religious fundamentalism in india essay

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Chapter 2: Religious Fundamentalism And Indian Secularism – the Present Crisis

The church’s mission and post-modern humanism by m. m. thomas.

A Talk given at the Seminar on the Future of inter-religious Dialogue at Dharmaram on 17 August 1993.

In this Seminar on the future of the inter-religious dialogue, it is proper that we start with the specific context of the present crisis of Indian Secularism and its relation to religious fundamentalism.

Indian Secularism emerged as a basic political ideology in the course of the Indian national struggle for independence. It emerged as the concept of Secular Nationalism in opposition to the nationalism based on the interests of one or other of the religious communities, therefore also called communalism. The Hindu nationalism with its goal of Hindu Rashtra of Akhanda Hindustan drawing its strength from Hindu revivalism appeared with militancy in the latter half of the first decade of the century in the Congress in opposition to the Liberal Nationalism of the earlier period which was too weak to fight for national independence. With its weakening in the Congress, it found organized expression in the Hindu Mahasabha and later in the Rashtriya Swayamseva Sangh. The two-nation-theory that India consists of the Hindu and the Islamic nations which are to be separated at independence found organized expression in the Muslim League. The idea of Secular Nationalism became dominant under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. It provided an ideological framework within which the many religious communities of India as well as the plurality of linguistic caste and ethnic cultures (in the formation of which one or other religions had played a dominant role) could participate together with the adherents of secular ideologies like Liberalism and Socialism (which emerged in India in the framework of the impact of modern humanism of the West mediated through western power and English education). Therefore dialogue between Religion and Secular Humanism as well as between Religions began to take place within the national context on the meaning, values and goals of modern Indian nationhood.

Gandhi represented the long history of Renascent Hinduism from Raja Rammohan Roy through Swami Vivekandnada to Gandhi himself, in which Hindu religion and culture were being renewed in interaction with Western Christianity and modern secular culture; and Nehru represented the dynamic of European Enlightenment and Liberal Democratic and Marxian social ideologies which emerged in the ethos. Thus India’s Secular Nationalism was a dialogic integration between renascent religion and secular ideologies. The middle class who give leadership to the national movement was the bearer of this idea of Secular Nationalism for pluralistic India.

When India became independent it was this middle class committed to secularism that drew up the Constitution of the Indian Nation-State. They imposed the idea of secular nationalism on the Indian peoples because they were convinced that it was the best basis for unity of pluralistic India and the best path towards building a new society based on the values of liberty, equality and justice. They also hoped to build indigenous roots for them in the various religions and cultures of India by reforming them from within and also by legal intervention and developing a composite culture supportive of a State which is common to all peoples living in India equally and a modernized society with dignity and justice for all.

Ram Jethmalani specifies the clauses in the Constitution defining Indian Secularism in his article in the Indian Express (Feb. 14, ‘93) on “Clearing Confusion”. “The most important component of secularism of the Indian variety is to be found in Articles 14, 15(2) and 16(2). These Articles compel equality of all citizens before the law and entitle them to equal protection of the laws. They outlaw the discrimination against any citizen on the ground only of his religion, whether it be in the matter of public employment or access to public places and even charity. Another facet of it was in Article 19(1)a   which granted freedom of speech and expression and Article 25 which preserved the total freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practice and propagate religion. Of course this right was subject to reasonable restrictions in the interests of public order, morality and health and the power of the State to legislate for social welfare

The partition of India and the establishment of Pakistan as an Islamic State and the Hindu-Muslim riots which happened in the wake of independence did strengthen the idea of Hindu State in India. But the assassination of Gandhi by the advocates of Hindu Rashtra boomeranged and Gandhi’s martyrdom and Nehru’s leadership exposing the Fascist nature of Hindutva reestablished Indian Secularism as the basis of Indian polity and nationhood. Nehru’s characterization of the Hindutva of the RSS assumes that Hindu Nationalism is one way of relating itself to the modern western religion cum secular impact on India. For Fascism too is a western ideology. In fact Hindutva is a reaction in self-defence of the traditional religious and social structure utilizing the technocratic and political power-means imported from the modern West. Savarkar asked for “Hinduisation of Indian politics and militarisation of Hinduism” to establish and defend Akhanda Hindustan.

