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Indian Culture
The Indian culture has enjoyed an international reputation for the brass
and bell metal work. The technology of metalworking had been entrenched
in the Indian Culture by 2500 B.C. This technology then was manifested in
myriad exquisite and sturdy images and icons.
These images and icons are still found in temples. They are still being
produced in household niches such as lamps, platters and other items required
for acts of worship. The metals being used for these products are mostly
gold, silver, copper, brass, bronze, and other mixed metals and alloys.
Infact the world-famous dancing figure of Nataraja, which is a strong
element of the Indian Culture, is a work in the Chola tradition. This
piece of art epitomizes the achievement of art in the Indian Culture.
In fact an even more remarkable fact is that most of the everyday household
equipments that people in India use are art objects. The simplest of equipments
ranging from the kitchen ladle, to the nutcracker, the water-pot, are all
perfect examples of the artistic bend in the Indian Culture.
Religions
Since at least the eighteenth century, India has been associated in the
European imagination as preeminently a land of religion. By the late nineteenth
century, Europeans (and increasingly Americans) were coming to India as
a landthat promised spiritual release from the weariness of the material
life. In the twentieth century, this reputation appeared to be solidified.
The struggle for independence came to be waged under the leadership of Gandhi,
whose unflinching advocacy of non-violence endeared him to admirers as a
man of religion and peace; and in the 1960s, when the enduring image of
India was as a land suffused spirituality, Westerners flocked to India to
avail themselves of the spiritual advice and teachings of countless number
of Indian gurus. This image has taken something of a battering in recent
years, and today Westerners, when they think at all of India, think of the
country as engulfed by religious 'wars' and hatred, as ensnared by perpetual
Hindu-Muslim conflict; meanwhile, the gross materialism of middle-class
Indians, given naked encouragement by the state, indigenous and foreign
corporate interests, the culture of modernity, and international finance
organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank, has all but eroded the
image as a land of sublime spirituality. What is indubitably unique about
India as a 'land of religions' is that it is the birthplace of several major
world religions. Three-fourths of the people describe themselves as adherents
of Hinduism, the oldest continuous faith in the world. Though today Hinduism
has spread to all parts of the world, taken there by Indian migrants, Hinduism
has, and will continue to have, an indelible association with India; and
perhaps in no other case is the association between a faith and a land so
close as it is with Hinduism. This religion produced a vast corpus of texts: preeminent among them have been the Rig Veda, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad
Gita, the Ramayana, and the Bhagvata Purana; and the commentaries of Shankaracharya;
modern-day classics include the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, the Gita-Rahasya
of Tilak, and Conversations with Sri Ramana Maharishi.
Society
India is a land of great diversity, in fact the Indian society is more heterogenous
than any other society in the world. Four of the major racial groups have
met and merged in the India scoiety and as a result there is a complex demographic
profile in the Indian society. The Aryans have managed to establish a dominant
presence in the Indian society in the regions of the northwest and the Gangetic
plain. However the people of the Mongoloid descent have managed to remain
undisturbed in the Himalayan region. The affinity of the Mongoloids with
the southeast Asian world is remarkable. This affinity is reflected in the
motifs that the Mongoloids use in their crafts. Though the Mongoloid people
have left a heavy influence on the racial pattern of the eastern tribes
of Orissa and Bihar, they stayed on within the central parts of India.
Music 
Music has always occupied a central place in the imagination of Indians.
The range of musical phenomenon in India, and indeed the rest of South Asia,
extends from simple melodies, commonly encountered among hill tribes, to
what is one of the most well- developed "systems" of classical
music in the world. Indian music can be described as having been inaugurated
with the chanting of Vedic hymns, though it is more than probable that the
Indus Valley Civilization was not without its musical culture, of which
almost nothing is known. There are references to various string and wind
instruments, as well as several kinds of drums and cymbals, in the Vedas.
Sometime between the 2nd century BC and the 5th century AD, the Natyasastra,
on Treatise on the Dramatic Arts, was composed by Bharata. This work has
ever since exercised an incalculable influence on the development of Indian
music, dance, and the performing arts in general.
