The population of India and their social background

1. The People of India

India's people inherited a civilization that began more than 4,500 years ago, one that has proven capable of absorbing and transforming the peoples and cultures that over the centuries have come to the subcontinent. India has long supported a large population of great diversity. The people in India's intricate network of communities speak literally thousands of languages, practice all of the world's great religions, and participate in a complex social structure that incorporates the caste system, a rigid system of social hierarchy.

India is one of the world's most populous countries, with a population (2000 estimate) of 1,017,645,163 and an average population density of 321 persons per sq km (833 per sq mi) in 2000. An estimated 72 percent of India's inhabitants live in rural areas. The population grew by nearly 24 percent between 1981 and 1991, down slightly from 25 percent growth between 1971 and 1981. It is estimated that the rate of growth will slow even further in the coming decades, but India's population nevertheless is expected to continue to increase. The annual growth rate in 1997 was 1.6 percent.

2. Ethnic and Cultural Groups

India's population is rich with diverse ethnic and cultural groups. Ethnic groups are those based on a sense of common ancestry, while cultural groups can be either made up of people of different ethnic origins who share a common language, or of ethnic groups with some customs and beliefs in common, such as castes of a particular locality. The diverse ethnic and cultural origins of the people of India are shared by the other peoples of the Indian subcontinent, including the inhabitants of Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka.

The overwhelming majority of India's population share essentially the same physical characteristics. There is no concrete scientific evidence of racial differences within this majority, although there are ethnic and cultural differences, such as language and religion. In physical appearance, Indians have brown skin of many shades, mainly straight black hair, and, with few exceptions, brown eyes. Other physical characteristics, such as nose shape, in most cases do not clearly differentiate one group from another. People of different regions are, on average, different from others in skin shade and height, but the overlap is great.

There are also groups of people in India that have been identified by the government as tribal, meaning they belong to one of the more than 300 officially designated “scheduled tribes.” The tribal people are sometimes called hill tribes or adivasis ("original inhabitants") and in 1991 made up about 8 percent (more than 65 million people) of India's population. For the purpose of affirmative action, the Indian government publishes “schedules” (lists) of the tribes, as well as of some other disadvantaged groups, such as the former Untouchables (see the Castes section of this article). Members of India's various hill tribes are thought to be indigenous and tend to be ethnically distinct. These groups typically marry within their community and often live in large, adjoining areas, which are preserved by government policies restricting the sale of land to tribe members.

Major tribes include the Gond and the Bhil. Each has millions of members and encompasses a number of subtribes. Most other tribes are much smaller, with tens of thousands of members. Very few tribal communities now support themselves with traditional methods of hunting and gathering or with shifting cultivation (also known as slash-and-burn agriculture) because of government restrictions aimed at protecting the environment. Instead, they generally practice settled agriculture. Tribal groups tend to live in rural areas, mainly in hilly and less fertile regions of the country. Less than 5 percent practice traditional tribal religious beliefs and customs exclusively; most now combine traditional religions and customs with Hinduism or Christianity. Eighty-seven percent identify themselves as Hindus, and 7 percent, mainly in the northeast, as Christians.

Most tribal groups live in a belt of communities that stretches across central India, from the eastern part of Gujarat (the westernmost state); eastward along the Madhya Pradesh-Maharashtra border; through Chhattisgarh, parts of northern Andhra Pradesh, most of interior Orissa, and Jharkhand; and to the western part of Bangla. The western tribes speak a dialect of Hindi, the central tribes use a form of the Dravidian language, and the eastern tribes speak Austro-Asiatic languages.

The other major concentration of tribal people is in the northeastern hills. Tribe members make up the majority of the population in the states of Mizoram, Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh. These people, many of them Christian, speak languages of the Sino-Tibetan family. Sino- Tibetan languages are also spoken by the Buddhists who live along the Himalayan ridge, including the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Uttaranchal, and Jammu and Kashmir (specifically, the region of Ladakh). In the Himalayas particularly, isolation on the mountain flanks has led to languages so distinct that ethnic groups living within sight of each other may not understand each other. Other tribes live in southern India and on India's island territories, but their numbers are not large.