Now how do we account for the emergence of RSS-VHP-BJP parivar and their Hindu ideology to new strength after four decades of the working of Indian Secularism to the extent of threatening the secular pluralistic basis of Indian polity? Their new strength is clear in their electoral successes and the appeal of their agitation and their new confidence about coming to power as rulers of India. It is their new vitality and popular support in the country of Gandhi and Nehru that needs interpretation.

There are no doubt many reasons for a complex phenomenon like this. Here I mention a few, actually three, which may be specially relevant to the theme of our Seminar.

1. Firstly, the spiritual vacuum created by Closed Secularism. Recently Rustom Bharucha’s The Question of Faith (published as no:3 of the Tracts for the Times by Oriental Longman 1993) raises the question of the relation of Indian Secularism to religion as Faith. The Editor in the Preface says that the Tract “polemises against a form of narrow sectarian Secularism which refuses to be sensitive to tradition and faith” and argues that Secularism needs to be rethought taking religious faith seriously, that “only then can Secularism reclaim the ideological space which Fundamentalists are threatening to take over, only then can Secularists capture the minds of the people”(p.vi). And the author Bharucha explains, “If by Secularism we mean a total avoidance of religious matters, the secular weapons may not be enough” to fight Fundamentalism. The point is that “if we do not intervene in the debates concerning the interpretation of religion, we are simply playing into the hand of Fundamentalists. Merely non-antireligious terms will only strengthen the deadlock” (p.4). The author discusses melas and lilas, Ananthamoorthy’s novels, Lohia and Gandhi, to show that there is religion as faith which is distinct from religion as ideology, and that it is an ally of political secularism. His conclusion is that “a reductive Secularism that has tended to equate almost anything religious with a fundamentalist purpose” is not the best way to resist the onslaught of fundamentalism. Therefore he asks for discrimination between terms like Religious, Communal and Fundamentalist (p.88). He adds that encountering fundamentalism on rigidly political lines is not enough; “alternatives have to be explored within the larger secular drives of neo-religious forms and philosophies” (p.92). In this connection he speaks of the significance of the Liberation Theology movements in all religions and notes the significance of the radical religious movements. The tradition of Neo-Hindu movements represented by Gandhi has been a force behind Indian secularism. Nehru could recodify Hindu personal law only because the Neo-Hindu movements had prepared the Hindu religious mind for it. Nehru saw no such neo-Muslim movement in Islam to touch the Muslim personal law. The Neo-Hinduism of Sri.Narayana Guru challenging the caste structure religiously was the basis of a good deal of the radical secular politics of social justice in Kerala. But Indian Secularism in recent years has been too closed to take any real interest in religious movements of renewal and denied religious spirituality or spiritually based morality any role in “public’s life. Alternately, it has made secularism to mean keeping as vote-banks a federation of fundamentalist/conservative religious communities each resisting any social change towards equality in its traditionally sanctioned social structure and showing indifference to the reforming liberal elements working in these communities. One may point to the politics of the Congress or the Left to illustrate it.

Actually Indian Secularists in the recent past did not care to put down roots in the indigenous soil of the religious or vernacular linguistic cultures of the country. As a result, when electoral politics enlarged the political community of India by bringing the groups other than the middle class into it, it produced popular leaders more inclined to the unrenewed traditions. That is to say, the dialogue between Religion and Secularism came to a stop leaving the field to closed secularism on the one hand and the revived communally oriented fundamentalist religion and culture on the other.

2. Secondly, Religious Fundamentalism. Whether all religious fundamentalisms emerge out of reaction to closed secularism or not is debatable. It may also arise from the insecurity of faith when its religious expressions are faced with the necessity to change. Whatever its origin, religious fundamentalism which rejects change in religion or its social structure ends up by isolating itself from the influence of other religions or the values of secular humanism, and in the long run tends to make religious community centred on its self-righteousness and eventually its self-interest. In the many quotes from Bharucha, religious fundamentalism almost becomes the basic enemy of Indian secularism. Therefore we must define Religious Fundamentalism a little more clearly.

