NCERT Solutions Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity or Many in the One

F R E E S T U D Y M AT E R I A L F O R E V E R Y S T U D E N T

CLASS 6 · SOCIAL SCIENCE

NCERT Solutions

Chapter 8: Unity in Diversity, or
‘Many in the One’

NCERT Textbook — Exploring Society: India And Beyond

BOOK PAGES SECTIONS QUESTIONS MEDIUM

125 – 136 11 24 English

Solutions, notes, sample papers & more at 38 pages

Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

CLASS 6 · SOCIAL SCIENCE · EXPLORING SOCIETY: INDIA AND BEYOND

NCERT Solutions — Chapter 8: Unity in Diversity, or
‘Many in the One’
Complete NCERT Solutions for Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ from
the NCERT textbook Exploring Society: India and Beyond. Every question of the chapter is answered — The Big
Questions, all six LET'S EXPLORE boxes, the in-text questions on pages 126 and 133, Before we move on …
and all five Questions, activities and projects — with the grain map on page 127, the Vaiśhali relief on page
128, the textiles photograph on page 129, the six sari pictures on pages 130–131, the Makara Sankrānti map
on page 132 and the Mewar Rāmāyaṇa painting on page 134 all read carefully off the printed page.

TEXTBOOK BOOK PAGES

Exploring Society: India and Beyond (Class 6) 125 – 136

SECTIONS QUESTIONS

11 24

MEDIUM

English

The Big Questions — Page 125
Chapter opening

THE BIG QUESTIONS

Q1 What is meant by ‘unity in diversity’ in the Indian scenario?

ANSWER

It means that India's enormous variety — of languages, dresses, foods, festivals, customs and
landscapes — is not a collection of unrelated pieces. Underneath the differences there is
something shared, so the many are different forms of one thing. Sri Aurobindo's phrase for this,
which gives the chapter its title, is the ‘Many in the One’.
The chapter puts the question through the British historian Vincent Smith, who wondered over
a century ago:
“How, in the face of such bewildering diversity, can a history of India be written? … The answer to the
query is found in the fact that India offers unity in diversity.”
The chapter then proves the point four times over, in four completely different areas of life.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

AREA OF THE ‘MANY’ — WHAT DIFFERS THE ‘ONE’ — WHAT IS SHARED
LIFE

Food Thousands, if not lakhs, of dishes and The same staple grains — rice, barley, wheat, bajra,
preparations jowar, ragi, dals and grams — and the same spices,
turmeric, cumin, cardamom, ginger

Clothing Hundreds of varieties of sari, dozens of A single garment — one unstitched length of cloth,
ways of draping it, one region and one the sari
community differing from the next

Festivals About a dozen different names on the map The same date (on or around 14 January) and the
of Fig. 8.5 same meaning — the beginning of the harvest
season

Literature Translations, adaptations and countless Two Sanskrit epics and one collection of stories, the
folk and tribal versions in every Indian Pañchatantra, behind them all
language

The chapter's last sentence states the idea in full: “Indian culture celebrates diversity as an
enrichment, but never loses sight of the underlying unity which nourishes that diversity.”

Why the phrase is worded so carefully: it does not say ‘unity instead of diversity’,
and it does not say ‘diversity instead of unity’. Unity here is not sameness. Rice, dal
and turmeric are the same all over India, but a Kashmiri, a Bengali and a Tamil
kitchen do wholly different things with them — and each is fully itself. That is why
the book says diversity “does not divide — it enriches”.

Q2 What aspects of India's diversity are the most striking?

ANSWER

The chapter's own list, given in Before we move on …, is: “India offers immense diversity in its
landscapes, people, languages, dresses, foods, festivals and customs.” Of these, the four it
examines closely are food, clothing, festivals and literature.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

ASPECT HOW STRIKING IT IS — THE CHAPTER'S OWN FIGURES AND EXAMPLES

People Over 1.4 billion inhabitants — about 18 percent of the world's population. The ‘People of
India’ project surveyed 4,635 communities across all States

Languages and The same project counted 325 languages using 25 scripts. On one train journey you hear
scripts familiar and unfamiliar languages and see different scripts on the way

Food Dishes “in their thousands, if not lakhs”, with regional grains and pulses shown all over the map
in Fig. 8.1

Dress “Every region and community in India has developed its own styles of clothing.” The sari alone
“comes in hundreds of varieties”

Festivals “An immense variety” — one January festival carries about a dozen names across the country

Literature Indian literatures are “among the most abundant in the world”; about a hundred folk
Mahābhāratas in Tamil Nadu alone

Movement of Many Indians may be called migrants — not living near their birthplace or with their original
people community — so diversity is found even inside one town or one classroom

Of these, language is usually the first thing a traveller notices, because it changes both in
sound and in writing.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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Beyond the book: India's languages are not 325 unrelated things. Scholars group

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LANGUAGE SOME LANGUAGES IN IT MAINLY SPOKEN IN

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Indo-European) Konkani, Nepali, Dogri, Sindhi — with Gujarat, Punjab, Odisha, West Bengal,

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Q3 How do we make out the unity underlying the diversity?

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

1. Look for the common ingredients. Thousands of dishes → the same rice, wheat, bajra,

dal, turmeric, cumin

2. Look for the common object. Hundreds of saris, dozens of drapes → one unstitched
length of cloth

3. Look for the common date and the common reason. A dozen names in January → one

harvest, one turn of the sun

4. Look for the common story. Countless retellings → the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata

Applied to the chapter's own evidence, the four tests read like this.

WHAT YOU NOTICE FIRST WHAT YOU FIND WHEN YOU LOOK UNDER IT

A Kashmiri, a Gujarati and a Tamil meal look All three are built from the same staple grains and spices —
nothing alike “the same ingredients (unity) … used in a number of
combinations (diversity)”

A Banarasi, a Kanjivaram and a Patan Patola look “But in the end, it is a single dress — the sari”
nothing alike, and are draped differently

Lohri, Bihu, Pongal and Uttarayan have different They fall on the same date and mark the same event — the
names, foods and customs beginning of the harvest season

Bhil, Gond, Munda and Nilgiri tribal stories of They are all versions of the same epic, which over centuries
the Pāṇḍavas differ from the Sanskrit text and “created a dense web of cultural interactions across India and
from each other many parts of Asia”

Why the epics are the strongest evidence: nobody ordered these retellings. Each
community made its own, in its own language, adding its own hills and rivers to the
story — and the result is that a child in Kerala and a child in Assam can both
recognise Hanuman. That is unity produced by sharing, not by anyone imposing it.

Try this: pick any everyday object — a lamp, a doorway rangoli, a wedding song, a
way of greeting — and make two columns, ‘what changes from place to place’ and
‘what stays the same everywhere’. The second column is the unity.

In-text Questions — Page 126

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

A Rich Diversity

Q1 What is meant by ‘unity in diversity’?

ANSWER

‘Unity in diversity’ means that things which look completely different are, underneath,
forms of one and the same thing. Applied to India, it means the country's many languages,
dresses, foods, festivals and customs are not separate worlds that happen to lie side by side —
they grow from shared ground.
The phrase reaches the chapter through Vincent Smith, who was troubled by the opposite
thought. He asked how a single history could be written for so “bewildering” a country, and
answered his own question: “the answer to the query is found in the fact that India offers unity
in diversity.”

