ABSTRACT
Cosmopolitanism is a view that human beings belong to one community irrespective of social and political boundaries (Kleingeld and Brown 2006). Raja Rammohan Roy, a scholar and social reformer from Bengal, wrote a letter in 1831 imploring Talleyrand, the famous French diplomat who served under Napoleon Bonaparte, to abolish the passport system ‘to promote the reciprocal enjoyment and advantage of the whole human race’. Rammohan Roy continued that religion, common sense and science all lead to the conclusion that mankind was one great family with numerous nations and tribes as its branches (Aravamudan 2007: 11). Cosmopolitanism is broadly classified into ethical, political and economic strands (Kleingeld and Brown 2006). In this chapter, I argue that the idea of unity in diversity has permeated Indian cultural understanding, influenced pre-and post-independence debates that led to the formation of the Indian republic and continues to influence contemporary social, political, and cultural discourse. The Rig Veda explains the idea of unity in diversity as follows: reality is one but the wise describe it in many forms (Ekam sat viprah bahudah vadanti). I argue that the progression of cosmopolitan ideas has a dual motion, one dialectical and the other antistrophical (Bloom 1991: 288-99).1 To the dialectical moment, I attribute the evolution of various institutions and processes, and to the antistrophical the specific relationship between the cosmopolitan and the vernacular. The antistrophical relationship played a unique role in the formation of linguistic states after independence and also defines the contemporary era of coalition politics in India.
