Village
Tourism
Viewed from a distance, an Indian village may appear deceptively simple.
A cluster of mud-plastered walls shaded by a few trees, set among a stretch
of green or dun-colored fields, with a few people slowly coming or going, oxcarts
creaking, cattle lowing, and birds singing--all present an image of harmonious
simplicity.
Indian city dwellers often refer nostalgically to
"simple village life."
City artists portray colorfully garbed village women gracefully carrying water
pots on their heads, and writers describe isolated rural settlements unsullied
by the complexities of modern urban civilization. Social scientists of the past
wrote of Indian villages as virtually self-sufficient communities with few ties
to the outside world.
In actuality, Indian village life is far from simple. Each village is connected
through a variety of crucial horizontal linkages with other villages and with
urban areas both near and far. Most villages are characterized by a multiplicity
of economic, caste, kinship, occupational, and even religious groups linked
vertically within each settlement. Factionalism is a typical feature of village
politics. In one of the first of the modern anthropological studies of Indian
village life, anthropologist Oscar Lewis called this complexity "rural
cosmopolitanism."
» Rajasthan
Village Tourism
» Himachal Pradesh Village Tourism
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