For majority of the people living outside their countries its their Nationality followed by religion.
(Now this could vary a lot for specific ppl .. esp like for americans whether is he a democratic or republican, what he thinks about Iran / N. Korea / Iraq ?? ;-)...
It mostly ends there. Anyone who wants to know more about my identity beyond being an Indian stops at my food preference, and concludes these are my religious restrictions.. (with a bit of apathy that I am indeed missing a lot of juicy stuff )
Now turn the scenario domestically and it becomes more complex .. and I think the complexity in India increases .. It becomes a taxonomy.. we have an obsession with dissection .. region (north south india, state, city, area .. the last level of granularity reached in here was till South Bangalore .. now its heading towards individual localities like katriguppe, Girinagar etc ), religion, caste,language, food, movie star idols (ask a rajini fan)...
this is the price we pay for having a history which dates back to 3000BC .. and 2000 years more we will be back like Jews with a single identity.. and hopefully its INDIAN...
The most remarkable achievement for India or of India , is to be a cohesive democracy, with so much diversity (and adversity too).. This is one front where we have excelled beyond any country in the world.. despite numerous races, religions, castes, languages etc we are functioning as a single country for 60 years..
Some Business guru recently said homogeneity increases productivity and diversity decreases it.. he was referring to corporations only.. looks like it applies to nations as well
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