Diversity = what you see — 325 languages, 25 scripts, 4,635 communities, lakhs of dishes
Unity = what you find when you look for what they share

Unity in diversity = both are true at once, and the second explains the first

Tip: the word to be careful about is ‘in’. Not unity versus diversity, and not unity after
diversity — unity in it, present inside the variety all along.

Q2 How shall we perceive and express this unity, or the ‘Many in the One’?

ANSWER

The chapter answers this by choosing a method: “To answer this question, we will explore a few
dimensions of Indian life.” Rather than argue about the idea, it goes and looks — at ordinary
things.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

DIMENSION WHERE IN THE WHAT IT SHOWS
EXPLORED CHAPTER

Food for All Pages 127–128 The same staple grains and spices everywhere, combined in
endlessly different ways

Textiles and Clothing Pages 128–131 One unstitched cloth, the sari, in hundreds of varieties and
dozens of drapes

Festivals Galore Pages 131–133 One mid-January harvest festival under about a dozen
names

An Epic Spread Pages 133–135 Two Sanskrit epics retold in every language and in
countless folk and tribal versions

The chapter then says the journey could have gone further: “in India's classical arts, including
classical architecture, both diversity and unity are easily noticeable” — a field left for the Art
Curricular Area.

Why this is the right method: unity in diversity is not a slogan to be repeated but a
pattern to be noticed. You perceive it by comparing carefully — two thalis, two saris,
two festivals — and you express it by being able to say, in each case, exactly what
changes and exactly what does not.

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 126
A Rich Diversity — a class activity

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 As a class activity, make lists of (1) the birthplaces of at least 5 classmates and the
birthplaces of their parents; (2) the students' mother tongues and other languages
known to them. Discuss the results in terms of diversity.

ANSWER

How to do it. Make one table on the blackboard with five columns and fill it in by asking each
classmate in turn. Ask politely, write down exactly what the person says, and never comment on
anyone's answer — a language or a birthplace is not better or worse than another.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

ASK FOR WHY IT BELONGS IN THE TABLE

Student's birthplace (town/village Shows how far the class itself has travelled
and State)

Mother's birthplace and father's Shows movement across one generation — usually much wider than
birthplace the students' own

Mother tongue The language spoken at home

Other languages known Most Indian children know two or three; some know four

Sample answer (your class's real table will look different — copy the shape, not the names):

STUDENT BORN AT MOTHER FATHER MOTHER OTHER
BORN AT BORN AT TONGUE LANGUAGES
KNOWN

Ananya Nagpur, Amravati, Nagpur, Marathi Hindi, English
Maharashtra Maharashtra Maharashtra

Ibrahim Nagpur, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Uttar Urdu Hindi, Marathi,
Maharashtra Telangana Pradesh English

Tenzin Bylakuppe, Bylakuppe, Leh, Ladakh Tibetan Hindi, Kannada,
Karnataka Karnataka English

Sujata Rourkela, Sambalpur, Rourkela, Odia Sadri, Hindi, English
Odisha Odisha Odisha

Karthik Nagpur, Madurai, Tamil Chennai, Tamil Tamil Hindi, Marathi,
Maharashtra Nadu Nadu English

Discussing the results — the three things to point out.

The parents' column is wider than the students' column. Five children born in one city
may have parents born in five different States. This is exactly what the ‘People of India’
project found: many Indians “may be called migrants, in the sense of people not living near
their birthplace or with their original community” (page 126).
Almost every student is multilingual. Count the total number of different languages in the
last two columns; in most Indian classrooms of 40 students it comes to eight or ten. The
country's 325 languages are not somewhere far away — a sample of them is sitting in the
room.
And yet the class works as one class. Everyone follows the same lesson, plays the same
games and shares the same tiffin. That is the ‘One’ in which the ‘Many’ live — the point of the
whole chapter.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

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Take it further: add a sixth column, ‘a word for water in my mother tongue’ — pani,

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jal, thanni, neeru, vellam, jol, paani, chuu. Some of these words are visibly cousins and
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LET'S EXPLORE — Page 128
Food for All
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As a class activity, make a list of ingredients (grains, spices, etc.) that are used in
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How to do it. Open the kitchen shelf at home with an elder's permission and write down what
you find, sorted into groups. Bring the list .to
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the items that appear on almost every
a home, arranged the way the chapter arranges it:
Sample answer — a list from one

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Cereals Rice, wheat flour (atta), semolina Yes — the chapter names rice, barley and wheat

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ragi (finger millet)
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Pulses Arhar/tur dal, moong Yes — “various kinds of dals and grams”
chana dal, urad

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coriander seed, mustard seed, black “throughout the country”

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pepper, cloves, cinnamon, chilli

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Oils Groundnut oil, mustard oil, coconut oil, Which one is the everyday oil changes by region —
sesame (til) oil mustard in the east and north, coconut in Kerala,
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vegetables
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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

What the comparison shows. The grains, pulses and spices columns will be nearly identical
across the whole class, even when classmates come from different States. The oils and the
ready-made pastes and powders will differ the most — panch phoron in a Bengali kitchen,
sambar podi in a Tamil one, garam masala in a Punjabi one, bhut jolokia in an Assamese one.
Same base, different finish: that is the chapter's point in one shelf.

Did you know? Millets — bajra, jowar and ragi — grow with very little water and
stand up to heat, which is why they have fed dry regions of India for thousands of
years. The year 2023 was observed as the International Year of Millets, on a
proposal made by India.

Q2 Take any one vegetable and think of the number of different dishes you can
prepare with it.

ANSWER

Take the potato (aloo, batata, urulaikizhangu, alugadde). One vegetable, one price, available in
every market — and it becomes a different dish in every direction you travel.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

DISH REGION IT IS BEST WHAT IS DONE TO THE SAME
KNOWN FROM POTATO

Aloo paratha Punjab, Haryana Boiled, mashed with spices, stuffed into
wheat dough and roasted

Dum aloo Kashmir Small whole potatoes fried, then simmered
slowly in a sealed pot

Aloo posto West Bengal Cubed and cooked with a ground poppy-seed
paste

Batata bhaji Maharashtra Boiled and tossed with mustard seed, curry
leaves and turmeric

Aloo chokha Bihar, eastern Uttar Pradesh Roasted or boiled and mashed raw with
mustard oil, onion and green chilli

Urulaikizhangu roast Tamil Nadu Diced and dry-roasted with chilli powder till
crisp at the edges

Masala dosa filling Karnataka Mashed with onion and turmeric, folded
inside a rice-and-dal crêpe

Samosa filling Eaten across India Coarsely mashed with peas and spices, sealed
in pastry and fried

Aloo gobi, aloo matar, aloo North India Paired with a second vegetable, changing the
baingan, aloo methi dish each time

Count: that is twelve dishes without leaving the table, and any Indian kitchen could add ten
more. Do the same with brinjal (baingan bharta, bharli vangi, ennai kathirikai, begun bhaja,
baingan ka salan) and the result is the same.