3. Education

India's official goal for education since independence in 1947 has been to ensure compulsory education for all up to age 14. A lack of money and effort put into primary education, however, has hampered the achievement of that goal. At independence 25 percent of males and 8 percent of females were literate. In 2000 those figures had been raised to 69 percent of males and 42 percent of females—56 percent of the overall population. The government invests comparatively more in secondary and tertiary schools, particularly colleges and universities. There was no serious political demand for primary education until the 1990s, when a grassroots movement arose to organize volunteers and conduct campaigns for universal adult literacy.

Education for the elite has been a tradition in India since the beginnings of its civilization. Great Buddhist universities at Nalanda and Taxila were famous far beyond India's borders. Withholding education from the nonelite, including women, has also been a tradition. The lowest caste members, including the Harijans and non-Hindu tribal groups, were denied the right even to hear the Vedas, sacred Hindu texts, recited.

State governments control their own school systems, with some assistance from the central government. The federal Ministry of Education directs the school systems of centrally administered areas, provides financial help for the nation's institutions of higher learning, and handles tasks such as commissioning textbooks. Education generally consists of ten years of elementary and high school, two years of higher secondary education, and three years at university level. While most students enroll in government schools, the number of private institutions is increasing at all educational levels. Indians have a right to establish institutions to provide education in their native language and with a religious or cultural emphasis, although the schools must conform to state regulation of teaching standards. Students begin specializing in subjects at the level of higher secondary school. A university typically has one or more colleges of law, medicine, engineering, and commerce, and many have colleges of agriculture. Prestigious and highly selective institutes of management have been established. The educational establishment also includes a number of high-level scientific and social science institutes, as well as academies devoted to the arts.

In 1996 elementary and middle level schools enrolled about 110 million pupils, and secondary schools 69 million. Total yearly enrollment in institutions of higher education was 6.1 million. India had around 581,300 primary and upper primary schools, many of them one -room (or even open-air) operations with poorly paid teachers. There are also some 84,000 secondary schools, about 200 recognized universities, and 5,000 technical, arts, and science colleges. The universities of Kolkata, Madras, and Bombay, founded in 1857, are the oldest still operating in India, although colleges existed in those cities before that date. Other major universities in India include Banaras Hindu University, in Varanasi; Aligarh Muslim University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, in New Delhi; Agra University; the University of Bihar; the University of Delhi; Gauhati University; Gorakhpur University; Gujarat University; Kanpur University; the University of Kerala, in Trivandrum; the University of Mysore; the University of Pune; and the University of Rajasthan, in Jaipur.

4. Way of live

The life of Indians is centered in the family. Extended families often live together, with two or more adult generations, or brothers, sharing a house. In much of the countryside, neighboring houses share a wall, so from the street one sees a continuous wall pierced by doorways. In other areas, in the south for example, the main house will have a veranda on the street, with an open courtyard behind. As farmers prosper, they change from adobe construction to brick plastered with cement, and from a tile or thatch roof to a flat concrete or corrugated metal one. Most home activity is outside in the compound courtyard or on the verandas of the house.

Only in a few part s of India, such as Kerala and Bengal, do people live on their farmland. The village is thus a settlement area, or a set of settlement areas, surrounded by unbroken fields, with farms frequently made up of separated plots. A large village will have a primary school, perhaps a temple or mosque, and a small shop or two. Some artisans have workshops in their houses. Most villages and settlement areas are fairly small, with about 100 to 200 families and a land area of about 250 hectares (about 620 acres) in regions where the land is irrigated, or three or four times that in dry areas. Paved roads and electricity have been extended to the majority of villages, making them less isolated. Many villagers now work for part of the day or part of the year in nearby towns or cities, while continuing to farm or to work as day laborers in agriculture or construction.

