Oh Wait, Are You A North Indian Or A South Indian?

We live in a country which is claimed by me to be rich in culture and traditions in almost every post on this blog. It is indeed a fact that we are one of the most populated countries in world and also one of those countries which has a huge 'inland diversity' when it comes to the number of religions, castes, languages and so on. Before independence our forefathers were successful enough in splitting Bharat into India and Pakistan based on two major religions - Hinduism and Islam.

Today, the scenario is pretty much different. While extremism still exists, there is a slight change in the way people think at least when it comes to the Hindu-Muslim divide. However, there is a bigger picture to this divide beyond the friction between these two religions.

We as Indians , forget that we are 'Indians' at times. It is our religion or caste or language which comes first to our mind. We are so biased towards it that we blindly tend to support politicians of our own religion or caste or language, irrespective of their political performance or background. Even during times of calamity, a Hindu will give preference to helping another Hindu over a person of any other religion and the divide and bias continues with the caste and sub caste and so on. Apart from this , there are geographical divides too. For instance, people in the south are looked with a meek eye in the north, while people from the north east are not treated equally in the country and there are several other examples which one can quote. There is absolutely no end to this.

We fail to understand how big an impact it would create on the future of the country and how weak we will become in terms of a country if we do not change TODAY. Forget about the common man, even the people who hold the highest authority in this country are biased and so are people everywhere.

If we need to take a step forward, we need to portray India as a nation that stands united in peace and harmony irrespective of the number and types of divisions it internally possesses. It is all in the hands of the educated youth to bury the divide and consider every Indian to be his/ her brother/sister.