Friday Facts: Diversity in India

Posted on Friday, August 16th, 2019

This week saw India celebrate its Independence Day – August 15th – in celebration of the day in 1947 when the United Kingdom legislated India’s sovereignty. As one of AC’s larger source countries for international students, and by special request, I’m going to share some tidbits that highlight the state of Diversity in India.

  • Although the caste system was banned by the constitution, there are approximately 3,000 castes in India, with each one being a social unit in itself. Not dissimilar to Canada’s Human Rights Act, India has (since the 1950’s) legislative protections to protect members of casts that face social injustice.
  • According to the 2001 Indian Census there are a total of 122 major languages and 234 identifiable mother tongues. Of these, 29 languages have more than a million native speakers, 60 have more than 100,000 and 122 have more than 10,000 native speakers.
  • Women are playing a significant role in the expansion of the Indian software industry, constituting 45% of the workforce (Budhwar, Saini, Bhatnagar 2005). This is significantly higher than in Canada, where women in Information and Communications Technology has remained at 25% for the past decade (ICTC, 2017).
  • India has 29 States/regions and 7 Union Territories.
  • In 2014, the Supreme Court of India recognized the transgender as a third gender, and as a protected gender identity to ensure admission in educational institutions and given employment. However, until 2018 homosexuality was Illegal. On Sept. 6, 2018 the Supreme Court of India emphasized that homosexual persons have a fundamental right to live with dignity without any stigma attached to their sexual orientation and are entitled to equal protection under the law. Despite these advances in legal protections, full social inclusion is still not achieved.
  • Regarding religious diversity as reflected in the 2001 census, Hinduism is professed by majority population and comprises 80.5%, and the second major religion comprises 13.4% of Muslims (Islam), 2.3% as Christians, 1.9% as Sikh, 0.80% as Buddhists, 0.4% are Jain. Other than these six religions there are many tribal religions.
  • Women in India are entitled to maternity leave, and employers with 50 or more employees are also required to provide daycare facilities to women returning to work following maternity leave.

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