Men work mainly in the fields, although where rice is grown, women transplant the seedlings. The entire family will pitch in at harvest time because most agricultural work is still done by hand. Women fetch water, prepare meals, clean, and care for milking animals that are stabled in or near the house compound. Among Hindus particularly, most worship is done in the home, where a room or an alcove is devoted to images of a god or gods. Young girls are expected to help with the women's work, and girls care for their younger siblings. Boys have fewer responsibilities, although they often herd goats and bring cattle to and from the fields.

In most cases a woman who marries moves to her husband's village from her home village. Visits to her birth family, who may live a day's journey or more away, are generally rare, especially as the woman grows older. Senior men (and their wives) exercise power in the family. Disputes within the family, which can be common, may result in partitioning of land or even of the house compound.

In the cities families still remain the center of social life. Different families (of the same or similar caste) may occupy different floors of the same house. Newer housing is in the form of apartment blocks for the poor and lower middle class, and separate two- and three-story houses on very small plots for the rich and upper middle class. Most women in cities work in the home, although some may supplement the family income through craft work such as embroidery. Poor women may work as house servants, laborers on construction sites, or street vendors. Increasingly among the educated, however, women have their own jobs as teachers, clerks or secretaries, or professionals. Women entrepreneurs or shopkeepers are rare.

Meals in village India consist mainly of the staple grain—rice, or wheat in the form of unleavened bread baked on a griddle—with stir-fried vegetables, cooked lentils, and yogurt. Each part of the country has its own cuisine, with differences in the kinds and mix of spices, in the cooking oil used (mustard oil in the north, coconut oil in the south), and in favored vegetables or meats. In seasons of scarcity, such as the months before the harvest, the poor may be reduced to having just a chili pepper or salt to flavor their rice or bread. Vegetables are those in season, and cooked food is generally not stored. Food at weddings or other celebrations can be very elaborate, with city-style soft drinks and snacks brought in. Men drink alcohol, most often fermented toddy palm juice in the south, or cheap distilled spirits in the north.

In urban areas meals are still organized around a staple grain, but the variety and amount of vegetables and meat are greater. Food is bought and consumed on the same day, and even those families with refrigerators typically use them only to keep water, soft drinks, or milk cool. Social visiting in cities is also mainly with relatives or among students with their classmates. The upper classes will entertain friends or business acquaintances at home, but men of other classes will more often meet at restaurants or tea stalls to socialize.

The basic clothing for most Indians, men and women, is still a simple draped cloth. For women this is the sari, which is wrapped as an ankle- length skirt and draped over one shoulder, with a fitted shirt and petticoat underneath. Styles of tying the sari vary among regions and communities. Except for widows, who wear plain white, saris are generally colorful and can be made of cotton or the finest embroidered silks. Village men and men in some urban areas such as Kerala wear a cloth called a dhoti in its full-length form. In north India it is typically tied with one or both ends brought between the legs and tucked in, to form loose “pant” legs. In the south, the full cloth or a half-sized one is wrapped as a cylinder, an ankle- length skirt that can be pulled up and tucked in itself to form a short skirt when work requiring movement is done. Muslims tend to wear the half- cloth in colored cottons rather than the white with thin colored border favored by Hindus.

Western-style clothing has virtually replaced traditional dress for men, especially in northern India. With rare exceptions among elite women, who wear slacks and a blouse on occasion, women continue to wear the sari or other Indian dress. In Mumbai and a few other cities Christian women may wear skirts and blouses, a remnant of colonial rule when English dress was expected of those groups.

5. Social Issues:

Social problems in India center on the connected issues of poverty and inequality. Particularly in rural areas lower castes and marginal social groups, such as tribal people and Muslims, are generally poor. India's poor face disease, scarce educational opportunities, and often physical abuse by those who control their livelihood. It is difficult or impossible for the poor to escape and enter the modernizing sector of society, where discrimination on the basis of caste or community is less prevalent. In all classes and in urban as well as rural areas, discrimination and at times violence against women is almost taken for granted.

