise our country would end up breaking into smaller nations such as European ones.

Now after living in such a diverse and tolerant society I can never imagine myself in a country where all people have same religion, same culture, and same language. That is how you would feel about a canvas painted by a single colour after watching a rainbow in sky.