Multiculturalism In India

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“Speak English, Kiss French, Drive German, Dress Italian, Spend Arab, Party Caribbean ” (Online quote on Multiculturalism). The idea of multiculturalism is the search for uniqueness and celebration of differences in a way that problematize the very structures and ethos of monologic unilinear discourses. In the West countries like Canada and USA have been examples of the simultaneous co-existence of multicultural ethnicities in which culture is associated with a particular ethnic community. USA has been boasting of its melting pot culture where all contradictions get fused and the differences get dimmed with the current of progress and the flux of time. It apprehends a curious mixture in which the cultural uniqueness of each segment is lost …show more content…

The national anthem and the pledge are examples of this reality where India or Bharat is celebrated and its diversity carefully and skillfully negotiated. The very danger that India’s neighbouring countries supposedly pose for this nation is also a dynamic move towards negotiating its pluralistic unity. “Mile sur mera Tumhara, to sur bane hamara” (Pandey) is a song of national integration developed in 1988 by Lok Seva Sanchar Parishad , written by Piyush Pandey, its music composed by Ashok Patki,and arranged by Louis Banks which is directed towards the idea of unity in diversity. In the site of that song national unity is equated with the mighty ocean which internalizes and fuses the various rivers of cultures. Strangely the metaphor of the sea negates the identity and individuality with regard to each “sur” signifying every distinct culture. It is here that the ideology of nationalism and those of multiculturalism are ambivalently …show more content…

Primarily negotiating the differences in a value neutral perspective where each person / group can maintain his /its integrity with dignity while retaining its uniqueness is what constitutes the essence of multiculturalism. Every story in Breast Stories is a discourse on the binaries of domination/ subordination interrogating locations of power or/and the lack of it. In “Breast Giver”, Jashoda is the protagonist whose economic subalternity is potently pitched against the independence and exposure of Haldar women as they signify the ethos of liberal feminism and the liberating potency of the movement of nationalism. Jashoda, the Brahmin whose very caste symbolizes a multicultural ancestry is subjected to exploitation in a modern/ democratic set up. The pungent irony and sarcasm with which Mahasweta attacks the apparent celebration of pluralism and the significant reason for the absence of it in reality is communicated thus: “He lives in independent India, the India that makes no distinction among people, kingdoms, languages, varieties of Brahmins, varieties of Kayasthas and so on. But he made his cash in the British era, when divide and rule was the policy.”(Devi 44). As we enter this unequal universe where money and power manipulate destinies, the entire notions of multicultural celebration of ethnicities are invalidated. The notion

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