India’s Diversity and Globalization: Unifying Forces and Innovation

Abstract

India is a multilinguial, multireligious, and multi-caste country and has been a dominant player in the world system and part of the global economy for ages. Its civilizational past has been shaped and has evolved through a number of events, crises, people, and communities. It has not been an isolated country at any point of time, as there has been a continuous exchange of ideas, products, and people with other countries and civilizations. It therefore becomes essential to understand India in a global context to examine its problems and to seek solutions. There are two types of studies focusing on changes in society, its interlinkages with others, and global system: civilization studies and world-systems analysis. The scholars in the civilization studies have focused on identifying the existence of different civilizations in different geographical areas in the ancient period. Some have devoted more attention to the interrelations and mutual influences among civilizations in terms of culture and ideology, and their rise and decline through several stages. World-systems analysts, on the other hand, have developed a perspective to examine issues of capitalism, development, and world inequalities. The world economy is a system of interconnected national economies that bring together national financial power and states that struggle to move up the hierarchy of states in terms of power and wealth. Both these groups of studies have given insight to understand the existence and growth of countries in present forms. It therefore becomes imperative to look at the key findings of these studies to have better understanding of India’s socioeconomic and environmental problems. This article proposes that a good governance system can direct India’s diversity and socioeconomic challenges to develop an innovative society. Further, it attempts to examine the following questions: How has India evolved as a civilizational entity over a period of the last 2000 years? How has globalization influenced its evolution during the last few centuries? What are the unifying factors of India in terms of culture, constitutions, and social processes? What are the present and new challenges that have emerged during last 60–70 years? How is India, despite its diversity, meeting and solving such challenges? In view of growing trend of globalization, are the unifying forces still relevant or not?