The diversity of India is tremendous; it is obvious; it lies in the surface and anybody can see it. It concerns itself with physical appearance as well as with certain mental habits and traits. There is little in common, to outward seeming, between the Pathan of the North-West and the Tamil in the far South. Their racial stocks are not the same though there may be common strands running through them; they differ in face and figure, food and clothing and of course, language. In the North-West Frontier Province there is already the breath of Central Asia, and many a custom there, as in Kashmir, reminds one of the countries on the other side of the Himalayas. Pathan popular dances are singularly like Russian Cossack dancing. Yet with all these differences there is no mistaking the impress of India on the Pathan, as this is obvious in the Tamil. This is not surprising for these border lands and indeed Afghanistan also were united with India for thousands of years. The old Turkish and other races who inhabited Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia before the advent of Islam were largely Buddhists and earlier still, during the period of the Epics, Hindus. The frontier area was one of the principal centers of old Indian culture and it abounds still with ruins of monuments and monasteries and, specially, of the great university of Taxila, which was at the height of its fame two thousand years ago, attracting students from all over India as well as different parts of Asia. Changes of religion made a difference but could not change entirely the mental backgrounds which the people of those areas had developed.
The Pathan and the Tamil are two extreme examples, the others lie somewhere in between. All of them have their distinctive features, all of them have still more the distinguishing mark of India. It is fascinating to find how the Bengalees, the Marathas, the Gujratis, the Tamils the Andhras, the Oriyas, the Assamese, the Canarese, the Malayalis, the Sindhis, the Punjabis, the Pathans, the Kashmiris, the Rajputs and the great central block comprising the Hindustani speaking people, have retained their peculiar characteristics for hundreds of years. They have still more of less the same virtues and fallings of which old tradition or records tells us, and yet have been throughout these ages, distinctively Indian, with the same national heritage and the same set of moral and mental qualities, There was something living and dynamic about this heritage which showed itself in ways of living and a philosophical attitude of life and its problems. Ancient India, like ancient China, was a world in itself, a culture and a civilization which gave shape to all things. Foreign influences poured and often influenced that culture and were absorbed. Disruptive tendencies gave rise immediately to an attempt to find a synthesis, Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization. That unity was not conceived as something imposed from outside, a standardization of externals or even of beliefs. It was something deeper and within its fold the widest tolerances of belief and custom was practiced and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged.
Differences, big or small can always be noticed even within a national group, however, closely bound together it may be. The essential unity of that group becomes apparent when it is compared to another national group, though often the differences between two adjoining groups fade out or intermingle near the frontiers, and modern developments are tending to produce a certain uniformity everywhere. In ancient and medieval times, the idea of the modern nation was non-existent and feudal, religious, racial or cultural bonds had more importance. Yet I think that at almost any time in recorded history, an Indian would have felt more or less at home in any part of India, and would have felt as a stranger and alien in any other country. He would certainly have felt less of a stranger in countries which had partly adopted his culture or religion. Those who professed a religion of non-Indian origin and coming to India settled down there, became distinctively Indian in the course of a few generations , such as Christians Jews Parsis, Moslems; Indian convert to some of these religions never ceased to be Indians in spite of a change of faith. All these were looked upon in other countries as Indians and foreigners, even though there might have been a community of faith between them.
Today, when the conception of nationalism has developed much more Indians in foreign countries inevitably form a national group and hang together for various purposes, in spite of their internal differences. An Indian Christian is looked upon as an Indian wherever he may go. An Indian Moslem is considered an Indian in Turkey or Arabia or Iran or any other country where Islam is the dominant religion.
All of us, I suppose, have varying pictures of our native land and no two persons, will think exactly alike. When I think of India, I think of many things; of broad fields dotted with innumerable small villages; of towns and cities I have visited; of the magic of the rainy season which pours life into the dry parched up land and converts it suddenly into a glistening expanse of beauty and greenery, of great river and flowing water; of the Khyber Pass in all its bleak surroundings; of the southern tip of India; of people, individually and in the mass; and, above all, of the Himalayas, snow-capped, or some mountain valley in Kashmir in the spring covered with new flowers, and with a brook bubbling and gurgling through it. We make and preserve the pictures of our choice, and so I have chosen this mountain background rather than the more normal picture of hot, sub-tropical country. Both pictures would be correct for India stretches from the tropics right up to the temperate regions, from near the equator to the cold heart of Asia.