Introduction
Culture plays a huge role in social groups as it allows people to have organized and goal-driven behaviors. From the anthropological perspective, culture is defined as a collective set of values, concepts, ideas, and rules shared among a specific social group to allow the aligned continuation of a desired functionality (Spradley and McCurdy 2). Some of the most important factors of culture are that it is learned, shared, and has symbols that represent it.
This means that a qualitative study is quite suitable for understanding culture. This is done by digging deeper into events, actions, and norms. Anthropologists mainly utilize qualitative research (Spradley and McCurdy 2). This paper examines Indian culture from an anthropological perspective by describing its language, symbols, economy, kinship system, and religion.
Language
Primarily, language is a tool that is used in communication. Since every culture has its language, there have to be systems that form different languages. These systems include phonology, grammar, and semantics (Spradley and McCurdy 38).
Before getting into the systems that create a language, it is essential to note the language spoken in the Indian culture. There are many different languages spoken in India. About 200 dialects, including Punjabi, Urdu, Oriya, Telugu, Bengali, and Kannada, are spoken (Pradhan and Hoda 1330). However, the national language spoken by at least 60% of Indians is Hindi (Pradhan and Hoda 1330).
Notably, Hindi is also the first language in the Indian culture, making it the mother tongue of most Indians. It originated from the primary language called Sanskrit, which belongs to an ancient language family called Indo-European (Pradhan and Hoda 1331). Having established that Hindi is the most spoken language in India, the language systems that form Hindi can be examined.
The most critical of these systems is phonology, which is the system that is responsible for sounds consisting of rules that direct how letters and words should be pronounced. In Hindi, words are pronounced the same way they are spelled (Pradhan and Hoda 1331). For example, “namaste” is a Hindi word that means hello and is pronounced the same way it is written, meaning Hindi is easy to pronounce.
The next language system, grammar, focuses on how words can be combined to give meaning to language. In other words, grammar allows a sentence to be structured. In Hindi, the grammar rules are that a sentence should start with the subject, object, and then the verb (Spradley and McCurdy 38). This differs from English, where the verb comes before the object.
Lastly, the system of semantics is the definition of words. It helps in relating words to their meanings. For example, just as the word man can mean human, a male, or an adult in English, the same applies to the Hindi word “aadami” (Pradhan and Hoda 1332). Indians also speak English as a second official language, though Hindi still remains their first official language.
Symbols
Symbols can be defined as things that represent another thing and are usually sensed by a person. In Indian culture, symbols are mainly used for communication, meditation, rituals, and worship, as they simplify tasks. For communication, Indians behave in particular manners to symbolize what they mean. For example, to convey etiquette, they cover their head when going to temples or highly esteemed places (Gautam and Sharma 76).
Regarding meditation, Indians place significant importance on meditation as they believe human beings develop their inner faculties through it. As such, they have meditation symbols such as OM or AUM, which represent the universe’s consciousness. For rituals, Indians have a culture of lighting a fire at the start of ceremonies. This fire symbolizes purity, as Indians believe the fire produces gases that burn all the impurities in the surrounding area, and they believe that it signifies prosperity (Gautam and Sharma 76).
Lastly, symbols are also used for worship as they represent the different gods of the culture. For example, the god Shiva is represented by the crescent moon and the third eye, the god the lotus flower represents Brahma, and the god Vishnu is represented by the color blue (Gautam and Sharma 77). Therefore, it is seen that symbols in Indian culture are mainly found in meditation, worship, rituals, and communication.
Economics
Every culture has its economic system that is essential in providing goods and services to the people. Thus, the culture of a social group determines its wants and needs. For example, human beings generally need clothes, but being a member of the Indian culture will require a specific style of clothes made using specific fabrics (Spradley and McCurdy 116). This means a culture consists of its cultural inventory produced, allocated, and exchanged in its economic system.
The economic system involves production, distribution, and market exchange (Spradley and McCurdy 116). There are two types of economic systems, which include capitalist and socialist. While a capitalist economy involves privately owned businesses that produce goods, a socialist economy involves government-owned businesses.