Why one vegetable can do this: the potato is the unity; the method and the
masala are the diversity. Change the cooking medium (mustard oil, coconut oil,
ghee), the spice mix and the technique (roast, boil, fry, steam, slow-cook), and the
same tuber turns into a Kashmiri, a Bengali or a Tamil dish. The chapter says exactly
this: “the same ingredients (unity) can be used in a number of combinations
(diversity) to prepare an endless variety of dishes!”

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 129

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Textiles and Clothing — the sari

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 Explain how the example of the sari reflects both unity and diversity (in 100-150
words).

ANSWER

Before writing, set out what goes in each half — that is what earns the marks.

UNITY — ONE THING DIVERSITY — MANY FORMS OF IT

A single unstitched length of cloth Made of cotton, silk or, nowadays, synthetic fabric

Worn in most parts of India Banarasi, Kanjivaram, Paithani, Patan Patola, Muga, Mysore — and
many more cotton kinds; “hundreds of varieties”

One name — the sari Different methods of weaving and designing; some designs woven in,
others printed after weaving; endless variation in colours from many
pigments

A history running back at least to the Many ways of draping it, varying by region and community — and new
Vaiśhali relief, a few centuries BCE ways still being invented

Sample answer (about 135 words):

The sari is a single plain length of cloth, worn with no stitching at all, in most parts of
India — that is its unity. Everything else about it varies. It may be woven from cotton,
from silk or, these days, from synthetic yarn. Banarasi, Kanjivaram, Paithani, Patan
Patola, Muga and Mysore are only some of the famous silk kinds, and the cotton
kinds are many more, so that this one garment comes in hundreds of varieties. The
varieties are produced by different methods of weaving and designing: some
patterns are woven into the cloth itself, others are printed on it afterwards, and the
colours come from many kinds of pigments. The ways of draping it differ from
region to region and community to community, and new ones are still being
invented. Yet in the end it remains one dress — the sari.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why this example is so convincing: the sari is not made uniform by any rule,
factory or authority. Weavers in Varanasi and in Kanchipuram have never
coordinated their designs, and no one decides how a sari must be draped. The unity
survives anyway, because it lies in the simplest possible idea — a length of cloth,
worn as it is. Diversity has almost unlimited room precisely because the shared core
is so small.

LET'S EXPLORE — Pages 130–131

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Textiles and Clothing — the many uses of the sari (Fig. 8.4)
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LET'S EXPLORE

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Fig. 8.4, pages 130–131 — the six photographs are described here; see the textbook for

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1. Under a tree. A long red sari is knotted to a low branch and hangs down in
a deep loop; a small baby lies asleep inside the loop, just above the dry

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leaves. Behind, two women walk away with baskets on their heads.
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2. In a river. A woman stands waist-deep in the water at dusk, holding one
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end of a bright orange sari and dragging the stretched cloth through the
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a balanced on her head; a red checked length of cloth is rolled into a thick

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ring and placed between her head and the pot. A basket hangs at her
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back.

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4. On a courtyard floor (seen from above). Two women hold a red sari

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stretched taut between their hands like a shallow sheet; one of them tips
grain out of a metal measure on to the cloth. A full sack of grain stands
beside them.
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5. In the rain. A woman in a pink printed sari lifts the loose orange end of
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her sari over her head with both hands and holds it stretched above her

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as the rain falls.
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6. On the grass. A woman lies fast asleep on a yellow-and-green sari spread

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flat on the grass, her head resting on her hand; a cow grazes among the

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trees behind her.
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ANSWER
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The six photographs in Fig. 8.4 (pages 130–131, all from south India) each show the sari doing a

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

# WHAT THE PICTURE SHOWS THE SARI IS BEING USED AS A…

1 A red sari knotted to a low branch in an orchard, cradle or hammock — the child sleeps in the
hanging in a deep loop, with a baby asleep inside it shade while the mother works nearby

2 A woman standing waist-deep in a pond, dragging a fishing net — the fine weave traps small fish
stretched orange sari through the water and prawns

3 A woman crossing a field with a heavy brass pot on her head-pad — the cloth is twisted into a ring
head, resting on a thick coil of cloth that steadies the pot and cushions the weight

4 Two people seen from above pouring grain from a container and sieve — grain is caught, carried
measure into a red sari held stretched open and cleaned in the held-out cloth

5 A woman in the rain pulling the orange end of her sari umbrella — shelter from rain, and on other
up over her head with both hands days from the sun

6 A woman lying on the grass in a field, resting her head mat or bedsheet — a clean place to lie down
on a spread checked cloth, cattle grazing behind her and rest in the open

Why one garment can do all this: because the sari is unstitched. A stitched dress
has one shape and one purpose. Six metres of loose cloth can be knotted, stretched,
coiled, held open or spread flat — so it becomes whatever the moment needs. The
chapter's larger point is the same: the fewer the fixed rules, the more forms a thing
can take.

Q2 Are you aware of, or can you imagine, more uses for the sari?

ANSWER

Yes — an old sari almost never gets thrown away in an Indian home. Some more uses, several of
which you will have seen yourself:

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

USE HOW IT IS DONE

A cloth swing (jhula, thottil, uyyala) Tied between two ceiling hooks or two trees for a baby, indoors as well as out

A curtain or a room divider Strung across a doorway or a window, giving privacy and cutting the glare

Straining and setting curd, or A clean cotton sari is one of the oldest household filters
filtering water

A carrying bundle The four corners tied over vegetables, grain or firewood make an instant bag

Shade over a courtyard, or a Stretched between poles at a village function or a wedding
temporary tent wall

A quilt (kantha, godhadi) Several worn saris layered and run through with running stitch — a famous
craft of Bengal and Maharashtra

Rope, sling or bandage in an Torn into strips; also used to lower a bucket into a well
emergency

Dusters, floor cloths, cot bedding, The last stage in the life of the cloth, after which the threads may still go into
doll's clothes a rag rug

Think about it: almost every use listed here is a form of reuse. A garment that is
never cut to a fixed shape can be handed on, re-draped, layered or torn up without
being spoiled — which makes the sari not only versatile but genuinely thrifty and
eco-friendly. Ask an elder at home what the oldest sari in the house is being used for
now; the answer is usually a surprise.

Q3 Following the example of the sari, make a list of different styles you have seen for
the dhoti — both as regards the fabric and the uses the dhoti can be put to. What
conclusion can you draw?

