India, as it stands to celebrate her Republic Day, is contesting views on its very idea. The idea of India is a very complicated, if not an impossible thing to define.
Because you need to have one single definition of the country to define the phenomena. India has nothing in singularity. Every aspect that you observe about India is in its plurality. We have no single language, no single culture, no single custom, no single religion, and even the geographical bandwidth of India transcends extremely different locations.
I, for instance, hail from Bihar, completed my graduation from Jharkhand, got a job in a bank that is headquartered at Hyderabad, only to serve in Mumbai, in a branch where most of the customers are Gujarati. This is the idea of India.
We have one nation, but yet many nations within the nation. Even one of the most popular languages in North India, i.e. Hindi, is spoken in different dialects, and a person speaking the same language in Punjab, sounds very different from the person talking the same language in Jharkhand.
The fundamental nature that defines India is its diversity and multiplicity. Even Hinduism, the oldest of religions originating in India, has so many shades, within itself, that you cannot bind it under one glass.
A practising Hindu from TamilNadu will have more in common with the Muslim from the same state, as compared to a Hindu from Uttar Pradesh, in terms of food habits, costumes, and language. But in terms of holy books and worship, the Hindu from Tamil Nadu will find himself more amicable with the Hindu from Uttar Pradesh.
The sole prerogative of this example being that the diversity is so embedded in the very nature of India, that India without diversity would be like a forest without bushes.
The only thing that we, the citizens of India, can, therefore, do to preserve the much-mentioned “Idea of India”, is to revere the Indian Constitution, which very much sums up the ideals and nature of Indian state.
The Preamble, that calls for justice and equality, the Fundamental duty, that calls for national integration, fraternity and unity and the Indian Constitution, that provides for the protection of aggrieved voices, are the ideals that we must resolve to serve, to ensure that the fluid and flawed Idea of India remains as it is; notwithstanding the ramblings that will, and should remain in a country as diverse as India.