The word Fundamentalism came into vogue in 1920 in relation to the Christian group who earlier published a set of twelve booklets under the title, Fundamentals. These booklets opposed the application of modern critical historical approach to the Bible and the traditional dogmas of Christianity, because in their opinion, it would destroy their supra-national and supernatural elements which belong to their very essence. Thus Fundamentalism and Modernism, Faith and Reason, were separated into two water-tight compartments. In contrast, some other believers maintained that the interaction between them was essential to discriminate the truly supernatural elements necessary to religious faith from irrational superstitions which distort faith; that it was also necessary to make faith reasonable and to express it intelligently to the moderns so as to offer them a faith that liberates reason from becoming idolatrous and inhuman.

This debate was crucial in distinguishing and relating scientifically objective history and the mythical interpretations of it expressing the divine and subjective meaning of the same for the community of faith. This was crucial, especially in relation to the Genesis account of Creation, the story of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus in the Gospels and the New Testament accounts in which the hope of the consummation of the Kingdom of God in the future was expressed. The debate included also the distinction and relation between the history of the church as part of the general religious history of humankind and as God’ select community to be the universal sign of Divine salvation for all. In the 80s when the Fundamentalists emerged in USA with control of the electronic media and formed the electronic church, they also formed the Moral Majority movement with a conservative ideology backing Reagan’s policies of laissez fare economics and dismantling social welfare entitlements and of opposition to equal rights for all irrespective of colour or sex. At this point. Religious Fundamentalism became a political ideological religion.

I have related this history of Christian fundamentalism to clarify what fundamentalism means and to show that it is justifiable to characterize as fundamentalist similar movements in any religion which through communal isolation from critical reason, secular humanism or through search for political power, buttresses traditional beliefs and social order from reform and seeks to destroy democratic freedoms.

In India the use of the word Fundamentalism has developed certain special nuances which are worth noting. V.M. Tarkunde, himself a Radical Humanist, in his JPMemorial Lecture on “Communalism and Human Rights” ( PUCL Bulletin June 93), clearly distinguishes Fundamentalism from Communalism. He says, “Fundamentalism consists of uncritical adherence to ancient beliefs and practices. Communalism on the other hand consists of animosity of persons belonging to one religion toward persons of another religion. A fundamentalist need not be communalist at all...On the other hand a communalist need not be a fundamentalist at all...Fundamentalism requires to be opposed by all Humanists and Democrats, but that opposition should not be mixed up with an opposition to communalism. In fact many members of Muslim fundamentalist bodies may be helpful to us in promoting communal amity in the country”. Tarkunde is right in distinguishing between them, but he underestimates the inability of fundamentalism to embrace people of other religions or secular humanists within their theological or community circle predisposing them to theocratic politics in the interests of “true religion and virtue”; and I would add that he underestimates the role of fundamentalism in India.

Fundamentalist Hindu opposition to change of the traditional Hindu social order had played a large part in the creation and strengthening of the RSS ideology of opposition to other religions and to movements of Hindu reformation. This is clear from what Golwalker says in his writings on Hidutva and Lohia’s essay on Hinduism which he wrote soon after the assassination of Gandhi. Golwalker says, that Hindutva is hostile to Islam because “Islam was the first religion to interfere with our social organization of chaturvarna ...Islam in India challenged our scheme of class-caste organization. All post-Islamic sects sought to counter Islam by seeking to take the wind out of Islamic sails by themselves making the same challenge. That is why these sects have now become a source of national division and weakness”. Here the RSS chiefs opposition to Islam, the sufi and bhakti sects and Gandhism and by extension to Christianity, liberalism and socialism, are all one piece. This led Golwalker to characterise those “who advocated Hindu-Muslim unity as necessary to fight for swaraj” as the perpetrators of the “greatest treason in our society” (Yogendra Sikand “Religion and Religious Nationalism” in The Frontier 9.5.92). Lohia writing on the motivation behind Gandhi’s assassination coupled Hindutva hostility to Islam and to the democratic transformation of Hindu society. He wrote, “No Hindu can be generally tolerant to Muslims unless he acts at the same time actively against caste and property and for women”. To Lohia, the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi was not an episode of Hindu-Muslim fight as of the war between the Liberal and the Fanatical in Hinduism(“Hinduism” in Fragments of a World Mind ) . That is, Hindutva’s Communalism is closely related to its Fundamentalism.