ANSWER

The dhoti is the same idea as the sari: a plain unstitched length of cloth, worn by men in most
parts of India, and known by a different name almost everywhere.
Part 1 — styles, names and fabrics.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

NAME AND REGION FABRIC USUALLY USED HOW IT IS WORN

Dhoti — north India White or cream cotton; silk for Wrapped round the waist, pleated in front, one end
weddings and rituals drawn between the legs and tucked behind

Dhuti — West Bengal Fine cotton, often with a thin Broad pleats fanned in front, worn with a kurta or
coloured border panjabi

Dhotar — Maharashtra Cotton, nine-yard length The kachcha style, tucked at the back, which
allows free movement

Veshti — Tamil Nadu Cotton, with a gold or coloured Worn full-length, or folded up to knee height for
border (zari kara) work

Mundu — Kerala Fine white cotton, often with a Wrapped once round the waist; folded up in the
kasavu gold border same way for work

Panche / Kachche — Cotton, sometimes silk Worn loose or in the tucked kachche style
Karnataka

Pancha — Andhra Pradesh, Cotton, often with a border Wrapped and tucked; the uttariyam cloth goes over
Telangana the shoulder

Dhotiyu / Chorno — Cotton, sometimes tie-dyed Worn with a kediyu and a turban
Gujarat, Rajasthan

Laacha / Tehmat — Punjab Cotton, often checked Wrapped without the centre tuck, worn for bhangra
and for fieldwork

Dhoti of the wrestler and Strong cotton, worn short Tucked tight and high so that the legs are
the kabaddi player completely free

Part 2 — uses beyond a garment. Like the sari, the dhoti gets pressed into other work: the
loose end is used as a towel to wipe the face and hands, as a filter for water, as a bag to carry
grain or fodder when the corners are knotted, as a fan in the heat, as a sheet to sit or sleep on,
as a sling or bandage in an emergency, and as a rope when torn into strips. Folded up to the
knee it becomes work clothing; let down to the ankle, the same cloth is formal dress for a
temple or a wedding.
The conclusion you can draw.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

One unstitched cloth

+ different fabrics, borders, lengths and ways of tying

+ different names in different States
= the same ‘unity in diversity’ pattern as the sari, in a completely different garment

Conclusion: this is a pattern in Indian life, not a one-off.

Why the same pattern shows up twice: both garments start from the simplest
possible design — cloth, uncut. Because nothing is fixed by stitching, every region is
free to choose its own fabric, border, length and drape without ever leaving the
shared form. Diversity grows out of the unity rather than against it, which is exactly
what the chapter is arguing.

LET'S EXPLORE — Pages 132–133
Festivals Galore (Fig. 8.5)

LET'S EXPLORE

Q1 What is your favourite festival and how is it celebrated in your region? Do you know
whether it is celebrated in any other part of India, maybe under a different name?

ANSWER

What a good answer must contain — three parts: (1) name your festival and say honestly why
it is your favourite; (2) describe how your own region keeps it — the food, the clothes, the
decoration, the days it lasts; (3) name at least two other regions that keep the same festival,
with the names used there.
Sample answer:

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
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My favourite festival is Makara Sankrānti, because it is the one day in the year

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when the whole neighbourhood is on the terrace at the same time. In our part of
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Maharashtra

l a se and we make tilgul — laddus of sesame and jaggery — which we give to
g
sesame,
aeveryone we meet, saying “til-gul ghya, god god bola”, take this sweet and speak
sweetly. Women wear black saris that day and exchange small gifts at a haldi-kunku
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gathering. From morning to dusk the sky is full of kites.
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ag India on the same date, under other names. In
The same festival is kept all over
Tamil Nadu it is Pongal, when new rice is boiled in a pot until it spills over. In Punjab

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the night before is Lohri, with a bonfire, and the day itself is Maghi. In Assam it is

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a s em for its kites.
So my c
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favourite
a gl whole country.
festival turns out to be a festival I share with the

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a gIflyour own festival is a different one, the map on page 132 still gives you the method: find the
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date and the reason, and then look for the same date and reason elsewhere under another
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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

NAME ON THE MAP REGION WHAT IT MARKS / HOW IT IS KEPT
(FIG. 8.5)

Shishur Saenkraat Kashmir Valley The sun's turn northward in the depth of winter

Maghi / Lohri Punjab, Haryana, A bonfire on Lohri night; the winter crop and the coming
Himachal Pradesh harvest

Khichdi Parv Uttar Pradesh A dip in the river and a gift of khichdi — rice and dal
cooked together

Makar Sankraat Madhya Pradesh and Kites and sweets of sesame and jaggery
central India

Uttarayan Gujarat and Rajasthan Literally ‘the northward journey’ of the sun; a famous kite
festival

Makar Sankranti Maharashtra Tilgul laddus and the greeting “speak sweetly”

Magh Bihu Assam The end of the harvesting season; community feasts and
bonfires

Poush Songkranti West Bengal The last day of the month of Poush; pithe-puli made of
new rice, date palm jaggery and coconut

Makara Sankranti Odisha Makara chaula, an offering made from newly harvested
rice

Pedda Panduga Andhra Pradesh and ‘The big festival’, kept over several days, with muggu
Telangana floor designs and decorated bulls

Makara Sankramana Karnataka Ellu-bella, sesame and jaggery, shared with the words “eat
sweet, speak sweet”

Pongal Tamil Nadu Four days; new rice boiled in a pot until it boils over, and
thanks given to the sun and to cattle

Makara Vilakku Kerala The lamp lit at the close of the Sabarimala pilgrim season,
on the evening of Makara Sankrānti

Why one festival has so many names: the event behind it is not a name at all — it
is the sun's turn towards the north and the harvest that follows, and that
happens over the whole country on the same days. Each region gave the same event
its own name in its own language and its own food, dress and games. One reason,
many celebrations.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q2 During October–November, many major festivals take place in India. Make a list of
the few main ones and their various names in different parts of the country.

ANSWER

October and November hold the busiest weeks of the Indian year, because the monsoon has
ended and the main harvest is in. Here are the principal ones, with the names used in different
regions.

FESTIVAL NAMES AND FORMS IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF INDIA ROUGHLY
WHEN

Navarātri and Durga Puja in West Bengal, Odisha, Assam and Tripura; Dussehra and Late September
Vijayadashamī Rāmlīlā across north India; Dasara or Nāda Habba in Karnataka, famous at to mid-October
Mysuru; Garba and Dandiya Rās in Gujarat; Bommai Golu in Tamil
Nadu and Bommala Koluvu in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana;
Bathukamma in Telangana; Āyudha Pūjā and Sarasvatī Pūjā in the
south

Deepāvali / Diwali in most of north, west and central India; Deepāvali in the south, Mid-October to
Diwali where Tamil Nadu keeps it a day earlier as Naraka Chaturdashī; Kālī mid-November
Pūjā the same night in West Bengal; Bandi Chhoṛ Divas for Sikhs; Tihār
or Swanti in Sikkim, Darjeeling and Nepali-speaking areas; Jains observe it
as the day of Mahāvīra's nirvāṇa

The day after Govardhan Pūjā or Annakūṭ in north India; Bali Pratipadā or Padwa in The day after
Diwali Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa; the Gujarati new year, Bestu Varas Diwali

The brother– Bhai Dooj in north India; Bhau-beej in Maharashtra; Bhai Beej in Gujarat; Two days after
sister day Bhai Phonta in West Bengal; Bhagini Hastha Bhojanamu in the south Diwali

Chhath Chhath Pūjā, also called Sūrya Ṣhaṣhṭhī or Dala Chhath, in Bihar, Six days after
Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh — offerings made to the setting and Diwali
the rising sun, standing in the water

Harvest festivals Wangala, the hundred-drums harvest festival of the Garos of Meghalaya; October–
of the northeast Kut, the harvest festival of the Kuki-Chin-Mizo peoples of Manipur, kept November
on 1 November

Guru Nānak Gurpurab or Prakāsh Parv, the birth anniversary of Guru Nānak, kept by November, on the
Jayantī Sikhs across India, with the largest gatherings in Punjab full moon of
Kārtika

Karthigai The festival of lamps of Tamil Nadu, with the great beacon lit at Late November
Deepam Tiruvannamalai; kept also in Kerala as Thrikarthika or early
December

What the list shows. Two patterns, both of them the chapter's:

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

One festival, many names — the night that is Diwali in Delhi is Kālī Pūjā in Kolkata, Bandi
Chhoṛ Divas in Amritsar and Tihār in Gangtok.
Many festivals, one season — Durga Puja, Diwali, Chhath, Wangala and Kut are different
festivals of different communities, yet they all cluster into the same eight weeks, because
they all follow the end of the monsoon and the main harvest.

