Vacation Travel India

In Punjab, the entrance hall of so many invasions, the impact of Islam was strong and deep. Here, Hindu dress disappeared. The sari was dropped in favor of the Islamic salwar kamiz, the modest tunic worn over drawstring pants. The rivalry between the stitched clothing of the Muslim and the unstitched draped garments of the Hindu was an expression in daily life of competing notions of civilized propriety. A new Indian identity evolved. It is epitomized in the linguistic amalgam of Hindi and Urdu, which is spoken across much of North India.

Muslims are outnumbered, almost 10 to one, yet India ranks as one of the largest Islamic populations on earth, with 110 million people. Consequently, Indian airports are overcrowded during Haj (February-March), the time of pilgrimage to Makkah.

Family terms

Extended family life in a densely populated country can be fraught with problems of privacy. Most societies in India are patriarchal and a daughter must leave her parents to set up a household with the groom’s family.

There are a bewildering number of terms for family relationships. It can sometimes seem that everyone in a room is distantly related in some fashion. “Bahu”, the daughter-in-law, and “Sas”, the mother-in-law, are important adversaries in the Indian family and a focus for conflicts about duty, obedience and respect.

Brother, “Bhai”, and older sister, “Didi”, are affectionate and respectful terms of address, even for people outside the nuclear family. It is even more common to call a visitor “Aunty” or “Uncle”, and older people may call you son, “Beta”, or daughter, Bed”. “Mata” and “Pita” are terms for mother and father (often with the respectful lag, ji, added), and there are many other names for relatives that show the birth order and branch of the family.

Technorati Tags: Indian Culture

India’s caste system is based on the twin concepts of dharma and karma, the duties one must fulfill in this life and the effects one’s actions will have on any future lives. These, coupled with the principle of hereditary occupation and strong concepts of pollution, produced a highly stratified society which, due to its flexibility, was one that could absorb new peoples with little trouble.

The Laws of Manu (circa AD 150) spell out codes for life in a multiracial society. Each individual is born into a particular jati or caste that predetermines both profession and status, regardless of the wealth of the parents. These castes are said to fall into four basic divisions, or varna. The Brahmans are intellectuals and priests - the link between mortals and millions of Hindu deities. Kshatriyas are rulers and warriors, in charge of justice and administration. Both Brahmans and Kshatriyas are considered “twice-born” and display their status with a sacred thread worn over the shoulder. Below them are the Vaishyas, merchants or traders, and the Shudras, agriculturalists. However, the most menial tasks were reserved for the outcastes, in practice the peoples conquered by higher castes and considered unworthy to be part of the system. These jobs include cleaning latrines, sweeping the streets, scavenging, burning corpses and gathering dead animals (which extends to working with leather, making shoes and playing drums at funerals or weddings).

A wedding, the ultimate family occasion, will bring out latent caste differences even in liberal-thinking modern professionals who have earned degrees for jobs forbidden them by birth. Every Sunday, classified advertisements in Indian newspapers list brides and grooms available for arranged marriages under specific headings of caste. Only occasionally - if the bride is over 30 years old, for example, or the groom is HIV-positive - will these “wanted” advertisements say “Paste no bar”.

There are thousands of subdivisions possible within the four major caste divisions, and these jati really matter. They determine the degree of superiority within society’s pyramid. Caste is not something that can be easily lied about. It may be encoded in a surname - one reason why traditional families still insist on an arranged marriage. A child will inherit the caste of the father, so inter-caste marriages are tolerated by the bride’s relatives if it is the groom who marries down. For consenting to such a match, a bigger dowry is demanded by the groom’s family.

Technorati Tags: Indian Culture