Incredibly Incredible India

India's culture is marked by a high degree of syncretism and cultural pluralism. It has managed to preserve established traditions while absorbing new customs, traditions, and ideas from invaders and immigrants and spreading its cultural influence to other parts of Asia. Traditional Indian society is defined by relatively strict social hierarchy. The Indian caste system describes thesocial stratification and social restrictions in the Indian subcontinent, in which social classes are defined by thousands ofendogamous hereditary groups, often termed as jātis or castes.