Communication and Media.
Introduction.
Culture refers to the ideas, social behaviors, and customs of a particular group of people. It is a manifestation of a society’s art and collective human intellectual achievements that characterize a group (Hodge et al., pp.1-6). Typically, a society’s culture may be presented with its distinct languages, food, religion, music and dance, architecture, and customs. This short paper explores the Indian culture in an attempt to describe the Indians’ beliefs, values, behavior patterns, norms, symbols, geography, clothing, and architecture. However, it also compares these aspects to the Australian cultural perspectives.
Indian Culture.
The Indian culture is labeled with a collection or an amalgamation of a myriad of cultures that span across the Indian subcontinent. Regarding the country’s religious culture, the Indian people worship based on the concept of dharma and karma, which encircles Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism (Marriott, pp. 1-39). Unlike my Australian culture that majorly constitutes Christianism, The Indians religious philosophy of nonviolence stems out as a critical aspect of the Indian faith. Nevertheless, the Indian people also hold a long history of Atheism and agnosticism.
Languages in India sum to about 29, with only 41% of the Indians speak Hindi. Among the major languages that describe Indians are Telugu, Bengali, Punjabi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Urdu, Marathi, Hindustani, and Gujarati. However, these languages are mostly spoken by individuals from a particular region; for example, people from Punjab do mostly speak Punjabi. Unlike the Australian culture that surrounds itself with 80% of English speaking natives, Indians reveal a multi-cultural aspect that describes its languages. However, unlike Indians, the Australian English language is characterized by an accent that varies according to gender and identity.
In terms of family structure and marriage, Indians possess a prevailing tradition of a joint family system. This system embraces the extended family to live together. Australian culture is much more individualistic in terms of the family set up. However, similar to the Indians, the father, in a nuclear family, is the head of the family. But for most of the Indian family structure that embraces a joint family system, the oldest male member of the joint family stands as the head of the family. The head of the joint family makes most of the important family decisions and rules which call other members to abide by. Indians marriages are primarily planned by parents; this has been a long norm for the Indians.
As opposed to Australian’s mostly individualistic system of planning a marriage, Indian marriage is characterized by the bride’s family as the providers of dowry to the bridegroom’s family. According to the Indian people, dowry is considered a woman’s share of the family wealth. Originally, daughters had no claim on their natal families’ estate, unlike in Australian culture where for many years, children’s claim on the family property has not outwardly been regarded as a male issue. Additionally, as a distinctive marriage system, married Indian women are closely associated with portable valuables such as household goods, and jewelry that they have control as brides all through their lives.
Indians maintain a very diverse cuisine as the country itself. However, as a cut-across standard, Indians prefer foods underuse of numerous ingredients (Civitello, 2011). The Indian cuisine culture deploys a broad range of food preparation styles, culinary presentations, and cooking techniques. From vegetable salads, meat all through spices and even bread, the Indian cuisine is invariably complex, unlike the Australian cuisine that adapts itself around four unique blends of culinary contributions, the pacific islanders, the European cuisine, the Asian cuisine and the Indigenous Australian’s cuisine that was developed from a hunter-gatherer diet well known as bush-tucker (Fiske et al., 2016).
Traditional clothing in India has a significantly varying style according to a region’s influence, particularly by geography, climate, and urbanization (Malik, Ashish, and Vijay Pereira, 2016). Indians maintain popular styles of dress for women and men. Women would most love styles that comprise of draped garments such as mekhela sador and sari. Indian men are majorly associated with lungi or dhoti, or panche. Additionally, Indians are distinguished with salwar-kameez, churidar, or dupatta, which is a long scarf thrown over women’s shoulders to complete their outfit. The Salwar represents a loose-fitting, whereas the churidar is the tight cut won by female Indians. Put regions within India would present variable dressing styles, such as from Punjab, Sikhs are the common headgear won by the Punjabi people. However, too, Indian women, unlike the Australian counterparts, have a strong sense of charm and fashion integrated with ornaments and makeup. Colored ornaments and jewelry such as earrings, bangles, necklaces, among others, are common and greatly valued.
It should, however, be mentioned that unlike the Australian culture, Indians maintain their ceremonies, special occasions, and festivals flourished with cheerful colors with a variety of ornaments of gold, diamond, silver, gems, and regional stones. Women are the greatest representation of color and jewelry for the Indians as women are required to incorporate such a combination of dressing during festivities, functions, and special occasions. Indian women, however, possess a uniquely essential makeup called bindi, which is worn on their forehead, which most of the Indians consider it an auspicious mark. The red bindi is only traditionally worn by married Hindu women, but the colored one is worn by the single Hindu women. Nevertheless, both the colors are considered part of the fashion for the Indians.
Conclusion.
The Indian culture distinctively identifies them in aspects regarding the languages they hold, clothing, religion, cuisine, marriage, and family structure that they hold. Australian culture differs significantly from the Indians’ culture in the aspects mentioned. Thus from the article, a significant exploration of the Indian culture is provided in correspondence to variations from what is greatly held by Australians.
Works Cited:
Civitello, Linda. Cuisine and culture: A history of food and people. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
Fiske, John, Bob Hodge, and Graeme Turner. Myths of Oz: reading Australian popular culture. Routledge, 2016.
Hodge, Adam, et al. “Exploring the intersections of religious attachment, meaning, and culture.” Religion, Brain & Behavior (2018): 1-6.
Malik, Ashish, and Vijay Pereira, eds. Indian culture and work organizations in transition. Routledge, 2016.
Marriott, McKim. “Constructing an Indian ethnosociology.” Contributions to Indian Sociology 23.1 (1989): 1-39.