Culture
The states of Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat are varied and distinct. 450 years of Portuguese rule has influenced Goa greatly. The architecture of Goa is a unique blend of Indian and Portuguese cultures. Goa is also well known for its beaches, temples and churches.
Maharashtrian culture derives from the ancient Indo-Aryan Vedic culture influenced deeply by the Maratha Empire and British colonial rule. Maharashtrians take great pride in the Maratha Empire, and many places in Maharashtra are named after the founder of the Empire, Shivaji. Marathi literature and cinema are popular in the state as well as across India.
Gujarati culture includes both Hindu and Islamic influence. It has also been influenced by the Parsis, who migrated to Gujarat from Iran about a 1000 years ago. Recently events like Rann Utsav, International Kite Festival and Global Garba festivals have been started to showcase its culture internationally. Mumbai and Goa are renowned for their nightlifes. Bollywood has had a huge impact on the lifestyle and culture of this part of India as Bollywood is situated in Mumbai.
Read more about this topic: West India
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I now speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle- class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing—he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)