Introduction 

This article concerns and confines itself to the arrival, acceptance, treatment and conduct of various communities (subsequently settled and became minorities) that came to the Indian Subcontinent. The purpose of the article can be as per the reader wishes, i.e., from simply to understand and gather information they might not have been aware of till date, or, on a more engaging plane to question what makes it different in the way the minorities were looked at before and now, additionally to understand the conduct of the minorities as well as the reasons they were treated differently.

For this purpose, two popular cases of the Jews and the Zoroastrians have been included for understanding the said objectives.

Further, a policy and jurisprudential lens can also be used, to understand the manner in which the authorities and ruling class dealt with it, and compare it with the contemporary set of rules.

Foreign Arrivals

Jews

As popularly identified, Judaism is one of the oldest foreign faiths that arrived, settled and diffused in the local population of India since ancient times.

According to Jewish journal of genealogy, the Bene Israel group flourished, in a tolerant land that had never known anti-Semitism, for 2400 years and were successful in all aspects of the socio-economic and cultural life of the people of the region.

B.J. Israel writes-

The legend that their [the Bene Israel] ancestors were the survivors of a shipwreck at the village of Nowgaon near the port of Cheul may be based on truth. On the other hand, it may have been adopted when our people came to learn that, according to the Hindu Puranas, fourteen corpses of foreigners from a shipwreck on the Konkan coast were miraculously brought to life by Parashuram, an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu, and given the status of Brahmins. (The Chitpavan Brahmins of Maharashtra are supposed to be descended from these miraculously created Hindus.) The Puranic legend may have been appropriated by the Bene Israel with suitable modification to account for their presence on the coast. Like Hindus, they abstained from beef in their diets and ‘‘frowned on’’ the remarriage of widows.[ref]

Fluid interactions of polytheistic cultures with foreign cultures are a common phenomenon, as they possess an inherent DNA of acceptance and appreciation of differences.

But this brings a curious fact to the notice! A Hindu god reviving the foreigners to life as well as giving them the status of brahmins. The flavour of acceptance of foreign beings in addition to the gravity and magnitude of the same, is something which is certainly old enough to the Indian thought but might be new to a western mind and a symbol of modernism.

Zoroastrians 

"We have always been welcoming to guests, but they were expected to abide by our cultural customs. In the past, when Persia was invaded by Arab and Turkish invaders, some Parsis fled and settled in Surat. They were welcomed by King Yadava Rana and Shankaracharya of Dwarka Math was consulted as to how they should be accepted into the society, they were asked to stop eating beef, to respect the Gau Mata (the holy cow), and to live in peace. These followers of Zarathustra have continued to uphold their pledge to this day."[ref]

For someone is unaware of the Shankaracharyas, they possess one of the highest titles in the Hindu faith. The fact that the Zoroastrians were not only allowed and welcomed, but also, without question, permitted to continue with their faith. This is not only a demonstration of the social fabric of the society who accepted them, but also of the religious elite, not being repulsive towards people of foreign faith.

The referred are the lines of Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, one of the founders and second 'sarsanghchalak' of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an alleged conservative and Hindu supremacist group, also cementing the above made argument.

COMMENTS AND CONCLUSION

Going through the above-mentioned data not only provides relevant trivial facts about India’s history of acceptance of foreign thought, but also the logical understanding as to the causation and happening of the same.

This also attempts to answer why the Indian society is not hostile towards the people of foreign faith. The same, though is not just about India’s all-inclusive culture but also about protection of its primary interests such as respect of the holy cow and societal harmony, while absorbing the thoughts alien to themselves. Today’s jurisprudence and policy making, particularly that of the west (something that India as a nation also subscribes to by its Constitution) can afford to take a look at how to respect and assimilate foreign thoughts if currently posed by the challenge. Deducing the data taken, it can also be safely concluded that the dance of this potential cultural amalgamation cannot possibly be burdened on one side, as understood above, the same is two-fold and the cultures who are on the receiving end, i.e. the aliens to the Indian land, must display acceptance to the providing or parent culture of the native land.