I remember in school I was taught, ‘Bharat ki akhandata main
uski shakti hai’, means India’s power is in its diversity. That time my
intellect was not so alert to question this statement. It is hard to argue
against something which is fed in your mind in childhood. Still we should make
an attempt.
Let us first raise basic question. What is unity? If you
think that everyone having same opinion, everyone wanting same thing and
everyone having same perspective is unity, then India lacks unity. But this is
too narrow view of unity. I would define unity as a feeling, a sense of
brotherhood. Unity is not free of arguments and confrontations.
Having different opinions, arguments, efforts for cause one
does believe in, are part of democracy and diversity. If one opposes us it does
not mean that he hate us, it can be just that he has his own reasoning and
belief. The unity comes after all arguments happen and decision is taken. Unity
is something which binds people in spite of all this. For example unity comes
when first we argue about caste based reservation. But once it is implicated we
sent our children to same school and invite at our home their friends from
other caste.
The beauty of unity is that it comes out openly at the time
of adversity, may be that it why it is seen less and questioned many times. But
the time of wars or time of natural disasters have shown again and again how
people have stand by each other forgetting all their differences.
Some people due to diversity do treat others differently.
And this behavior can go to extremes of being a threat to diversity. For this
reason we should not consider diversity as threat. Human beings are capable of
using same energy for both constructive and destructive purpose. Like nuclear
energy, power of diversity can be used both ways.
If due to our inefficiency in administration we let
diversity be one of the reason for unfair distribution of resources and
treatment of human beings then indeed we will make diversity hamper our
progress. In fact till now unity is the thing which has made us move forward
with so much of diversity. If we would use our diversity to complement each
other shortcoming, like moving surplus food from one area to deficit area, then
it will make unity strong. If we use diversity as excuse of our inefficiency then
it will destroy our unity.
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