Poverty has been reduced in India since independence, although in 1994, 35.04 percent of the population still lived below the poverty line. Industrialization has created jobs in the cities, and rural workers have been able to diversify their sources of income. Urban workers at entry level, however, are usually forced to live in appalling conditions in slums.

Modern water supply and sanitation arrangements are rare in the poor areas of most towns and cities and are lacking entirely in most villages. As a result, many Indians suffer and even die from diarrhea, malaria, typhoid, and cholera. India has succeeded in eradicating smallpox and has brought down the overall death rate, in significant part by investing in a health-care system that includes hospitals, clinics, and drug manufacture and distribution. By the mid-1990s acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) emerged as a serious problem. To combat the disease, the Indian government, with help from volunteer groups, established a vigorous AIDS-awareness program.

Part of the problem of disease and poverty in villages is that poor people cannot afford the money and time it takes to provide treatment for their children, many of whom are already weakened by an inadequate diet.

Girls of all classes are given less medical care than their brothers and so die in greater numbers. Many parents prefer sons, who remain with them and provide security for them in old age. Because daughters often require a dowry at marriage and are unlikely to earn an income that could raise a family's economic position, they are seen as a liability. By the mid-1990s, the spread of family planning facilities and the increase in confidence that children would survive to adulthood helped reduce the preferred family size to just three children: two sons and a daughter. Second- and thirdborn daughters, especially in families without sons, continue to die at rates greater than average.

Discrimination against women does not end with childhood, nor is it confined to the countryside. Although India has had a woman as prime minister, the percentage of women serving in political or administrative office still remains very low. Some women are major leaders of grassroots movements, and women play an active role in India's vigorous press. Yet women are rare in senior business positions and in the legal and medical professions. Women's movements to combat violence against women have had considerable success in raising awareness of the issue and stimulating government action.

Discrimination against lower caste members, including the Harijans or former Untouchables, is still a problem in India. As a result violence between castes sometimes breaks out. Since independence, many lower caste groups have mobilized politically and have achieved positions of power or leverage in several states. More than 50 percent of the positions in the national civil service were reserved for members of lower castes by the mid-1990s. Efforts to organize the landless and the homeless, however, have not enjoyed the same success. In rural areas, men of lower caste traditionally serve those of higher caste. This situation has aggravated caste conflict and has helped to keep the poor politically and socially weak.

Relations between Hindus and Muslims have also been problematic. After the partition of British India into India and Pakistan, Muslims of the northern provinces who stayed in India—where they were a minority— became vulnerable. Riots between Hindus and Muslims have occurred on occasion since the mid-1960s. Muslims in rural areas remain largely untouched by the conflict. Riots tend not to occur in areas where there are structures of mutual social or economic advantage—for example, in towns with a large industry owned by Hindus and employing Muslims. Also, at the personal level, there are many examples of friendships and mutual respect. Muslim leaders have served as presidents of India, and Muslims have held positions of great prominence in all fields, including the military.

6. Social Services

India's central government has focused on improving the welfare of the Indian people since independence. The focus has been on transforming the health of the population and providing benefits for the weakest members of the society, especially scheduled castes and tribes, women, and children. These efforts have resulted in improvements, although the degree varies by state.

Health-care facilities have been extended to all parts of the country, with more than 20,000 primary health centers and more than 100,000 subcenters in 1995. Still, the number and quality of personnel staffing them are less than desirable, and spending levels have been low. Although the number of hospital beds in relation to the population has increased since independence, there are still too few doctors for the population, particularly in rural areas. The government also promotes family planning and alternate systems of health care, particularly those with deep Indian roots such as Ayurvedic medicine.

