People of Uttar Pradesh

Uttar Pradesh is a microcosm of the entire Indian nation in its diversity. Multi ethnic, multi religious and multi cultural, Uttar Pradesh has absorbed many an immigrant culture and race within its borders and created a unique cultural heritage found nowhere else in the country.

The people of Uttar Pradesh is a curious mix of the traditional and the modern. One of the least developed states in the country; it has some highly industrialised pockets. While the people are secular, liberal and progressive, at the same time they are also deeply rooted in social and religious traditions and taboos. While its diversity is its strength, it is often equally divisive although rarely parochial. The urban centres have grown into modern, chaotic sprawling cities and towns but the rural areas of the state are trapped in a time warp. Old rituals, traditional practices and archaic agricultural methods are still followed and little by way of progress and development has trickled down to the hinterland. That, in a nutshell, is Uttar Pradesh, a state that defies definition.