By Parikshit Gogate | EEP-AGMP 2025
Long before the corporate world discovered the vocabulary of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, India lived its essence without articulation. What is now framed as a modern organisational priority was, for India, simply a civilizational habit. You see this instinct first in language, where culture reveals itself most honestly. In Sanskrit and in many Indian linguistic traditions, the feminine is not an afterthought. We say Stree–Purush, not the reverse. We invoke Sita–Ram, Radha–Krishna, Gauri–Ganapati, Uma–Mahesh, Lakshmi–Narayan. The feminine principle—Shakti, Prakriti—is placed at the axis, not the periphery.
This pattern is not confined to Sanskrit. It appears across Indian languages with striking consistency. Tamil says Amma–Appa and Amman–Ayyan. Malayalam uses Chechi–Chettan. Bengali says Ma–Baba and Didi–Dada. Marathi has Aai–Baba and Tai–Dada. Gujarati says Ba–Bapuji and Ben–Bhai. Punjabi and Hindi use Mata–Pita and Behen–Bhai. Even in Kashmiri, it is Maji–Boba. Across regions, the feminine is named first, invoked first, and culturally centred. Language, without debate or doctrine, encodes co‑presence and dignity.
This instinct in language naturally extends into how India imagines the sacred. The Kamakhya temple in Assam places the feminine as the source of generative power. Tripura Sundari, worshipped at the historic temple in Udaipur, Tripura, represents one of the most complete expressions of Shakti—sovereign, self‑contained, and unmediated. The Mahalakshmi temples across India anchor prosperity and balance in the feminine. These are not marginal shrines but civilizational markers. A culture that centres Shakti does not need to be taught the idea of inclusion; it has lived it for millennia.
The same civilizational confidence shaped how India received those who arrived at its shores. Syrian Christians became part of Kerala’s social fabric from the first century onward. Parsis, fleeing persecution in Persia, were welcomed into Gujarat with the promise that they would blend like sugar in milk. Jewish communities, from the Bene Israel to the Cochin Jews, lived in India for centuries without, by and large, experiencing the antisemitism that scarred their history elsewhere. There was no apartheid, no enforced segregation, no cultural erasure. Difference was not a threat; it was a presence to be accommodated.
This cultural muscle memory carried naturally into the workplaces that evolved over time. In a Marwari trading house in Calcutta, a teenager learning accounts might sit beside a seventy‑year‑old munim who spoke a different language but shared the same ledger. In a Parsi‑run mill in Ahmedabad, workers from multiple castes and communities lived in the same chawls and celebrated each other’s festivals. Inclusion was not a policy; it was the operating system.
India offers a reminder that inclusion is strongest when it is instinctive, not instructed—and that sometimes, the most modern ideas are simply ancient instincts rediscovered.
This is why the DE&I conversation in India must be framed differently. We do not need to import the vocabulary to validate the instinct. We only need to recognise that our civilizational memory already holds the principles the world is now formalising. In a time when DE&I risks becoming procedural, India offers a reminder that inclusion is strongest when it is instinctive, not instructed—and that sometimes, the most modern ideas are simply ancient instincts rediscovered.
Author Bio:
Parikshit is a strategic finance and governance professional with experience across global energy and advisory roles.
Beyond work, he writes on the intersections of history, culture, and geopolitics.