  M.N. Srinivas makes a distinction between Orthodoxy and Fundamentalism. He sees that substantial numbers of Hindus have moved into the middle class who have been most affected by the process of secularization. This process has been strengthened, not necessarily by the philosophy of secularism but by the “recent great developments in communication, transport, urbanization and education”. As a result, “ideas of purity and impurity” which were so pervasive in the lives of Hindus have become much weaker, and in the life-style of the middle class they are “becoming confined to rites of passage, pilgrimages and a few festivals”. Middle class from other religions are also affected, but purity-impurity ideas were “weaker among them initially”. Unemployment has added economic security to the religious uprooting. This provides the “ideal soil for sowing fundamentalist seeds”. But he adds, Fundamentalism has to be distinguished from Orthodoxy; for while the latter involves strict adherence to tradition, the former interprets tradition for political purposes” (“Towards a New Philosophy” in The Times of India 9.7.93). But in the light of the history of Christian fundamentalism, Srinivas’s Orthodoxy is Fundamentalism and his Fundamentalism is the ideology of Communalism. Purity-impurity ideas were the religious foundation of caste and it is the return to it by the middle class for spiritual and economic stability that makes for their shift from Secularism to Hindutva. The middle class of other religions may also be showing a new passion for the securities of their religious tradition. In their case the sense of being part of a minority community may add to their insecurity.

It is necessary however to state that scholars like Ashish Nandy see no genuinely religious motivation in Communalism, and therefore avoids relating it to Fundamentalism which has a basic religious concern in its motivation. Hindutva like Closed Secularism itself “assumes the world to be a desacralised place, where only the laws of the market, history, judiciary and empirical science work”. It is “blatantly non-Indian and recognizably an illegitimate child of colonialism”, which introduced the idea of priority of State over Religion against the Indian concept of building the State on the basis of a “secondary allegiance” as in the case of Asoka and Akbar and, in modern India, Mahatma Gandhi. It is the Semitization of Hinduism in the 19th century that now “reaches its form in political Hinduism, Brahminic, steam-rolling...The ultimate product of this process was Nathuram Vinayak Godse...”. In Nandy’s opinion, serious believers cannot use their faith instrumentally as ideology. “Hinduism is a Faith; Hindutva an Ideology”. It is “Secularism’s double, the poor man s Statism”(Indian Express Feb. ‘90). Therefore the tradition of Hindu tolerance practiced within a world assumed to be the realm of the sacred, has no relevance for Hindutva as for Secularism. Here we are back to the necessity of religious faith and of dialogue with both Secularism and Hindutva to convert them to a genuine basis of what Nandy calls “the plural patriotism on which the most important strand of the freedom movement was based, and is now culturally orphan”. I suppose he means a return to Gandhism.

3. Thirdly, the tension between religions on Conversion. I should mention briefly a third factor contributing to the crisis of Indian Secularism, namely the tension between Hinduism and the missionary religions on the question of conversion which continue unresolved’. Not only the Hindutva of the RSS but also the Neo-Hinduism of the Gandhian line consider the mission of conversion of people from one religion to another as religious imperialism and destructive of inter-religious harmony.

