Boiling pot

For a nation as young as the USA, it has achieved a lot. If you take a step back and study its belligerent nature, it certainly owes its progress to wars but it has indeed covered long strides in human progress as well. To me, the greatest success that the United States can boast of is its homogeneity. The American fabric, boosted by the so-called American Dream, has made sure that you don't care where the person comes from as long as he's an American and wants to succeed. Yes, one can argue that this development dissolves ethnic identity. To that, i'd ask, "And the problem is?" I'd rather have blacks being referred to as African-Americans than Zimbabwean-American or Senegalese-American. Similarly, the Asian-Americans could be anyone from China or Japan or Korea. Young Americans of Indian/Pakistani heritage can easily fall under the ABCD (American Born Confused Desi) category. This bracketing of where-one-comes-from closes the unnecessary gaps and knits the community in the long run. There are whites in America without any regard to where their origin lies. You can say the same for Latinos. You don't care what their real ancestry is. Meryl Streep and Tom Cruises are German-Americans while Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are Italian-Americans. Leonardo DiCaprio is a mix of both these heritages. But do you think anybody cares in Hollywood? Exactly my point. Scarlett Johansson is a Jew by birth and so is Gwyneth Paltrow but then their blondness effectively dominates their Yiddish roots. This peculiar overlooking of caste is what fuels America's success. Let's move a bit out of cinema. The Kardashians are of Armenian descent while John Kerry has a mix of Brahmin (believe it or not) as well as British blood. Bernie Sanders' parents were Polish and Aziz Ansari's parents are Tamil. Nicholas Sparks is a Czech-American. Madonna is what happens when Italian and French genes party. And the list goes on and on and on.

The point being, despite all its shortcomings, at least the USA has been pushing the threshold of unity. In comparison, where exactly does India's success story stand?