How to check your own list: for each festival write down (a) the date, (b) the reason,
(c) the names. If two festivals share (a) and (b) but not (c), you have found unity in
diversity. If they share only (b), you have found a season shared by many
communities — which is a second kind of unity.

In-text Questions — Page 133
An Epic Spread

Q1 Who has not heard of the Pañchatantra, for example?

ANSWER

Almost nobody in India — and, remarkably, a great many people outside India as well.
That is exactly why the chapter picks it as its first example of one literature becoming many.

ABOUT THE WHAT THE CHAPTER SAYS
PAÑCHATANTRA

What it is A collection of delightful stories with animals as the main characters, which
“teaches us important life skills”

How old The original Sanskrit text is at least 2,200 years old

Inside India Its stories “have been adapted in almost every Indian language”

Outside India They travelled to Southeast Asia, the Arab world and Europe, inspiring new
collections of stories on the way

How many versions About 200 adaptations in more than 50 languages

The chapter draws the conclusion itself: “This illustrates how ‘one’ collection of stories has
become ‘many’.”

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Why animal stories travel so far: a story about a king of a particular country
belongs to that country. A story about a crow, a mouse, a tortoise and a deer who
save one another belongs to anybody who has seen a crow. Nothing in it has to be
translated except the words — which is why these tales crossed languages, religions
and continents so easily.

Did you know? The best-known stories are the ones you have probably heard
already — the monkey and the crocodile, the blue jackal, the brahmin and the goat,
the tortoise who talked while being carried by two swans, the four friends who freed
the deer from the hunter's net. When the collection reached the Arab world it
became famous under the title Kalīla wa Dimna, named after the two jackals of its
first book, and from there it passed into Persian, Hebrew, Latin and most European
languages.

LET'S EXPLORE — Page 134

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

An Epic Spread — the painting in Fig. 8.6
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m as
LET'S EXPLORE

.co a g l
a s eamclass discussion, try to identify the episode depicted in the painting shown in
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In
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Q1
Fig. 8.6 above and important details associated with it.

. c om ag
s e m Mewar, 1652, India Office Library, London);
Fig. 8.6, page 134 — a painting (Sahibdin,

a g lasee the textbook for the painting itself.
described here,
A crowded Mewar miniature, painted in flat panels of red, yellow, green and

m
blue, with a gold-and-orange border. Reading it panel by panel:
co
se wound about
Bottom left, on a green field: a battlefield after the fighting. Two blue-
m.
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skinned princes in gold crowns lie stretched on the ground,

se m with pale coils; long arrows lie across them. Around

g l a monkeys and bears, some grey, some brown, lie fallen or sit slumped with
a their heads in their hands. A few crowned warriors stand among them

m figures ride through the air in gilded
looking down.
a s
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emin a chariot drawn by a white horse, watching the
Top left, in the blue sky:
agl
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canopied carriages and
field below.
Centre, in a yellow palace: rows of soldiers in helmets, some on

c o m
.
horseback, crowd the courtyards and stairways; one rides a dark brown
horse and another raises a bow. m

o m a se figure with many
Top right, on a red ground: a court scene. A large lseated
.c a garms holding weapons
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heads stacked in a crown-like tier and many

ag l receives courtiers and warriors who stand before him with folded hands

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and drawn bows.

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Middle right, on a pink and yellow ground: the same many-headed, many-
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armed figure again, now

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a in a garden: a woman in red sits under flowering trees with
Bottom right,
two women companions attending her, apart from all the fighting.

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s e mANSWER
agla First, read the caption. It tells you almost everything you need: Yuddha Kanda of Ramayana,
.c
Sahibdin, Mewar, 1652, India Office Library, London. So the folio belongs to the Yuddha Kāṇḍa —
s e m
m a
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the ‘Book of War’, the sixth book of the Rāmāyaṇa — was painted by the artist Sāhibdīn in

m .
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Mewar (Rajasthan) in 1652, and is now in London.

a g l
Then read the picture. A Mewar folio shows several moments of the story at once, in separate
coloured compartments, to be read like panels.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

WHERE TO WHAT IS DRAWN THERE WHAT IT TELLS YOU
LOOK

The large Warriors and a whole army of vānaras (monkeys) A battlefield after a defeat. The
green field on and bears lying on the ground, wound about with white coils are serpents — arrows
the left long white coils; two blue-skinned princes among that turned into snakes and tied
them; the surviving monkeys sit around them in grief down the whole army

The blue sky Figures riding in golden aerial chariots, and a The battle is being fought in the air
at the top warrior shooting arrows from a chariot drawn by as well as on the ground — a mark
white horses of the demon warriors' magical
powers

The red A crowned figure with ten heads and many arms Rāvaṇa, king of Laṅkā, in his
chamber, seated in a palace, receiving warriors and messengers court, hearing what has happened
upper right on the battlefield

The pink The ten-headed figure again, seated on a throne, with A second moment in the same
panel, lower a warrior standing before him with folded hands court — the painter shows time
right passing by repeating the figure

The yellow Two women seated among flowering trees inside a Sītā in the Aśhoka grove, guarded
garden, walled enclosure but attended by a companion
bottom right

Putting it together. The most likely identification, and the one a class usually reaches, is the
famous nāgapāśa episode of the Yuddha Kāṇḍa: Rāvaṇa's son Indrajit, fighting invisibly from
the sky, strikes Rāma, Lakṣhmaṇa and the vānara army with arrows that turn into serpents
and bind them fast; news of it is carried to Rāvaṇa in his court, while Sītā waits in the Aśhoka
grove. In the story the brothers are later freed and the war goes on.
The important details to bring into the discussion:

The characters you can pick out by convention — Rāma and Lakṣhmaṇa are painted blue;
Rāvaṇa has ten heads; Hanuman and the vānara army are the monkeys; Jāmbavān's people
are the bears.
The technique — one page, many scenes, divided by bands of colour, with the same
character repeated in different compartments. You do not read it left to right like a
photograph; you read it compartment by compartment, like a story.
The date and the place — 1652, Mewar. This is a Rajasthani painting of a Sanskrit epic
composed far earlier and far away, now kept in London. The single picture is itself an
example of the chapter's theme: one story, retold in one more language — the language of
painting.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Honest note for the class discussion: different groups may name the episode
slightly differently, since several moments of the Yuddha Kāṇḍa look alike — an army
fallen on the field, Rāvaṇa in court, Sītā in the grove. That is fine. What the activity is
really testing is whether you can describe what you actually see and give reasons,
rather than guess. Say what you see first, and name the episode second.