Recently H.V.Seshadri, the General Secretary of the RSS issued a commentary on the RSS’s call to the minorities. In it he makes the point that Hindutva being by nature “all embracing and looks upon every sincere religious and spiritual pursuit with equal respect, is the opposite of Fundamentalism” which is intolerant of plurality. Fundamentalism, he said, “represents a mind-set confined within one Prophet, one Book, a single way of worship” which by nature led to the “concept of believers going to heaven and nonbelievers going to hell, with a religious duty cast upon its followers to convert the rest by any means whatsoever” (Indian Express? 1993).

The more liberal Krishna Kanth, the Governor of Andhra Pradesh, in his address to the Assembly of the National Council of Churches in 1991 and following it in a press interview with Neerge Choudhury (Indian Express 21 Oct. 1991) “called for an end to religious conversion in the country, not by law but by a voluntary consensus of religious leaders”, because in his opinion, communal strife is closely linked to conversion. His main argument is as follows: “The word Hindu which had essentially geographic and cultural meaning began to acquire religious connotations” and communal overtones when missionary religious began converting the untouchables and lower castes of Hindu society with promise of their liberation from caste indignities. It produced in Hindus the feeling that “in an age of competitive politics” in which power-sharing is “determined by numbers”, conversion would reduce them to insignificance. In any case, says Kanth, conversion did not bring liberation to the converted people from caste, because caste is not just a Hindu phenomenon but an Indian reality and is practiced by all religions in India. So, the “social logic” of conversion is no more there. But it is with conversion that the “false concept of majority and minority emerged making Hinduism a religion and caste a Hindu phenomenon”. Only a stopping of conversion will be “a starting point for harmony in society and for lessening mental insecurity, fanaticism and prevalent climate of confrontation”.

The fundamental law of religious freedom in the Constitution of India includes the freedom to “propagate” religion. But the debate on it was endless. It was the announcement by Mukherji and D’ Sousa that the Christian Community had decided to forgo special communal representation in the legislature and other communal safeguards so that there would not be political exploitation of increase of numbers through conversion that there was a spontaneous decision in the Constituent Assembly to include propagation of religion as a fundamental human right of the citizen. Though the Court has ruled that the right to propagate does not include the right to convert, that right is the right of the one who hears the propagated religion. But even afterwards there were attempts to restrict this freedom by law in Parliament. It was Nehru’s opposition to them that defeated them. The O.P. Tyagi Bill got the support of then Prime Minister Morarji Desai and it was the fall of the Desai ministry that prevented it from getting passed. But the question has continued to agitate Hindu minds. It raises many very sensitive theological as well as social issues on which Hinduism with its mystic orientation and Christianity and Islam with their prophetic historical orientation differ in a fundamental sense. But the ecumenical inter-religious dialogues in recent years have been exploring new paths to break the deadlock. The Indian situation certainly calls for mutual understanding at depth and consensus about permitted parameters of religious practices, for which inter-faith dialogues among religions and secular ideologies at various levels may be necessary, specifically within the Indian context. Since freedom of propagation and conversion involves not only matters of religion, but also of culture and political ideas, any restriction at this point will affect the fundamental rights of the human person in general. I suppose that must be the reason for Governor Kanth proposing a consensus of religious leaders on this matter outside the law.

In fact the difference in the character of mystic and prophetic, Indian and Semitic spiritualities needs to be discussed at depth. Nehru used to say that he preferred the cultural attitude related to the spirit of Paganism which allowed many gods including an unknown god to coexist; it reinforces democratic tradition. He also thought that the totalitarianism of Communism and Fascism was a secularization of the Semitic religious outlook. Lohia saw the same difference but thought if the attitude of coexistence of gods is allowed to go to extreme in matters of society and politics, it would cut active dialogue between different points of view and bring about stagnation. He realized that the other approach brought about strife. So he asked for a synthesis of the two, failing which he would prefer strife rather than stagnation. This discussion shows that there are clear political and cultural implications for all religious attitudes. So inter-faith dialogue must include these implications also.

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Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation

Indians say it is important to respect all religions, but major religious groups see little in common and want to live separately, table of contents.

