Indian Culture
Culture
The culture of India has been shaped by the long history of India, its unique geography and the absorption of customs, traditions and ideas from some of its neighbors as well as by preserving its ancient heritages, from the Indus Valley Civilization onward. India’s great diversity of cultural practices, languages, customs, and traditions are examples of this unique co-mingling over the past five millennea. India is also the birth place of several religious systems such as Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, some of which have had a great influence also in other parts of the world.
From the thirteenth century onwards, following the Islamic conquests and the subsequent European colonizations, the culture of India was influenced by Turkish, Persian, Arabic and some European (notably, British) cultures. The various religions and traditions of India that were created by these amalgamations have influenced South East Asia and some other parts of the world.
Language
The great number of languages in India have added to the diverse cultures and traditions at both regional and national levels. 216 languages are spoken by a group of more than 10,000 people; however there are many others which are spoken by fewer than 10,000 people. All together, there are 415 living languages in India. The Constitution of India has stipulated the usage of Hindi and English to be the two official languages of communication for the Union Government. Individual states’ own internal communications are usually in the state’s language or English.
The two major linguistic families in India are those of the Indo-Aryan languages and those of the Dravidian languages, the former being largely confined to northern, western, central and eastern India and the latter to southern India. The next largest language family in India is the Austro-Asiatic language group, which contains the Munda languages of central and eastern India, the Khasian languages of northeastern India, and the Nicobarese languages of the Nicobar Islands. The fourth largest language family in India is the Tibeto-Burman languages, which are themselves a subgroup of the larger Sino-Tibetan language family.