Before we move on … — Page 136
The chapter in three points

BEFORE WE MOVE ON …

Q1 India offers immense diversity in its landscapes, people, languages, dresses, foods,
festivals and customs.

ANSWER

The chapter backs every word of this sentence with something you can count or see.

THE WORD IN THE THE CHAPTER'S EVIDENCE
SENTENCE

Landscapes “If you travel through India by train, you will notice not only changing landscapes
…”

People Over 1.4 billion inhabitants, about 18 percent of the world's population; 4,635
communities surveyed across all States

Languages 325 languages using 25 scripts — you hear the languages and see the scripts on a
single journey

Dresses “Every region and community in India has developed its own styles of clothing”; the
sari alone in hundreds of varieties

Foods Dishes “in their thousands, if not lakhs”; the grains and pulses spread across the map
in Fig. 8.1

Festivals “An immense variety of festivals” — about a dozen names for one mid-January
festival

Customs “People from other parts of India with different customs and traditions”, met even
inside your own region

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

The chapter also notes that this diversity “is usually the first thing that strikes visitors to our
country” — and that with a population this size, it is “not surprising”.

Q2 Diversity is easy to perceive in many fields, but there is also an underlying unity.

ANSWER

The two halves of this sentence are unequal on purpose. Diversity is easy — it is visible from a
train window. Unity has to be looked for, because it lies beneath the surface.

Easy to perceive — different dresses, different food, different languages, different scripts

↓ look underneath ↓

Underlying unity — the same staple grains, the same garment, the same festival, the same

stories

FIELD THE DIVERSITY YOU SEE AT THE UNITY YOU FIND UNDERNEATH
ONCE

Food Thousands of dishes Rice, barley, wheat, bajra, jowar, ragi, dals, grams;
turmeric, cumin, cardamom, ginger

Clothing Hundreds of saris, dozens of drapes One unstitched length of cloth

Festivals A dozen names in January One date, one harvest

Literature Countless regional, folk and tribal The Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahābhārata and the Pañchatantra
versions

Arts Many classical styles of music, dance “Both diversity and unity are easily noticeable” here too
and architecture (page 135)

Why it is worth the trouble of looking: if you stop at the first half of the sentence,
India looks like a collection of strangers. If you go on to the second, the same facts
become evidence of a very long shared life. Nothing in the list of differences has to
be denied to see it — that is the whole strength of the idea.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Q3 India's unity celebrates diversity because diversity does not divide — it enriches.

ANSWER

This is the chapter's conclusion, and it turns a common assumption upside down. Difference is
often treated as a problem to be reduced. Here it is treated as wealth.

IF DIVERSITY DIVIDED… WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED, ACCORDING TO THE CHAPTER

Each region would keep its stories The Pañchatantra was adapted in almost every Indian language, and about
to itself 200 versions exist in more than 50 languages

The epics would have stopped at They were retold everywhere — the Bhils, Gonds and Mundas, and most
the edge of the region that tribes of the northeast and the Himalayan region, made their own versions
composed them and their own legends of the heroes visiting their land

A garment would belong to one The sari and the dhoti are worn across the country, each region adding its
community only own fabric, border and drape

Neighbouring regions would not The same January festival is kept from Kashmir to Kerala on the same date,
share a calendar for the same reason

The chapter's final sentence says it in full: “Indian culture celebrates diversity as an
enrichment, but never loses sight of the underlying unity which nourishes that diversity.”
Note the direction of the verb — the unity nourishes the diversity. The many are not a threat to
the one; they are what the one produces.

Tip for the exam: if asked to explain this line, use one clear example rather than
three vague ones. The sari is the easiest: because everybody agrees it is a plain
unstitched cloth, Varanasi and Kanchipuram are both free to weave it their own way
— and India ends up with hundreds of kinds instead of one.

Questions, activities and projects — Page 136
End-of-chapter exercise

Q1 Conduct a class discussion on the two quotations at the start of the chapter.

ANSWER

The two quotations on page 125 say the same thing in two very different voices — one a poet's
prayer, one a philosopher's argument. Read each slowly before discussing.

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THE QUOTATION WHAT IT SAYS, LINE BY LINE

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may never lose.cthe bliss of the touch of the one in the play
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kept from something. Whatahe fears losing is the ability
Rabindranath Tagore: “Oh, grant me my prayer, that I It is a prayer, not a statement — the poet is asking to be

s em
of theamany.”
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to feel the one while enjoying the many. ‘Play’ is the key
word: the variety of the world is not a muddle but a
delight. ‘Touch’ tells you this is something felt, not

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proved

a s em
aitslfulfilment
which has always been normal to [India] and g
Sri Aurobindo: “… The principle of unity in diversity He calls unity in diversity ‘normal’ to India — not an
achievement or a slogan but her ordinary condition.
the fundamental course of her being and its very nature, Swabhava means one's own nature, swadharma one's
the Many in the One, would place her on the sure
co m
own duty or way of being. His claim is that India is on

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foundation of her Swabhava and Swadharma.” firm ground only when she is being herself, that is,

m l as
.co g
many-in-one

m a
l a se
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Questions that make the discussion go somewhere:
a Tagore says the many are a ‘play’. Sri Aurobindo says the many-in-one is India's ‘nature’.

m a s
agl
Which of the two words fits your own experience of the country better, and why?

m .co
se
Tagore asks that he may ‘never lose’ this sense. What could make a person lose it? (Living

g l a
only among people exactly like oneself; treating one's own way as the only right way;
refusing to travel or to listen.) a
Sri Aurobindo says a country is strongest when it follows its own swabhava. Does that idea

co m
.
apply to a person too — is a student strongest when copying others, or when being fully
e m
m as
himself or herself while belonging to the class?

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em
Both were writing long before this textbook. Does anything in the chapter — the grain map,

a s
gl
the sari, the January festival, the tribal Rāmāyaṇas — prove either of them right?

a
Why the chapter opens with poetry and philosophy rather than facts: the facts
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come later, and there are plenty of them. What the two quotations supply is the idea
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that makes the facts add up — that variety is a form of richness rather than of

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disorder. Without that idea, 325 languages is just a large number.

co m
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Select a few stories from the Pañchatantra and discuss how
.c valid today. Do you know of any similar stories fromagyour region?
Q2

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ANSWER
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Part 1 — four stories and their message today.