• The dimensions of Hindu nationalism in India
• India’s Muslims express pride in being Indian while identifying communal tensions, desiring segregation
• Muslims, Hindus diverge over legacy of Partition
• Religious conversion in India
• Religion very important across India’s religious groups
• Near-universal belief in God, but wide variation in how God is perceived
• Across India’s religious groups, widespread sharing of beliefs, practices, values
• Religious identity in India: Hindus divided on whether belief in God is required to be a Hindu, but most say eating beef is disqualifying
• Sikhs are proud to be Punjabi and Indian
• 1. Religious freedom, discrimination and communal relations
• 2. Diversity and pluralism
• 3. Religious segregation
• 4. Attitudes about caste
• 5. Religious identity
• 6. Nationalism and politics
• 7. Religious practices
• 8. Religion, family and children
• 9. Religious clothing and personal appearance
• 10. Religion and food
• 11. Religious beliefs
• 12. Beliefs about God
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix A: Methodology
• Appendix B: Index of religious segregation

This study is Pew Research Center’s most comprehensive, in-depth exploration of India to date. For this report, we surveyed 29,999 Indian adults (including 22,975 who identify as Hindu, 3,336 who identify as Muslim, 1,782 who identify as Sikh, 1,011 who identify as Christian, 719 who identify as Buddhist, 109 who identify as Jain and 67 who identify as belonging to another religion or as religiously unaffiliated). Interviews for this nationally representative survey were conducted face-to-face under the direction of RTI International from Nov. 17, 2019, to March 23, 2020.

To improve respondent comprehension of survey questions and to ensure all questions were culturally appropriate, Pew Research Center followed a multi-phase questionnaire development process that included expert review, focus groups, cognitive interviews, a pretest and a regional pilot survey before the national survey. The questionnaire was developed in English and translated into 16 languages, independently verified by professional linguists with native proficiency in regional dialects.

Respondents were selected using a probability-based sample design that would allow for robust analysis of all major religious groups in India – Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains – as well as all major regional zones. Data was weighted to account for the different probabilities of selection among respondents and to align with demographic benchmarks for the Indian adult population from the 2011 census. The survey is calculated to have covered 98% of Indians ages 18 and older and had an 86% national response rate.

For more information, see the  Methodology  for this report. The questions used in this analysis can be found  here .

More than 70 years after India became free from colonial rule, Indians generally feel their country has lived up to one of its post-independence ideals: a society where followers of many religions can live and practice freely.

India’s massive population is diverse as well as devout. Not only do most of the world’s Hindus, Jains and Sikhs live in India, but it also is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations and to millions of Christians and Buddhists.

A major new Pew Research Center survey of religion across India, based on nearly 30,000 face-to-face interviews of adults conducted in 17 languages between late 2019 and early 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic ), finds that Indians of all these religious backgrounds overwhelmingly say they are very free to practice their faiths.

Related India research

This is one in a series of Pew Research Center reports on India based on a survey of 29,999 Indian adults conducted Nov. 17, 2019, to March 23, 2020, as well as demographic data from the Indian Census and other government sources. Other reports can be found here:

• How Indians View Gender Roles in Families and Society
• Religious Composition of India
• India’s Sex Ratio at Birth Begins To Normalize

Indians see religious tolerance as a central part of who they are as a nation. Across the major religious groups, most people say it is very important to respect all religions to be “truly Indian.” And tolerance is a religious as well as civic value: Indians are united in the view that respecting other religions is a very important part of what it means to be a member of their own religious community.

These shared values are accompanied by a number of beliefs that cross religious lines. Not only do a majority of Hindus in India (77%) believe in karma, but an identical percentage of Muslims do, too. A third of Christians in India (32%) – together with 81% of Hindus – say they believe in the purifying power of the Ganges River, a central belief in Hinduism. In Northern India, 12% of Hindus and 10% of Sikhs, along with 37% of Muslims, identity with Sufism, a mystical tradition most closely associated with Islam. And the vast majority of Indians of all major religious backgrounds say that respecting elders is very important to their faith.

