The Personality of India: Pre- and Proto-historic Foundation of India and Pakistan c10.51

c10.51

tion of colonists, but a slow spread of a people who freely adapted their Social and Cultural life as a result of contact with the new people whom they met. Thus various movements of peoples and cultures at different periods in our history have given rise to a synthetic or composite culture. Its origin, says Jawaharlal Nehru, "may be traced back, on the one hand to the Pre-Aryan period, the civilization of Mohenjo-daro etc., and the great Dravidian civilization. On the other hand, it received a powerful impress from the Aryans who came from Central Asia. Subsequently, it was influenced by repeated incursions from the North-west and later, by the people who came across the seas from the West. Thus this national culture gradually grew and took shape. It had a remarkable capacity for synthesis and of absorbing new elements."¹ It is the horizontal unity built by this cultural synthesis, that has given rise to the fundamental unity of this Sub-continent, as it is based on a common cultural heritage. Yet this very story of a fundamental unity is not complete nor true, if we ignore the counteracting centrifugal forces—representing the "Provincial State" within a "National State" or—to put it in another way—the forces of regionalism in contrast to a united state.