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STORY WHAT HAPPENS WHY THE MESSAGE STILL HOLDS

The monkey and the A crocodile befriends a monkey to carry him Keep your wits when you are frightened; and
crocodile home and take his heart; the monkey saves be careful about who is being friendly to you
himself by claiming he has left his heart on and why — a lesson that fits online “friends”
the tree exactly

The four friends and Four very different animals free the trapped A team wins by combining different
the deer (crow, deer, each using the one thing it can do abilities, not by everyone being the same —
mouse, tortoise, the chapter's own theme, told as a story
deer)

The blue jackal A jackal falls into a dyer's vat, is taken for a Pretending to be what you are not cannot
magical beast, is crowned king — and is last; and a crowd can be fooled by
found out the moment he howls with the appearances for a while, but not forever
other jackals

The brahmin and the Three cheats, one after another, tell a man A false statement repeated by enough people
goat (or ‘the three that the goat on his shoulder is a dog, until starts to sound true. This is exactly what a
rogues’) he abandons it rumour or a forwarded message does today

Part 2 — similar stories from your own region. Do not copy this list; ask at home first. Every
part of India has its own collection, and the point of the question is to find yours.

COLLECTION OR REGION / LANGUAGE WHAT THE STORIES ARE LIKE
TELLER

Hitopadeśha Sanskrit, drawn largely from the Animal fables arranged as advice to young
Pañchatantra princes

Jātaka tales Buddhist tradition, retold in many Stories of the Buddha's earlier births, very
Indian languages often as an animal

Tenali Rāma stories Telugu, from the Vijayanagara court A quick-witted courtier who solves
problems by cleverness

Birbal stories North India, Hindi and Urdu The same pattern — intelligence beating
force or wealth

Vikram–Betāl (Vetāla Sanskrit and most north Indian Each tale ends in a riddle about what is
Pañchaviṃśati) languages right

Gopal Bhar stories Bengali A court jester's tales, comic and sharp

Paramārtha Guru stories Tamil Comic tales of a foolish guru and his
disciples

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Notice what this proves: the fable with a moral is not the property of one region or
one language. Sanskrit, Pali, Telugu, Bengali, Tamil and Hindi all have their own —
sometimes the very same story under a different name. One kind of story, many
tellers: the chapter's theme again.

Q3 Collect a few folk tales from your region and discuss their message.

ANSWER

How to collect properly. This is a small piece of fieldwork, and doing it carefully matters more
than the number of stories.

1. Choose your tellers. Grandparents, older neighbours, a shopkeeper, a farmer, a domestic
helper, someone who has come from another State — the range matters.
2. Ask an open question: “Is there a story you heard as a child that you still remember?” Do
not suggest a story yourself.
3. Write it in the teller's own words as far as you can, and note the language the story was
told in. If it is in a language your class does not share, keep the original words for the names
and the songs.
4. Record three things about the story: where it is set (a real hill, river or village?), who the
characters are, and what the story is warning against or praising.
5. Name and thank your source — “told by Smt. Kamala Devi, aged 74, in Bundeli”. A collected
tale without its teller is only half a record.

Sample entry (use the shape, not the story):

Story: The parrot and the miser
Told by: my grandmother, in Bhojpuri
The tale: A rich man kept a parrot in a golden cage and fed it the best fruit, but
never let it out. A poor woodcutter's daughter kept no cage at all, and a parrot came
to her hut every evening for a few grains. When both fell ill, the rich man's parrot
could not call for help, but the girl's parrot flew to the village and brought the
neighbours.
Message: what is held by force is not really yours; what is given freely comes back to
you.
What it shows about the region: the tale is set in a millet-growing village and
mentions the mahua tree, so it belongs to the dry central belt where that tree
matters.

What to discuss in class once the tales are in.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Sort them by message — honesty, hospitality, kindness to animals, respect for water and
forest, cleverness over strength, the danger of greed. You will find the same handful of
messages coming up again and again, in stories collected from different languages.
Look for the local detail — the name of a hill, a river, a tree, a festival. That is what makes
the tale yours.
Look for a familiar story wearing new clothes. Very often a classmate's tale will turn out to
be a version of one you already know. That is the chapter's discovery, made by your own
class: the same story, many local forms.

Q4 Is there any ancient story that you have seen being depicted through a form of art?
It could be a sculpture, a painting, a dance performance, a movie … Discuss with
your classmates.

ANSWER

What a good answer contains: name the story, name the art form and where you saw it,
and then say how that particular art form told the story — because each one tells it
differently.

ART EXAMPLES YOU MAY WELL HAVE SEEN HOW IT TELLS THE STORY
FORM

Sculpture / Temple panels of the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata; One frozen moment, chosen because it
relief Mahabalipuram's ‘Arjuna's Penance’; Jātaka scenes at carries the whole story; you must know the
Sanchi and Bharhut tale to read it

Painting Fig. 8.6 in this chapter — the Mewar Rāmāyaṇa of Several moments on one surface, in
1652; also Madhubani, Pattachitra, Kalamkari, Phad compartments or panels, read like a comic
and Warli scroll paintings strip

Classical Kathakali and Kūṭiyāṭṭam (Kerala), Bharatanatyam, Through abhinaya — face, eyes and hand
dance Odissi, Kathak, Sattriya (Assam), Manipuri Rās Līlā gestures (mudrās) — so a single dancer
can play several characters

Folk theatre Rāmlīlā and Rāsalīlā (north India), Yakṣhagāna All night, in the open, with the audience
(Karnataka), Terukkūttu (Tamil Nadu), Chhau joining in — the story belongs to the
(Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal), Bhavai (Gujarat) village, not to a stage

Puppetry Tholu Bommalata (Andhra Pradesh), Togalu Leather or wooden figures, often in
Gombeyaata (Karnataka), Kathputli (Rajasthan) shadow behind a lit screen

Cinema and Films and serials on the Rāmāyaṇa and the The newest retelling of all — and, as the
television Mahābhārata; animated versions; comic books chapter would say, one more version added
to the hundreds already there

Sample answer:

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Last year our school took us to a Yakṣhagāna performance during a temple festival.
The episode was Abhimanyu's entry into the Chakravyūha from the Mahābhārata.
The performers wore enormous headdresses and painted faces, and the whole story
was carried by a singer at the side with drums, while the actors danced and spoke.
What struck me was that the audience already knew what was going to happen —
everyone knew Abhimanyu would not come out — and yet the hall was completely
silent. I had read the episode in a book, but on the stage it felt like something
happening to people we knew.

Why this activity belongs in this chapter: each of these art forms is a different
language for the same story. A sculptor, a Kathakali dancer, a puppeteer and a film-
maker retell the Rāmāyaṇa in ways that look nothing like each other — and every
one of them is still the Rāmāyaṇa. That is unity in diversity, seen with your own eyes.

Q5 Discuss in class the following quotation by India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal
Nehru, when he travelled to many parts of India before Independence: “Everywhere
I found a cultural background which had exerted a powerful influence on their
lives. … The old epics of India, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and other
books, in popular translations and paraphrases, were widely known among the
masses, and every incident and story and moral in them was engraved on the
popular mind and gave a richness and content to it. Illiterate villagers would know
hundreds of verses by heart and their conversation would be full of references to
them or to some story with a moral, enshrined in some old classic.”

ANSWER

The setting matters. Nehru was travelling across India before Independence, in the years
when he was trying to understand the country he was working for. He met villagers in many
different regions who spoke different languages and had never met one another. What
surprised him was how much they already had in common.

