Another of those incredible frequent holidays in India?

I recently received a mail from a Westerner who was concerned about no communication from our end, and simply wrote, "Another of those incredible frequent holidays in India?"

What do you think would have been my first reaction: Anger, rage, fury, or felt insulted? None! I go by the adage, 'if you know your worth, no one can insult you'. My thoughts were: perhaps this has been written on a lighter note - hopefully. Or, may be it's sheer ignorance - not respecting the sentiments of the people of a specific region.

I got curious to understand why the west feels we in India have frequent holidays. I did some net surfing for comparisons and came up with some interesting facts. Most of these may not be directly related to the 'frequent holidays' theme. I thought I should share those here.

--We have a a population of over a billion, and though the majority of us follow the Hindu religion, we have Jews, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, and a multitude of people from various other religions and sects.

--There are 28 states in India, some states [usually neighboring ones] share a common official language – which is our national language – Hindi. While others have region specific languages – in all there are 18 languages for official work within Indian.

--In addition to these 18 official languages, there are some 6000+ dialects in which people converse across India. Language form and flavor changes after every 250-300 miles in India. For example our national language itself has around 4 to 6 flavors, depending on the region it is spoken in. This also means within a single state, there is one official and several region specific language/dialects. I am myself amazed!

--Irrespective of what may be the state’s official language, the highest court of every state [High Court] has English as their business language, and the Supreme Court of India too does all business transaction mainly in English.

--With a billion plus people spread across different regions, representing different cultures and religions, speaking different languages, the temperament of each Indian remains same - tolerance.

--Also, even with a billion plus people and with so many different religion-specific celebrations, we have just 4 national holidays in India:

A. Republic day on 26th January
B. Independence day on 15th August
C. Gandhi Jayanti – 2nd October – Birthday of our Father of the Nation
D. Christmas

This, in comparison to most of the counties in the world is less, and specially in comparison to this Westerners! But the best thing is, even if one of these holidays fall on a weekend, we are not encouraged to take a day off before or after the holiday! Needless to say, for the government, there’s no concept of a long weekend. However, let me add that depending on the religious or regional occassions, there are local holidays as well. But overall, in such regions also, there are never such more than 6-7 annual holidays, including the national ones.

A rough comparison with other countries:
--US has 10 [Inauguration day excluded]and around another 28 popular holidays.
--UK has around 9
--France has 10
--China has 7
--Pakistan has 8 national and 9 popular holidays
--India has 4 national and 11 popular holidays