We need to understand better the nature of indian multi-culturalism (indic pluralism?). I think it is also present in realted forms in SE Asia – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and so on. It is quite different from US or French multi-culturalism, these are western models with their own histories and dynamics. So there is some similar and some different examples of this phenomenon out there.

The topic deserves study from a practical point of view – what are the strengths of indic pluralism, ,what are its weaknesses, how can it be taken forward/modernized and so on.

All four of my grandparents came to America in the early 1900’s from eastern Europe. Although they had all lived within a 50 mile radius of one another in their home country, they only met (and married) in NYC’s immigrant ghetto, the lower east side of Manhattan. Two families were different kinds of immigrants. My father’s parents were Ukrainian peasants who accidentally lived in New York. My mother’s parents were the “new American aristocracy” who accidentally happen to have been born peasants in Ukraine. I grew up in my mother’s parent’s home and they prepared me for life as an active and successful citizen of their new country.

To my father’s parents, I was never Ukrainian enough, never enough respectful of the old ways, and never fluent enough in the language of Ukraine. To my mother’s parents, I was never fluent enough in English, never cosmopolitan enough, never erudite and scholarly enough, and never hard-working enough.

My mother’s parents and their daughter and grandson became involved in the local communities and organizations, across religions, ethnicities, and geographies, always striving to be part of their respective developments. My father’s parents were less so, having settled into a community of slavic, eastern European immigrants of like mind, remaining there for their lifetimes.

When I see immigrants in the US today, I wonder to which end of the continuum they will gravitate, to which set of my grandparents will they be more akin. I confess my own bias. I expect that new immigrants – of any culture – will make best efforts to become part of their new home, to understand it, work at being accepted, and work with new groups to improve and develop it.

The US is often referred to as “the melting pot”, but I think it is more the case that we are a “Cobbs Salad”, composed of individual chunks and groups rather than a smooth homogeneous bisque. Still I prefer my muticultural US (especially as a born and bred New Yorker) to the more structured cultural classes of many Europeans. Nor is the US innocent as we still have the same debates as the EU about what it means to be “an American”. These debates center around language, around law, around religion, and around acceptance.

However, I close with the idea that tolerance is quite more easily practiced in an already multicultural society than in a more homogeneous society. Changes in the former are merely one of degree whereas changes in the latter are one of kind. Tolerance in either requires an act of will but is much more difficult in the latter.

For one I grew up in the same area at the same time and
could give a very different account of local “tolerance”. I
have lived in India now for 30 years so I feel I can
comfortably give my point of view.

For most part the people with a dress sense not sensitive to the local norms are the tourists. Most westerners who settle in India make the effort to wear appropriate clothing and respect the culture. Also on the beaches nowadays you will find many Indians in pretty much the same westernized dress style.

Where is mention of the caste system still prevalent in
India? A system I would hardly call tolerant and
integrating! In many villages the Dalit community are still
physically segregated from the others. In what other country is the word “untouchables” still used today to describe a section of people?!
(http://ibnlive.in.com/news/dalits-segregated-walled-off-
in-madurai-village/64511-3-1.html)

Akash says he lives in an area that “has absorbed a
disproportionate number of Western immigrants over the last
few decades”. Where is that different from the communities
of Indian and other nationalities being absorbed in the USA
the UK and Europe? Which by the way are much larger in numbers than your 1000 odd foreigners settled in and around Pondicherry! Where
in India do you have a “Little Italy” or a “Chinatown”.
Many parts of big cities in the west have become
totally transformed into areas where shops, restaurants
even the language on the streets are all from one
particular culture.

Politics? Mrs. Sonia Gandhi is the only western person in Indian
politics and she has got no end of grief for it. The USA on
the other hand has many Indians in all levels of politics
and the judiciary.
(http://www.deshvidesh.com/Current_Issue/Desh-
Videsh_November_2009/indiansinusplitical.html)
I have been here for 30 years and can not vote, or be part of the “system”. I have numerous Indian friends settled in the west who get naturalized and integrated in to the system after just a few years (right to vote, work, social security etc…).

In conclusion I think it is far too soon to say that India has a tradition of tolerance .What remains to be seen is how tolerant it will remain when the immigrant populations start reaching the numbers they have in the west.