India is a country of heterogeneous people. Here we find multifarious languages, religions, Castes and creeds. However, in the midst of all such diversities of character, there is an underlying unity among them.
That is the unity of common culture and tradition, common historical growth, common fight for freedom against the British rule, common allegiance to India and common loyalty to the India national flag. This national unity of India had its first upsurge in 1857 A.D. in the first Indian war of Independence known as Sepoy Mutiny. In the independent India, this unity of the Indians proved its might during the wars with Pakistan and China. All the people of Indian soil, sinking down all their differences, stood as one integrated whole against the Chinese and the Pakistani aggressors.
Lurking-dangers to our national unity:
The lurking dangers to national unity of India are the narrow communal feelings. In India, there are different categories of community, such as racial, lingual and religious. The racial communities are generally Aryans, Dravidans, Anglo-Indians and aborigines. The lingual communities are generally those who speak Hindi, Bengali, Panjabi, Gujarati, maharastri, Oriya, Assamia. The religious communities are generally. Hidus, Muslism, Sikhs, Christians and parsees. People of these communities fall easy preys to narrow communal sentiments. There are very narrow sectarian feelings as well in the communities themselves. In Hindu community there are sectarian feelings between swordsmen and milkmen and so on. In the Muslim community there are quarrels between Siha Musalmans and Sunni Musalmans, between round cap sect and long cap sect.
In India, there are some anti-social elements and political self-seekers who are fanning narrow communal feeling in order to meet their own selfish interests. They create narrow communal feelings in people. They appeal to their communal emotions leading to communal riots, communal discord and communal disharmony. Such activities will no doubt, weaken our national unity. Every Indian should be aware of this danger to the national unity of India.
What should be done in order to maintain national unity of India and to put it on a sound footing is that we must put stress on communal accord and communal harmony. We know, Mahatma Gandhi worked hard all his life and at last, laid his life to strengthen the friendship between Hindus and Muslims. We need such heroes and martyrs in India, who can sacrifice their lives for our national unity. People themselves, should discard all kinds of narrowness from their minds. They should develop a broad Indian outlook. Each one should say 'I am Indian first'. One community should refrain from doing anything that may wound the feeling of another. All the Indians should try to develop common brotherhood among themselves irrespective of caste, creed, language and religion.
We know that Russia was a multiracial and multi-lingual State of multifarious religious faiths. And it was also a country of strong national unity. You may say that Russia is dictatorial country where unity was maintained at the point of bayonet. But we can see the democratic countries like Indonesia and Switzerland, where people of various races, Carious religions and various languages have maintained very ideal unity of nations and various languages have maintained very ideal unity of nation. Hence, why can't we do it in India? We can, if we will. So, let us think from this moment that we are the children of Mother India and we are all brothers and sisters.