Certainly, the ancientness of the Hindu tradition cannot be disputed.

But the other religions too have had a long run in History of India, which has been a multi-religious country for a very long time indeed. Aside from the obvious and prominent presence of Muslims in India for well over a millennium (Muslim Arab traders started settling in what is now Kerala from the eighth century), India has had sizeable Christian communities from at least the fourth century (well before there were large Christian communities in, say, Britain), Jews from the time of the fall of Jerusalem, Parsees from the eighth century, and Sikhs from the time when that religion was born. It is also worth recognizing that even before the arrival of Islam, India was not, as is sometimes claimed, a Hindu country, since Buddhism was the dominant religion in India for nearly a millennium. Indeed, Chinese scholars interested in India regularly described India as the Buddhist kingdom (the other name used was the Western kingdom). Furthermore, Buddhism is arguably as much an inheritor of the earlier Indian traditions of the Vedas and the Upanishads as Hinduism is, since both the religions drew on these classics. In fact, Chinese scholars were introduced to the Upanishads mainly through their studies of Buddhism. Jainism too has also had a similarly long history and in fact a continuing presence today. Also, one must take note of the very long tradition of atheism and agnosticism in India, originating at least as early as the sixth century b.c. Sanskrit (including Pali) has a larger atheistic and agnostic literature than exists in any other classical language, and references to influential atheistic thinkers can be found throughout Indian history (from the Ramayana and the Buddhist texts to Madhavacaryas Sarvadarsanasamgraha in the thirteenth century and Abul Fazls account of Akbars multi-religious conferences in Agra in the late sixteenth century). No less important, it would be futile to try to have an understanding of the nature and range of Indian art, literature, music, architecture, or food, without seeing the contributions of constructive efforts that have defied the alleged barriers of religious communities. Indias culture does indeed bear the mark of history, but the mark is that of its interactive and multi-religious history. This is, in fact, an important part of the broader claim made by Rabindranath Tagore that the idea of India itself militates against the intense consciousness of the separateness of ones own people from others. While the questions that the proto-Hindutva approaches present have some initial plausibility, they do not, on closer scrutiny, provide enough basis for dismissing the inclusive understanding of Indian identity that emerged during the independence movement. This broad national understanding does, of course, allow considerable variations in specific features within a general picture of inclusiveness. For example, there were significant differences between the ethical and political priorities that were advocated for India by Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagoreto consider two leading and somewhat dissimilar voices that helped to teach us what we are. But in interpreting India and the Indian identity, they shared a general refusal to privilege any community over any other, and neither wavered from an inclusive view of Indian ness. Both refused to see India in terms of religious major itarianism. That shared vision,

based on political reasoning as well as history, remains important in contemporary discussions. All History is related to civil services exam. In the foundational fields of democracy and secularism, we are, in fact, no wiser today than we were when the Indian republic was established. What we need is resoluteness of practice, not the abandonment of principles