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We all live our lives oblivious to the other societies and various cultures that are around us; we never take the time to learn about them either even if we decide to vacation there. We go to our destination we are ignorant of their culture and tradition and in some instances offend them. In this article we will be discussing India, describing their various cultures, as well as the races and ethnicities that exist within their country. We are the ambassadors of our country and we need to represent our country properly.
Indian’s culture extends back around 5,000 years and is among the world’s oldest culture. As with any country, India is a very diverse. The country has different regions that have their own separate culture. There are 28 states and seven territories in India, while the national languages are Hindi and English, each territory has at least one main language. There are roughly 22 languages and 400 living languages spoken around India. Hinduism and Buddhism were born in India; a majority of the country are recognized as Hinduism. 3% of the populations are Muslim and there are small percentages that are Christians and Sikhs. The people of India are conscious of their social order and their statuses compared to other people, whether it be family, friends or strangers; which is why the two cultures that will be discussed are treated like they are. There are two cultures that will be discussed in this article, the Dalais and the Advise; Dalai meaner ‘broken, oppressed’ and Advise is a collective name used for the indigenous people of India. Dalais embody 170 million in India, which is 17% of the population.
There are four main castes in Indian’s caste system, it assigns individuals a certain status according to the Hindu beliefs; the Dalais fall outside the caste system. The Dalais are members of the lowest rank of Indian society and face discrimination and violence on a daily basis. The Dalais are looked at as impure and contaminating, which the higher castes exclude them from the rest of society. Due to the violence they face, the Dalais are prevented from taking part in the basic human rights that are promised to all the inhabitants of India.
The Dalai status has been associated with occupations that involve manual labor such as, cleaning streets, tearooms, sewers. Due to their impurity, the principles of their status dictate what they can and can’t do, where they live, who they marry etc. As stated before they are excluded from all of the basic human rights within India. Even after gaining independence more than 60 years ago, India is still affected by the caste system and ten Dallas remain ten most souses community In ten country. The Advises are known to be the earliest inhabitants of the country and even lived in much larger areas than they do now.
The Advises history is not really known UT it is believed that they were forced into the hill areas after the invasion of the Indo-Aryan tribes so they were not integrated into the caste system. For years the Advises have faced violence Just like the Dalais from the mainstream Indian society; they are viewed as primitive. The government does intend on integrating them in with the main society instead of allowing them to preserve their unique way of life; during this process there has been a lack of support by the state to the Divas community when it comes to their rights.
The Dalais and the Advises do not Just face coordination within India, they also get treated unfairly in outlying areas such as, Nepal and Sir Lankan. Even though many of them share the same beliefs are the higher castes they are not allowed to worship in the same temples as everyone else. Even though there is supposed legal protection against the Dalais and the Advises, they still face caste-motivated killings, rape and other torture on a daily basis in India. In Just one year there were nearly 58,000 cases of abuse against the Dalai community but that is Just a fraction of the incidents.
Many of the Dalais do not port in fear of retaliation from the upper caste and even the police, which are sworn to protect and serve the citizens. Any attempts made by the Dalais to demand their rights are met with more violence. “On September 26,2006, a Dalai family was killed by an upper cast mob, after the mother and daughter were stripped, beaten and paraded through the village and the two brothers were brutally beaten. They were attacked because they refused to let the upper-caste farmers take their land. ” (India: ‘Hidden Apartheid’ of Discrimination against Dalais, U. S. Fed News Service, Including U. S. Tate News [Washington, D.
C. ] 13 Feb. 2007) There are also another incident where a man was beaten so severely that both of his arms and one of his legs had to get amputated. All he was trying to do was seek prosecution for the men who gang-raped his daughter. There is no culture, religion or person that is better than the other. We may believe that our culture is the greatest and that no other can compare. There is violence on a daily basis against a community because they do not live the same as others. It is our responsibility to learn about one another’s country and culture so we hen do visit we can understand how they operate better than we did.
We may have stumbles across those individuals visiting or living in our country that we discrimination against because of the sound of their voice, how they dress or what god they believe in, how do they look at us?