Yet, despite sharing certain values and religious beliefs – as well as living in the same country, under the same constitution – members of India’s major religious communities often don’t feel they have much in common with one another. The majority of Hindus see themselves as very different from Muslims (66%), and most Muslims return the sentiment, saying they are very different from Hindus (64%). There are a few exceptions: Two-thirds of Jains and about half of Sikhs say they have a lot in common with Hindus. But generally, people in India’s major religious communities tend to see themselves as very different from others.

This perception of difference is reflected in traditions and habits that maintain the separation of India’s religious groups. For example, marriages across religious lines – and, relatedly, religious conversions – are exceedingly rare (see Chapter 3 ). Many Indians, across a range of religious groups, say it is very important to stop people in their community from marrying into other religious groups. Roughly two-thirds of Hindus in India want to prevent interreligious marriages of Hindu women (67%) or Hindu men (65%). Even larger shares of Muslims feel similarly: 80% say it is very important to stop Muslim women from marrying outside their religion, and 76% say it is very important to stop Muslim men from doing so.

Moreover, Indians generally stick to their own religious group when it comes to their friends. Hindus overwhelmingly say that most or all of their close friends are also Hindu. Of course, Hindus make up the majority of the population, and as a result of sheer numbers, may be more likely to interact with fellow Hindus than with people of other religions. But even among Sikhs and Jains, who each form a sliver of the national population, a large majority say their friends come mainly or entirely from their small religious community.

Fewer Indians go so far as to say that their neighborhoods should consist only of people from their own religious group. Still, many would prefer to keep people of certain religions out of their residential areas or villages. For example, many Hindus (45%) say they are fine with having neighbors of all other religions – be they Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain – but an identical share (45%) say they would not be willing to accept followers of at least one of these groups, including more than one-in-three Hindus (36%) who do not want a Muslim as a neighbor. Among Jains, a majority (61%) say they are unwilling to have neighbors from at least one of these groups, including 54% who would not accept a Muslim neighbor, although nearly all Jains (92%) say they would be willing to accept a Hindu neighbor.

Indians, then, simultaneously express enthusiasm for religious tolerance and a consistent preference for keeping their religious communities in segregated spheres – they live together separately . These two sentiments may seem paradoxical, but for many Indians they are not.

Indeed, many take both positions, saying it is important to be tolerant of others and expressing a desire to limit personal connections across religious lines. Indians who favor a religiously segregated society also overwhelmingly emphasize religious tolerance as a core value. For example, among Hindus who say it is very important to stop the interreligious marriage of Hindu women, 82% also say that respecting other religions is very important to what it means to be Hindu. This figure is nearly identical to the 85% who strongly value religious tolerance among those who are not at all concerned with stopping interreligious marriage.

In other words, Indians’ concept of religious tolerance does not necessarily involve the mixing of religious communities. While people in some countries may aspire to create a “melting pot” of different religious identities, many Indians seem to prefer a country more like a patchwork fabric, with clear lines between groups.

One of these religious fault lines – the relationship between India’s Hindu majority and the country’s smaller religious communities – has particular relevance in public life, especially in recent years under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP is often described as promoting a Hindu nationalist ideology .

The survey finds that Hindus tend to see their religious identity and Indian national identity as closely intertwined: Nearly two-thirds of Hindus (64%) say it is very important to be Hindu to be “truly” Indian.

Most Hindus (59%) also link Indian identity with being able to speak Hindi – one of dozens of languages that are widely spoken in India. And these two dimensions of national identity – being able to speak Hindi and being a Hindu – are closely connected. Among Hindus who say it is very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian, fully 80% also say it is very important to speak Hindi to be truly Indian.

The BJP’s appeal is greater among Hindus who closely associate their religious identity and the Hindi language with being “truly Indian.” In the 2019 national elections, 60% of Hindu voters who think it is very important to be Hindu and to speak Hindi to be truly Indian cast their vote for the BJP, compared with only a third among Hindu voters who feel less strongly about both these aspects of national identity.