Indian culture is found to have adopted both the capitalist and socialist economic systems, making it a mixed economy (Carrier 11). The capitalist economy grew due to Indians having a culture of nurturing skills from a young age. Ancient India consisted of people innovating and inventing things to suit the needs and wants of people. For instance, many new technologies, fabrics, arts, genetics, and industrial production originate from India (Carrier 13). Different generations often learn these skills they can use to start private businesses.
For the socialist economy, the private sector in India takes responsibility for forming private enterprises (Carrier 13). The market exchange system in India is mainly driven by the need to develop and strengthen economic ties in the culture. Hence, Indians use money to buy and sell goods. The currency for the Indian money is known as Indian Rupee. From this analysis, it can be seen that India’s economic system is entirely defined and consistent.
Kinship System
Kinship is essential in tracing the roots and heritage of a person. Hence, kinship can be described as a system defining social relationships. There are two principles that kinship is based on, which include birth and marriage (Spradley and McCurdy 152). Birth explains the family in which a person is born, while marriage explains the family union in which a person has joined.
In the Indian culture, birth links a person to their ancestry or descent. Ancestry can either be patrilineal, which traces the lineage of one’s father, or matrilineal, which traces the lineage of one’s mother. In India, people are identified by their patrilineal descent (Spradley and McCurdy 152).
The principle of birth also defines a person’s clan, wherein members of the same clan often share a common ancestry and can be tribal, royal, or religious. They include Rajput, Chauhan, Parmar, and Solanki (Gautam and Sharma 78). All these clans represent different societies in India under their overall kinship.
Regarding marriages, two people often come together to form a family union. However, there are situations where a person can be united to more than one person in marriage. As such, the kinship principle of marriage consists of monogamy, polygamy, and polyandry as the primary forms of marriage.
The most common marriage form in India is monogamy, but polygamy is also accepted. About 1.9% of Indian women are in polygamous marriages (Gautam and Sharma 79). Polyandry is not practiced in India as it is considered wrong and prohibited. Further, marriage in India can happen between siblings (incest) as it is not legally punishable. However, some societies still view incest as taboo, meaning that marriage and birth form family kinship and ties.
Religion
Religion is the belief in a supernatural being, with different individuals and groups having varied viewpoints. People worship their supernatural beings in different ways. Supernatural beings can be gods, spirits, ghosts, and magical deities (Spradley and McCurdy 256).
India’s culture consists of several religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism. However, Hinduism is the most popular religion practiced by most Indians. The fundamental beliefs of Hinduism are that life is a continuous cycle in which humans are born, die, and come back to life in reincarnation. They also believe in karma, a doctrine explaining cause and effect. Karma means that every action is repaid in the same way.
Most importantly, Hinduism involves the worship of many gods representing different manifestations of the same unity. For instance, Brahma is the god of creation, Vishnu is the god of preservation, and Shiva is the god of destruction (Gautam and Sharma 79). Thus, Hinduism is the religion with the greatest adherents in India.
Conclusion
In conclusion, cultural practices and beliefs are essential to social group norms. Anthropology uses qualitative studies to analyze and categorize the concept of culture. Indian culture is quite extensive and diverse, with clear foundational principles. From an anthropological point of view, India is observed to have come from both knowledge and behavior. Knowledge is utilized to inform cultural behaviors as it forms the basis of character and development amongst Indians. As discussed, this is seen in their language, symbols, kinship, economics, and religion.
Works Cited
Carrier, James G. A Handbook of Economic Anthropology. 3rd ed. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2022.
Gautam, Nisha, and Krishna Kumar Sharma. “Indian Culture: A Modality for Wellbeing.” Journal of English Language and Literature, vol. 17, no. 1, 2020, pp. 75–79. Web.
Pradhan, Kalyani, and Noorul Hoda. “Relationship between Society, Language, Culture, and Education in the Indian Context.” International Journal of Research Publication and Reviews, vol. 3, no. 5, 2022, pp. 1330–1333. Web.
Spradley, James P., and David W. McCurdy. Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology. 14th ed. Pearson, 2012.