Life expectancy at birth was 64 years in 2000, compared with 32 years in 1941. The infant mortality rate is still high at about 59 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2000, down from about 150 per 1,000 live births in the late 1940s. Smallpox was eradicated in the 1970s, and deaths on a large scale due to cholera, influenza, and other similar diseases have also been eliminated. Malaria and tuberculosis occur at much reduced rates, but new drug-resistant varieties are cause for concern. While the number of cases of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) were few in the mid- 1990s, the number of people with the virus that causes AIDS had exploded by then, with some estimates of more than 1 million infected. Efforts to check the spread of the disease, particularly prevalent among prostitutes in major cities and among drug users in some of the nort heastern areas, have not been very effective. Malnutrition remains a serious problem, despite the gradually increasing amount of grain available per capita (rice, wheat, and grains such as millet remain the major food source of most Indians). Public sanitation facilities are not adequate, and in most areas, including most towns, smaller cities, and the countryside, are almost nonexistent.

Welfare programs for the scheduled tribes and scheduled castes (including the Harijans, or Untouchables) have centered on "compensatory discrimination," which is similar to affirmative action: Positions are reserved for this population in the legislature, civil services, and educational institutions. Also, education subsidies are provided, including scholarships and reduced fees. A national commission for scheduled castes and tribes monitors progress in ending discrimination against these groups and progress in their social and economic standing. Public discrimination has become rare, and quite a few individuals have risen to positions of influence and respect, including India's first Harijan president, Kocheril Raman Narayanan, who was elected in 1997. Private discrimination in housing and employment continues, however, and the desperately poor of the countryside, constitut ing the majority of these groups, remain virtually powerless against exploitation and physical abuse.

There are a wide variety of programs intended to improve the welfare of women and children, but they have had little impact in parts of the country (part icularly the northern states) where the problem is most acute. Female children suffer particularly: They are often neglected in infancy, sometimes resulting in death. Also, they may be kept out of school or married off early. Programs for children, such as those for supplemental nutrition, have little effect in situations where child labor is endemic.

7. The Europeans in India

As early as the 15th century, Europeans were interested in developing trade opportunities with India and a new trade route to East Asia. The Portuguese were devoted to this task, and in 1497 Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese royal navigator and explorer, led an expedition around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean. In May 1498 he sailed into the harbor of Calicut on the Malabar Coast, opening a new era of Indian history. Establishing friendly relations with the dominant kingdom of the Deccan, the Portuguese secured lucrative trade routes on the coast of India in the early 16th century.

For about the first two centuries after Europeans arrived in India, their activities were restricted to trade and evangelism, their presence protected by naval forces. For the entire period of the Mughal Empire, European traders were confined to trading posts along the coast. In the 16th century the Portuguese navy controlled the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean, protecting the traders settled in Goa, Daman, and Diu on the western coast. Christianity swiftly followed trade. Saint Francis Xavier, a Spanish Jesuit missionary, came to Goa in 1542, converting tens of thousands of Indians along the peninsular coast and in southern India and Ceylon before leaving for Southeast Asia in 1545. In fact, the area of India he and other missionaries traversed was already home to communities of Christians, some converted by Saint Thomas in the 1st century AD and some who fled to India many centuries later to escape persecution for their Nestorian beliefs.

The Dutch displaced the Portuguese as masters of the seas around India in the 17th century. The Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602, two years after its main rival, the English East India Company. Both companies began by trading in spices, gradually shifting to textiles, particularly India's characteristic light, patterned cottons. Their activities in India were centered primarily on the southern and eastern coasts and in the Bengal region. The economic effect of purchases made at the coastal depots were felt far inland in the cotton-growing areas, but the Europeans did not at that time attempt to extend their political sway.

By the 18th century British sea power matched that of the Dutch, and the European rivalry in India began to take on a military dimension. During the first half of the 18th century the French, who had begun to operate in India in about 1675, emerged as a serious threat to the growing power and prosperity of the English East India Company. By the mid-18th century the British and French were at war with each other throughout the world. This rivalry manifested itself in India in a series of conflicts, called the Carnatic Wars, which stretched over 20 years and established the British as the primary European power in India.

