INDIAN TRADITION

                                                          Modern fashion in India

Many aspects of Western fashion have become common among Indian men, particularly in the professional community. Horizontal stripes and plaids are common on casual business shirts, particularly among Indians in North America. Owing to growth of women empowerment and influence of western culture, nowadays most of the teen and adult girls in cities wear low hip jeans, low neck tops, tight jean trousers with salwar, half trousers, sleeveless T shirts etc. Women who hail from rural villages usually wear frocks and half sarees; boys normally wear a shirt and pants, whether formally or casually.


The most accepted formal dressing for couples in formal occasions like parties and weddings is saree for the ladies and formal pants and shirts with suits in the winter for the men. While one is utterly ethnic and Indian the latter is very western and out of India.






                                                            Marriage

For centuries, arranged marriages have been the tradition in Indian society. Even today, the vast majority of Indians have their marriages planned by their parents and other respected family-members, with the consent of the bride and groom.Arranged matches are made after taking into account factors such as age, height, personal values and tastes, the backgrounds of their families (wealth, social standing), their castes and the astrological compatibility of the couples' horoscopes.

In India, the marriage is thought to be for life,and the divorce rate is extremely low — 1.1% compared with about 50% in the United States.The arranged marriages generally have a much lower divorce rate. The divorce rates have risen significantly in recent years:

"Opinion is divided over what the phenomenon means: for traditionalists the rising numbers portend the breakdown of society while, for some modernists, they speak of a healthy new empowerment for women.




                                                             Traditional Clothes

Traditional clothing in India greatly varies across different parts of the country and is influenced immensely by local culture, geography and climate. Popular styles of dress include draped garments such as sari for women and dhoti or lungi for men; in addition, stitched clothes such as salwar kameez for women and kurta-pyjama and European-style trousers and shirts for men, are popular.

In India, a person's social status is perceived to be symbolized by his or her attire. Indian dress etiquette discourages exposure of skin and wearing transparent or tight clothes.Most Indian clothes are made from cotton which is ideal for the region's hot weather.Since India's weather is mostly hot and rainy, majority of Indians wear sandals.

Worn by women on their forehead, the bindi is considered to be a highly auspicious mark in Hindu religion.Traditionally, the red bindi (or sindoor) was worn only by the married Hindu women, but now it has become a part of women's fashion. Some Indian traditions consider the bindi to be representative of the third eye.




                                                            History

With its oldest core dating back to as early as 1500 BC,the Rigvedic Sanskrit is one of the oldest attestations of any Indo-Iranian language, and one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, the family which includes English and most European languages.Sanskrit has had a profound impact on the languages and literature of India. Hindi, India's most spoken language, is a "Sanskritized register" of the Khariboli dialect. In addition, all modern Indo-Aryan languages, Munda languages and Dravidian languages, have borrowed many words either directly from Sanskrit (tatsama words), or indirectly via middle Indo-Aryan languages (tadbhava words).Words originating in Sanskrit are estimated to constitute roughly fifty percent of the vocabulary of modern Indo-Aryan languages,and the literary forms of (Dravidian) Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.Part of the Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, the Bengali language arose from the eastern Middle Indic languages and its roots are traced to the 5th century BC Ardhamagadhi language.








                                                            Dance

                                                                                                     


 A kuchipudi performer from Andhra Pradesh.Indian dance too has diverse folk and classical forms. Among the well-known folk dances are the bhangra of the Punjab, the bihu of Assam, the chhau of Jharkhand and Orissa, the ghoomar of Rajasthan, the dandiya and garba of Gujarat, the Yakshagana of Karnataka and lavani of Maharashtra and Dekhnni of Goa. Eight dance forms, many with narrative forms and mythological elements, have been accorded classical dance status by India's National Academy of Music, Dance, and Drama. These are: bharatanatyam of the state of Tamil Nadu, kathak of Uttar Pradesh, kathakali and mohiniattam of Kerala, kuchipudi of Andhra Pradesh, manipuri of Manipur, odissi of the state of Odisha and the sattriya of Assam.