Page 33 of 38

as e
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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

co m
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NEHRU'S PHRASE WHAT HE IS SAYING

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background” .c
om
“Everywhere I found a cultural
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Not in one region but in all of them — the unity he found was countrywide

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paraphrases” — exactly the ‘epic spread’ this chapter describes

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“engraved on the popular mind”
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The stories were not stored in libraries but in people — the same oral ag
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strength the chapter describes for tribal versions

“Illiterate villagers would know
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Learning and literacy are not the same thing. People who could not read

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hundreds of verses by heart” carried a whole literature in memory

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“their conversation would be full The epics were not something people studied; they were

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of references to them”
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understood

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How the quotation connects to the chapter. Nehru's observation is field evidence for what
agl
a s
agland many parts of Asia”; Nehru walked into that web and
the chapter argues on pages 133–135. The chapter says the two epics “created a dense web of
cultural interactions across India
reported it — a common store of stories and values held by people who shared neither

co m
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language nor region.

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Questions for the class discussion:
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se place — films, serials, songs, sport, the internet?
Nehru
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retelling in your own language worth less than the original, or worth more, since it is the one
people actually live with?
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“Illiterate villagers would know hundreds of verses by heart.” What does this tell us
about memory, and about judging people by whether they can read?
Could the same paragraph be written about your own town today? Try writing four lines

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beginning “Everywhere in my town I found …”

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Careful in the discussion: Nehru is describing what he observed, not ranking
m anybody. Communities in India draw on many stores of story and value — epics, folk a g
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ag tales, the lives of saints and teachers, oral traditions of every kind — and the
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chapter's point is that these have long borrowed from one another. Discuss the
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shared inheritance, and treat every community's own version of it with the same

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respect.

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m as e
.co


a g l Page 34 of 38

Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Chapter at a glance
The chapter's one idea: India's variety is real, and so is what lies under it. Travel across
India and the landscapes, dresses, foods, languages and scripts keep changing — this is
usually the first thing a visitor notices. With over 1.4 billion people (about 18 percent of the
world's population), that is not surprising. But the British historian Vincent Smith asked
how a history of so bewildering a country could be written at all, and answered himself:
“India offers unity in diversity.” Sri Aurobindo's name for the same thing gives the chapter
its title — the ‘Many in the One’.
The numbers come from one big survey. Late in the 20th century the Anthropological
Survey of India carried out the ‘People of India’ project — a survey of 4,635 communities
across all States of the country. It counted 325 languages written in 25 scripts, and
observed that a great many Indians can be called migrants, in the sense of people no
longer living near their birthplace or with their original community.
Food: the same ingredients, endless dishes. The dishes of India run into thousands, if not
lakhs. Yet the same staple grains turn up almost everywhere — cereals such as rice, barley
and wheat; millets such as pearl millet (bajra), sorghum (jowar) and finger millet (ragi);
and pulses such as many kinds of dals and grams. The same is true of spices such as
turmeric, cumin, cardamom and ginger. Same ingredients (unity), countless combinations
(diversity).
Cloth: one unstitched length, hundreds of varieties. The sari is worn in most parts of
India — cotton, silk, and nowadays synthetic fabrics. Banarasi, Kanjivaram, Paithani,
Patan Patola, Muga and Mysore are famous silk types, and cotton types are many more.
Weaving, designing, printing and colouring multiply the varieties; so do the ways of draping
it, which differ from region to region and community to community — and new ways are
still being invented. A stone relief from Vaiśhali (today in Bihar), a few centuries BCE,
already shows a woman in a sari. India also long produced the world's finest cotton: printed
chintz became so popular in 17th-century Europe that England and France banned its
import.
Festivals: one date and one meaning, many names. Around 14 January, the beginning of
the harvest season in many parts of India, the same festival is celebrated under a dozen
different names — Shishur Saenkraat, Maghi/Lohri, Khichdi Parv, Uttarayan, Makar
Sankranti, Magh Bihu, Poush Songkranti, Pedda Panduga, Makara Sankramana,
Pongal, Makara Vilakku (Fig. 8.5, page 132).
Stories: two epics, countless retellings. The Pañchatantra — Sanskrit, at least 2,200
years old — exists in about 200 adaptations in more than 50 languages. India's two epics,
the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata (some 7,000 pages together in the original), have
been translated, adapted and retold for more than two millenniums, with countless folk
versions besides — a scholar counted about a hundred folk Mahābhāratas in Tamil Nadu
alone. The Bhils, Gonds, Mundas and most tribes of the northeast and the Himalayan
region have their own versions, and legends of the heroes visiting their own land. As the

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

anthropologist K.S. Singh put it, “There is hardly a place in the country which the epic
heroes such as the Pandavas, did not visit according to folklores.”
The closing sentence is the whole chapter. “Indian culture celebrates diversity as an
enrichment, but never loses sight of the underlying unity which nourishes that diversity.”
Unity here does not mean everyone doing the same thing; it means many different things
growing from something shared.

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

Quick revision

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT WORTH REMEMBERING
APPEARS IN
THE CHAPTER

Unity in Many different forms of life, dress, Chapter title; Vincent Smith's answer: “India
diversity food, speech and worship that page 126 offers unity in diversity”
nevertheless share something
underneath

‘Many in the Sri Aurobindo's phrase for the same Page 125, Unity is not uniformity
One’ idea — the many are forms of one opening
thing, not fragments of nothing quotation

‘People of A massive survey by the Pages 126 and 4,635 communities, 325
India’ project Anthropological Survey of India, 135 languages, 25 scripts
directed by K.S. Singh

Migrant (as A person not living near their Page 126 The survey found many Indians
used here) birthplace or with their original may be called migrants in this
community sense

Staple grains The basic food grains of most Indians Pages 126–128, Cereals: rice, barley, wheat.
Fig. 8.1 Millets: bajra, jowar, ragi. Pulses:
dals and grams

Sari A plain, unstitched length of cloth Pages 128–131 Silks: Banarasi, Kanjivaram,
worn in most parts of India Paithani, Patan Patola, Muga,
Mysore

Relief A design that stands out from the Page 129, margin Fig. 8.2 — a woman in a sari,
surface of a panel of stone, wood, from Vaiśhali, a few centuries
ceramic or another material BCE

Chintz A beautiful kind of printed cotton Page 129, Don't So popular in 17th-century
made in India Miss Out Europe that England and
France banned its import

Makara The festival on or around 14 January Pages 131–132, One festival, about a dozen
Sankrānti that marks the beginning of the Fig. 8.5 names on the map
harvest season in many parts of India

Pañchatantra A Sanskrit collection of stories with Page 133 At least 2,200 years old; about
animals as the main characters, 200 adaptations in more than
teaching life skills 50 languages

Epic A long poem generally narrating the Page 133, margin The Rāmāyaṇa and the
adventures of heroes and other great Mahābhārata — about 7,000

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Class 6 Social Science Chapter 8 Unity in Diversity, or ‘Many in the One’ AglaSem · NCERT Solutions

TERM WHAT IT MEANS WHERE IT WORTH REMEMBERING
APPEARS IN
THE CHAPTER

figures of the past pages together

Folk version A retelling of an epic kept alive orally Pages 134–135 About a hundred folk
by a community rather than in a Mahābhāratas in Tamil Nadu
written text alone

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