India not a melting point, but a rainforest: R Balakrishnan

What is the idea of India? A melting pot of cultures? A salad bowl of multiculturalism? Researcher R Balakrishnan prefers none. He would rather love to use the metaphor of a tropical rainforest to describe the multicultural and multilingual country.

The author contradicts the normal tendency to describe India as a melting pot to signify the unity in diversity.

''The melting pot is a place where different metals are put together, melted and a new alloy is made,'' the 63-year-old said at the sixth edition of the Tata Steel Bhubaneswar Literary Meet.

''All the inputs put into that melting pot lose its identity. It becomes a new metal,'' says Balakrishnan, the chief adviser to the Odisha chief minister.

Therefore, he says, the melting pot is a sort of a slaughterhouse, where the identities are lost forever and something new is created.

The former IAS officer was attending a discussion on his book, 'Journey of a Civilization: Indus to Vaigai', which he owes to his understanding of India through the tribals of Odisha particularly.

Balakrishnan, who has been working on Dravidian origin, the prehistory of Tamils, and the Indus Valley civilization for the past three decades, said a metaphor of salad bowl for multiculturalism can't be applied for India.

The salad bowl is a post-harvest process and everything doesn't make the cut, he said at the three-day event at the Bhubaneswar Club on Sunday.

Balakrishnan, who is a researcher in the field of onomastics, Indology, and Tamil studies, says a rainforest describes the country in the best way.

''There are multiple layers in a rainforest and every independent layer coexists, he elucidates. ''There is interdependence and an identity for everything.'' The former additional chief secretary underlined that one cannot talk about the idea of India without talking about the tribals.

At a time of inclusiveness versus exclusiveness, he considers that civilization is all about caring for and respecting others, and not ''you versus me''.

''In Indian culture, nobody can claim that history starts with me, culture starts with me,'' he says.

Balakrishnan emphasized that it is absolutely unscientific if anybody claims superiority on the basis of the varna system or puts the society into a class hierarchy.

Ancient Indian society was not what it is today when it comes to marriage. It's not like matrimonial ads where people look for a fairer partner who is from the same caste, he says.

''This happened during the Gupta period and later. The caste system was perpetuated when the marriages were controlled.'' He cited the practices of a human being removing the fecal of another human being, getting into the sewage, and dying because of the toxic gas in spite of the technology available.

Balakrishnan underscores that as long as untouchability is there, ''we can never claim ourselves as a developing society.'' 

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)