Dedications

True. Not only colour, our current political / religious leaders have divide all animate or inanimate objects and celestial spheres in the name of religion.
 

I loved the punchline "Awareness of the colorful spectrum of a diversity of our cultures. Let that be our unity and identity."

I would add "May all Indian citizens vow to not permit divisive elements to cause a rift amongst us on the basis of creed and religion. Also let us all not indulge in any activity which would harm our Nation, its unity and its environment. Lets us all demand transparency, accountability and good governance from our public representatives and public servants so that our Country becomes the "Sonay ki chidiya" it once was.
May God bless us all.

 

Sir it's our own blinkers that dont let us look beyond being FRATERNAL

Sir you forgot white flowers go to the CEMETERY Is the notion

 

Please don't use religion to breed hatred. Allow us to joyfully celebrate all religious festivals, not only our own. That's the Indian grass-roots reality! Congrats to this well written blog.
 

While the conversation around color and identity in modern India is complex, looking at history offers a powerful "India" narrative. Long before the concept of "secularism" was debated in modern courts, India practiced a lived, breathing pluralism that was quite rare in the Western world of that time.

While Europe was often locked in centuries of "Holy Wars" and rigid theological purges, India was evolving as a civilizational "melting pot" where diversity wasn't just tolerated—it was the default setting.


1. The Indian Foundation: Harmony as the Default
Centuries before the Enlightenment in Europe, Indian rulers and thinkers were already enshrining the idea of religious freedom.
* Emperor Ashoka (3rd Century BCE): His edicts carved into stone pillars across the subcontinent explicitly commanded his subjects to respect the faiths of others, stating that "by honoring the religion of others, one helps one’s own religion to prosper."
* Shelter for the Persecuted: India has a 2,000-year history of being a sanctuary. When the Jews were persecuted in the Roman Empire, they found a home in Kerala. When the Parsis (Zoroastrians) fled Islamic conquest in Persia, they were welcomed in Gujarat. They didn't just survive; they thrived and became an integral part of the Indian fabric without ever being forced to change their identity.


2. Historical Examples of Institutionalized Hate in the West
To understand the "India" narrative, one can contrast it with the era of institutionalized religious violence in the West, where religion was used as a direct justification for expansion and erasure.
* The Crusades (11th–13th Centuries): Unlike the localized conflicts in India, the Crusades were papally-sanctioned "Holy Wars." The First Crusade ended in 1099 with the horrific massacre of nearly the entire Muslim and Jewish population of Jerusalem. Violence was framed as a "penance" for sins, turning war into a spiritual duty.
* The Goa Inquisition (1560–1812): Even on Indian soil, the arrival of colonial powers like the Portuguese brought a rigid intolerance previously unknown to the region. The Inquisition in Goa involved the public burning of "heretics," the destruction of Hindu temples, and the criminalization of local customs (including the use of Konkani or wearing traditional attire). It was an attempt to bleach the vibrant Indian culture into a single, European religious hue.
* The "Doctrine of Discovery": This was a series of papal decrees that gave Christian explorers the "right" to claim lands and enslave non-Christians (pejoratively called "Saracens" or "pagans"). This ideological framework justified the decimation of indigenous cultures in the Americas and parts of Africa—a stark contrast to the Indian model of cultural synthesis.


3. The Takeaway: Reclaiming the True Spectrum
The "irony" you mentioned—using colors to divide rather than celebrate—is a deviation from India’s historical DNA. The attempt to "color-code" religion is often a modern political tool borrowed from the "us vs. them" ideologies that fueled the Crusades and colonial expansions.
India’s strength has always been its ability to absorb, not exclude. When we see orange and green as barriers rather than threads in a tapestry, we are essentially adopting the very mindset that led to the dark chapters of history mentioned above.


A Pro-India Vision: The most "Indian" thing one can do is reject the monochromatic view of the world. By celebrating Holi, Christmas, and Eid with equal fervor, we aren't just being "nice"—we are upholding a civilizational standard that India mastered thousands of years before the rest of the world.