The Hindu : Miscellaneous / This Day That Age : dated December 10, 1954: Cultural unity of India

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Friday, Dec 10, 2004

Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous - This Day That Age

dated December 10, 1954: Cultural unity of India

The unity of Indian culture in spite of the diversities of the regional cultures of the country was stressed by the President, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, while inaugurating on December 9 a four-day Malayalam art festival, organised by the Delhi Malayalee Assocation. He said he could not help wondering how the thread of unity, woven in centuries, if not millennia, by mutual contact and community of interest, thought and outlook had strung together into a beautiful pattern of diverse regional cultures of this ancient land. "This diversity, portraying the peculiar characteristics and traditions of different regions," he said, "has given Indian unity a remarkably subtle and kaleidoscopic effect. The whole panorama of Indian culture is dominated by the rich diversity provided by different regions, and yet the concept of Indian culture is so unmistakably clear and unique that, as a whole, it can never be equated with the culture of any single region. nor the latter mistaken for what is known as Indian culture." The President said it was the two great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which provided common links in the realm of thought, literature and social customs of the various regions of the country. "It cannot be said to be purely accidental that literary activity in nearly all the Indian languages, particularly the languages of the north, east and the west, which were then in a formative stage, began with local translations of the two epics or parts thereof. Even in the case of the Dravidian languages the classical traditions began only with the popularisation of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana through local media. It is a significant fact that in all our languages, the first fruits of literary effort were either translations of these epics or independent works based on the themes of the epics. That being so, it is not at all surprising that there is a thread of unity visible to any discerning eye."

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