As the French and British skirmished over control of India's foreign trade, the Mughal Empire was experiencing its rapid decline and regional kingdoms were emerging. The continuously warring rulers of these kingdoms used well-trained and disciplined French and British forces to support their military activities. The foreigners, however, had their own agenda, frequently expanding their own political or territorial power under the guise of championing a local ruler. Led by innovative and effective Joseph François Dupleix, the French managed by 1750 to place themselves in a powerful position in southern India, especially in Hyderabad. In 1751, however, British troops under Robert Clive captured the French southeastern stronghold of Arcot in a pivotal battle. With this encounter the balance of power in the south swung to favor the British, although the struggle for control of India's trade continued.

In Bengal, the English East India Company had begun fortifying Fort William in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to defend against possible attacks by the French. Nominally a part of the Mughal Empire, Bengal was at this time virtually independent under the emperor's nawab (governor). In response to reports of unauthorized activities of the British, the nawab Siraj-ud-Dawhah attacked Calcutta in 1756. Some British survivors of the attack were imprisoned in a small dungeon known as the Black Hole of Calcutta where a number of them died. After the incident, Robert Clive, then the British governor of Fort Saint David, moved north from Madras and, conniving with the commander of his enemy's army, defeated the nawab in the Battle of Plassey in 1757. The battle marked the first stage in the British conquest of India. The French attempted to regain their position in India but were beaten back by the British in 1761. In 1764 the British again defeated local rulers at the Battle of Buxar. This victory firmly established British control over the Bengal region.

8. Books:

Shona Ramaya: Flute

Flute is the story of Nikhil and Julian, and Julian and Dane: each in his own way obsessive, outcast, filled with hatred and rejection, and each determined to recreate his world.

Julian, visiting India to escape scandal in England at the beginning of this century, meets Nikhil, who becomes infatuated with Julian's androgynous beauty. As they are drawn to each other, Julian becomes haunted by the sound of the flute and Nikhil realises that the only way he can hold Julian is to fire his imagination with the story of Krishna, the god of the magic flute, and the myth of power associated with it. But as Julian learns to play the flute and becomes obsessed by Krishna, the forces of family and fantasy threaten to tear him apart; and his adoring younger half-brother Dane, lost in a dream of his own involving an Indian dancing girl, tries to steer Julian away from what he considers the edge of madness.

Written with a cinematic structure, Flute reveals a fantastic India where the world of British colonialism is a half forgotten dream and the myth of Krishna overwhelmingly real. This novel is about myth, about man's ability - and determination - to create it, and its consuming power.

Frances Mary Hendry: Chandra

About the author:

FRANCES MARY HENDRY was a teacher in Scotland for over 20 years. She has also run a small guest house which only had visitors in the summer, which meant she could write all winter.

Until 1986, when she won the S.A.C. Literary Award for her book Quest for a Kelpie, the only writing she had done was for pantomimes for her local drama club - something she still enjoys doing.

Summary:

In Delhi, 11-year-old Chandra is delighted to be getting married; she is sure she'll be happy with the 16-year-old husband her father has chosen for he r. After the wedding, she returns to school, while he goes home to finish his studies out in the desert state of Rajasthan. But when

she goes to visit her in- laws, she is met with hatred, beatings and imprisonment. Her husband has just died, and Hindu tradition says that a widow must stay with her husband's family as a servant until she dies. Even if she runs away, her tamily will not take her in again. With the help of the Goddess Durga, and modern-minded friends of many castes, Chandra fights for her freedom.

References:

India: The rocky path from independence to a modern nation state (World and Press Special)

India - Old and New (Shahana Dasgupta) ISBN 3-464-05152-8

India: The golden jubilee

Flute (Shona Ramaya) ISBN 0-349-10077-2

Asoka and Indian civilzation (Helen and Hemant Kanitkar)

Chandra (Frances Mary Hendry) ISBN 0-19-275058-5

The Vintage Book of INDIAN WRITING 1947-1997 (Salman Rushdie and Elizabeth West) ISBN 0-09-973101-0

Internet: www.encarta.com