The difference this reflects is often more apparent than the elements of commonality. Despite some intermarriage at the elite levels in our cities, Indians are still largely endogamous, and a Bengali is easily distinguished from a Punjabi.

Most of the time, an Indian's name immediately reveals where he is from or what her mother-tongue is: when we introduce ourselves, we are advertising our origins. If caste and language complicate the notion of Indian identity, ethnicity makes it worse. (If he is a Brahmin, for instance, 90% of his fellow Indians are not.) Even his Hinduism is no guarantee of his majorityhood, because caste divisions automatically put him in a minority. Worse, this stock Hindu male has only to mingle with the polyglot, multicoloured crowds - and I am referring not to the colours of their clothes but to the colours of their skins - thronging any of India's major railway stations to realise how much of a minority he really is. And, if he were visiting, say, my home state of Kerala, he may be surprised to realise that a majority there is not even male. But a majority of the country does not speak Hindi. As a Hindu, he belongs to the faith adhered to by four-fifths of the population.

A Hindi-speaking Hindu male from Uttar Pradesh may cherish the illusion he represents the 'majority community'. There has never been an archetypal Indian to stand alongside the archetypal German or Frenchman. For the simple fact is that we are all minorities in India. Such an episode is almost inconceivable elsewhere, but it was a startling affirmation of Indian pluralism. Tradition and politics required a speech in Hindi, so he gave one - the words having been written out for him in his native Kannada script, in which they made no sense. Eight other prime ministers had done exactly the same thing 48 times before him, but what was unusual this time was that Deve Gowda, a southerner from the state of Karnataka, spoke to the country in a language of which he did not know a word. W hen India celebrated the 49th anniversary of its independence from British rule in 1996, its then prime minister, HD Deve Gowda, stood at the ramparts of Delhi's Red Fort and delivered the traditional independence day address to the nation.

What is indian national language