This disturbance is made bigger influencing the people of whole country by the political involvement in them. Thus, pluralism has both strengths and weaknesses.
PLURALISM IN INDIA: STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS
The ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious plurality of India is its strength as well as its weakness. Broadened and enriched by various sub-cultures, India has produced a unique mosaic. On the other hand, various social divisions and cleavages have embittered intergroup relations with recurrent violent conflicts. The recent prolonged volcanic explosions of communal hated in Assam and Punjab have shaken the national integrity and unity.
HOW PLURALISM EXISTS IN INDIA
The Indian psyche, which is the reflection of Indian social reality, is highly complex; contrasting values and basic propensities often coexist and Indians display a high "tolerance of dissonance".
In the Indian psyche, as well as in Indian modes of behavior, just a position of opposites has been frequently observed and commented upon by travelers. writers, social scientists and historians. To some extent, historical circumstances have greatly contributed to this feature of Indian psyche. Down the ages. instead of assimilation and integration of diverse cultural influences, what seems to have taken place in India has been a kind of coexistence of disparate elements without any synthesis. The country has been exposed to many cultural influences following invasions from its north-western frontier.
The unique capacity of Hinduism is to incorporate often hostile elements into some kind of a unique socio-cultural structure. In India, vast number of dissimilar people with distinct cultures had to find a way of living together, and they have coexisted rather than merged. Neither a "Melting pot" mechanism not a 'Social blending machine" seems to have operated in Indian context.
Hinduism did not absorb the influx of influences from outside into a unique and unified sustem, but it engulfed them to use Schulberg's expression. Groups migrationg into the country with their own coustoms, cultures and lifestyles lived amicably side by side with those who were already there. There occurred a kind of cultural existence. The process has been described an encompassing, in which seeming contradictions of thoughts and actions, instead of leading to confirmation are tolerated, balanced accommodated and integrated.
Ramanujam remarked, When Indian learn, quite expertly, modem science business or technology, they "compartmentalize" these interests. The new ways of thought and behavior do not replace, but live along with older "religious" ways. Computers and typewriters receive Aa yudapooja as weapons of war did once. The modern, the context free, becomes one or more context, though it is not easy to contain.
Sinha and Sinha also observed a 'dissonance' in Indian work culture in which the highest ideal of work (as embodied in the lndian scriptures) exists along side lower examples of depravity in work behavior. It appears that the Indian has the propensity to function in the 'grey area' or between opposites. This coexistence of opposites throughout Indians' lives and culture that is considered to be cultural and psychological out of their anxiety, an average Indian is 'caught in a chaos of conflicting patterns,none of them wholly condemned but no one of them clearly approved and free from confusion'. Such contradictions and odd paradoxes are in evidence in the socio-political plane, where for example, Gandhi an Sarvodaya goes hand in hand with the building of a highly complex techno-industrial society, cottage industry with mass production, and Ahimsa with the worst kind of Social Violence (D.Sinha, 1962,p.33)
Chaudhuri talked of the 'Terrible Dichotomy' of Hindu personality where a large number of antithetical though connected traits the shape behavior co-exist; a sense of solidarity with an uncontrollable tendency toward diversity, extreme object hating with object liking, authoritarianism with anarchic individualism, violence with non-violence, militarism with pacifism, possessiveness with carelessness about property owned, courage with cowardice, cleverness with stupidity. As Kapp (1963) pointed out, there remains 'ac unresolved dualism within the present human situation which explains the paradoxical co-existence in one culture system of contradictory value orientations and actual behavior pattern'
Infinite varieties of religious tenets and forms of worship are permitted in Hinduism; most are based on individual. There is enormous heterogeneity of beliefs and practices, ranging all the way from strict monism to monotheism, to dualism, pantheism and near paganism and even atheism.
Individuals are permitted to follow whatever forms suit them, according to their samskara (basic predisposition); karma (past actions) and inclinations.
WEAKNESS OF PLURALISM
India has paid very heavily for communal and religious liberty. The sub-continent was portioned uprooting millions and causing death and devastation unparalleled in human history. The death toll varies between 2,25,000 to 5,00,000, probably the estimated by Penderel Moon, an Indian civil servant of 200,000 is the most reliable (Ziegler, 1985). Communalism has claimed the lives of many Mahatma Gandhi (1948), the Father of the Nation, and one of greatest saints of human civilization, Indira Gandhi (1984), the Prime minister of India, and among the greatest statesman of the modern period; and Sant Harchand Singh Longowal who stood for communal harmony between Hindus and Sikhs and was shot dead by a Sikh fanatic.
Indeed, a great deal is at stake, nothing less than the future of the India polity and security. The situation cannot be allowed to drift dangerously. The nation demands an effective intervention before we reach the end of the precipice .. Disappointingly, there is no scientific planned social policy to guide and improve inter group relations in the country. There is an abundance of pious and good-intentioned sentimental attitudes.
The gravity of problem demands and deserves a more serious concern. A determined scientific, rational and informed intervention is needed. As a necessary prelude to such social intervention a stocktaking cf knowledge and its inadequacy about various aspects of inter group relationships and tensions in India are required. This stocktaking inevitably has to be interdisciplinary involving all major social,.sciences, most importantly, anthropology, communication and mass media, economics, education, history, political sciences. Social psychology, of course is par with excellence. But social tension in its broadest sense is not a solely social psychological phenomenon, it is also a product of historical, economic, political and social factors which fall outside our natural constituency of social psychology. According to Milner "We have to concede from outset. .. that the social psychological perspective is necessary but insufficient."
The importance of non-psychological factors in the formations of group identities, group images, attitudes to other social groups and socio-political behavior are too obvious an visible to escape the attention of any intelligent and informed person except some psychologist who obsessed with professional narcissism, insight on psychological explanation alone for psychological variable.
SUMMARY
India is a unique mixture of several ethnic groups, cultures, languages and religions. It is a blend of all the existing diversification.
The first part explains how pluralism exists in India. It is the Indian psyche, which helps them to tolerate other religions or groups without much difficulty. The historical events also contributed to the pluralism. From ages, many invaders have come from west and have brought their cultural influences along with them. Instead of mingling in the existing ones, the other cultures started having their own identity and all the cultures coexisted parallely.
In the later part of lesson, the disadvantages due to pluralism is discussed. Though, the diverse groups exist in India, there are always constant battles and disturbances due to the differences in their basic beliefs and ways of behaving. Sometimes, polity involves in these disturbances, causing a lot of trouble not only to the groups in conflict, but also to the whole country people. There have been many riot and are still existing. These are all to be dealt in sociology, political science and especially in the field of social psychology.