![]() ![]() ![]() The legends of Rama and Krishna are sung and repeated with equal fervour among people despite their differences in languages. The great epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are devotionally read by people throughout the country. All the religious scriptures like the Gita, the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas are given equal respect in India. These temples are not only concentrated in one region, but are scattered in every corner of India. People have worshipped gods and goddesses in temples everywhere in India. The Hinduism, being the major religion of people in India, provides the basis of unity. ![]() Despite their differences, the religious systems practise almost common rites and rituals. There may be differences in the way these elements are treated in different religious groups, but each religion preaches a fundamentally single religious faith and shares a belief in the purity and value of life in respect of belief in an unseen power, benevolence, piety, honesty and liberality, with every other religious faith. The feelings of each religious group are the same, each accepts the truth of immortality of soul, temporary nature of world, belief in rebirth, the doctrine of Karma, salvation, contemplation etc. In-spite of the religious diversities, it possesses religious unity. Various religious groups are found in India. The concept of mother India also indicates the realization of geographical unity. In the North stands the great Mountain the Himalayas and the sea washes her feet in the other direction. ![]() Nature has bestowed on India its gift through natural boundaries to maintain her unity. Those kings and emperors ruled in the past and tried to extend their respective empires from the Himalayas to cape Camorin and from the Brahmaputra in the East to the Indus in the West. Each of them has conceived of the country as a single expanse from the Himalayas to Cape-Camorin, a country ruled by one king. The very name ‘Bharatvarsha’ has occupied an important place in the minds of poets, political philosophers and religious thinkers. In the name ‘Bharatvarsha’ lies the historical significance which symbolizes unity. India is most popularly called by the name “Bharatvarsha”. The natural boundaries provide India a geographical unity, a unity which surprises the Europeans scholars who themselves live in small countries and find it difficult to comprehend how such as vast country with varieties of nature can be united. Therefore it could embrace and contain, absorb and assimilate people of all races, religions, castes and creeds. The secret of India’s survival, the continuity of her culture, the enrichment and growth of her heritage, has been in this capacity, this rare gift, to greet the Unity underlying the Diversity. Srinivas observes that the unity of India is essentially a religious one. Unity amidst diversity is visualized in the geo-political sphere, institution of pilgrimage, tradition of accommodation, tradition of interdependence, emotional bond etc. He says “Beneath the manifold diversity of physical and social type, language, custom and religion which strike the observer in India there can still be discerned … a certain underlying uniformity of life from the Himalayas to Cape Camorin. This has been reflected in the observation of Herbert Risley, the census commissioner in 1911. Notwithstanding the various diversities evinced in India, there are the bonds of unity which are located in a certain underlying uniformity of life as well as in certain mechanisms of integration. ![]()
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