Dance
A martial arts tradition from the coastal state of Kerala, Kalaripayatuu
— "the arts of the gymnasium" -- is believed to have a history
extending back to the first century AD. It has been suggested that kalaripayatuu
was taken by a Buddhist monk from the Malabar coast to China, where it led,
in turn, to those martial arts that are now familiar in the West, namely
judo, karate, and kung fu. Those proficient in Kalaripayatuu are said to
have constituted themselves in medieval times into elite suicide squads,
known as "chavars". At some point, the Nairs began to dominate
the sport. The Madhya [Middle] Kerala Sampradayam [School] is noted for
its accuracy, foot movements (kalams, said to number 64), and striking power;
it acquired considerable popularity in the Middle East, where Arab traders
who came to the Malabar coast in search of spices first intro duced it. The
Kadaanada [North Kerala] Sampradayam is known for its emphasis on speed,
flexibility, stamina, body balance, and remarkable neuromuscular coordination.
At the present moment, Kerala has two kalaris, or gymansia: in principle,
the one founded by C. V. Narayanan Nair caters to Hindu students, and the
one founded by Haji Ennam Kuty attracts Muslim students, but in fact students
from both faiths intermingle. As with many other phenomena, such as yoga
-- which in the West has largely been reduced to hatha yoga, or a set of
exercises, so occluding the various profound associations yoga in India
has had with sadhana (discipline), moksha (spiritual emancipation), brahmacharya
(such restraint as makes one capable of approximating the divine) -- the
modern instruction of kalaripayatuu has divorced the self-defence aspect
of the art form from the philosophy and rituals associated with it over
the centuries.
Architecture
One of the most enduring achievements of Indian civilization is undoubtedly
its architecture, which extends to a great deal more than the Taj Mahal
or the temple complexes of Khajuraho and Vijayanagara. Though the Indus
Valley sites of Harappa, Mohenjo-daro, and Lothal provide substantial evidence
of extensive town planning, the beginnings of Indian architecture are more
properly to be dated to the advent of Buddhism in India, in the reign of
Ashoka (c. 270-232), and the construction of Buddhist monasteries and stupas.
Buddhist architecture was predominant for several centuries, and there are
few remains of Hindu temples from even late antiquity. Among the many highlights
of Buddhist art and architecture are the Great Stupa at Sanchi and the rock-cut
caves at Ajanta.
Cuisine 
Though no country in the world is as strongly associated with vegetarianism
as India, a number of recent studies have purported to establish that by
far the greater majority of Indians are non-vegetarians. The history of
vegetarianism in India begins not with the Aryans, as is commonly believed
by Hindus, but in the aftermath of the introduction of Buddhism and Jainism
in the sixth century BCE. Though orthodox Hindus are shocked to hear it,
the early Aryans were almost certainly beef-eaters. Unlike the Indus Valley
people, who were agriculturists and traders, the Aryans were a pastoral
people, and they slaughtered cattle as food. Neither the early Indus Valley
people nor the early Aryans venerated the cow. Though the Buddha was an
exponent of ahimsa, or non-violence, he was not himself a vegetarian, and
it is said that his last meal contained pork. Nonetheless, given the Buddhist
emphasis on ahimsa, vegetarianism received much impetus. The Buddha’s
slightly older contemporary, Mahavira, the founder of the religion that
would come to be known as Jainism, took the precepts of ahimsa much further,
and it is the complete reverence for all forms of life that made it impossible
for those who embraced Jainism to practice agriculture. The upper castes,
who found members of their community deserting the "Hindu" fold
for Buddhism or Jainism, increasingly came to adopt vegetarianism.
Fairs & Festivals 
Though India is often and justly described as a land of many religions and
innumerable languages, it might well be described as a land of festivals
as well. One conventional authority, the Encyclopedia Brittanica, rather
unabashedly and with the customary cavalier attitude with which India can
be treated, says of Hindu festivals that these arecombinations of religious
ceremonies, semi-ritual spectacles, worship, prayer, lustrations, processions
(to set something sacred in motion and to extend its power throughout a
certain region), music, dances (which by their rhythm have a compelling
force), magical acts -- participants throw fertilizing water or, during
the Holi festival, coloured powder at each other -- eating, drinking, lovemaking,
licentiousness, feeding the poor, and other activities of a religious or
traditional character. No example is adduced of "lovemaking",
but one might reasonably infer that the reference is to some tantric practices. more about
fairs & festivals...
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