Overall, among those who voted in the 2019 elections, three-in-ten Hindus take all three positions: saying it is very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian; saying the same about speaking Hindi; and casting their ballot for the BJP.

These views are considerably more common among Hindus in the largely Hindi-speaking Northern and Central regions of the country, where roughly half of all Hindu voters fall into this category, compared with just 5% in the South.

Whether Hindus who meet all three of these criteria qualify as “Hindu nationalists” may be debated, but they do express a heightened desire for maintaining clear lines between Hindus and other religious groups when it comes to whom they marry, who their friends are and whom they live among. For example, among Hindu BJP voters who link national identity with both religion and language, 83% say it is very important to stop Hindu women from marrying into another religion, compared with 61% among other Hindu voters.

This group also tends to be more religiously observant: 95% say religion is very important in their lives, and roughly three-quarters say they pray daily (73%). By comparison, among other Hindu voters, a smaller majority (80%) say religion is very important in their lives, and about half (53%) pray daily.

Even though Hindu BJP voters who link national identity with religion and language are more inclined to support a religiously segregated India, they also are  more  likely than other Hindu voters to express positive opinions about India’s religious diversity. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of this group – Hindus who say that being a Hindu and being able to speak Hindi are very important to be truly Indian  and  who voted for the BJP in 2019 – say religious diversity benefits India, compared with about half (47%) of other Hindu voters.

This finding suggests that for many Hindus, there is no contradiction between valuing religious diversity (at least in principle) and feeling that Hindus are somehow more authentically Indian than fellow citizens who follow other religions.

Among Indians overall, there is no overwhelming consensus on the benefits of religious diversity. On balance, more Indians see diversity as a benefit than view it as a liability for their country: Roughly half (53%) of Indian adults say India’s religious diversity benefits the country, while about a quarter (24%) see diversity as harmful, with similar figures among both Hindus and Muslims. But 24% of Indians do not take a clear position either way – they say diversity neither benefits nor harms the country, or they decline to answer the question. (See Chapter 2 for a discussion of attitudes toward diversity.)

India’s Muslim community, the second-largest religious group in the country, historically has had a complicated relationship with the Hindu majority. The two communities generally have lived peacefully side by side for centuries, but their shared history also is checkered by civil unrest and violence. Most recently, while the survey was being conducted, demonstrations broke out in parts of New Delhi and elsewhere over the government’s new citizenship law , which creates an expedited path to citizenship for immigrants from some neighboring countries – but not Muslims.

Today, India’s Muslims almost unanimously say they are very proud to be Indian (95%), and they express great enthusiasm for Indian culture: 85% agree with the statement that “Indian people are not perfect, but Indian culture is superior to others.”

Relatively few Muslims say their community faces “a lot” of discrimination in India (24%). In fact, the share of Muslims who see widespread discrimination against their community is similar to the share of Hindus who say Hindus face widespread religious discrimination in India (21%). (See Chapter 1 for a discussion of attitudes on religious discrimination.)

But personal experiences with discrimination among Muslims vary quite a bit regionally. Among Muslims in the North, 40% say they personally have faced religious discrimination in the last 12 months – much higher levels than reported in most other regions.

In addition, most Muslims across the country (65%), along with an identical share of Hindus (65%), see communal violence as a very big national problem. (See Chapter 1 for a discussion of Indians’ attitudes toward national problems.)

Like Hindus, Muslims prefer to live religiously segregated lives – not just when it comes to marriage and friendships, but also in some elements of public life. In particular, three-quarters of Muslims in India (74%) support having access to the existing system of Islamic courts, which handle family disputes (such as inheritance or divorce cases), in addition to the secular court system.

Muslims’ desire for religious segregation does not preclude tolerance of other groups – again similar to the pattern seen among Hindus. Indeed, a majority of Muslims who favor separate religious courts for their community say religious diversity benefits India (59%), compared with somewhat fewer of those who oppose religious courts for Muslims (50%).

Sidebar: Islamic courts in India

Since 1937, India’s Muslims have had the option of resolving family and inheritance-related cases in officially recognized Islamic courts, known as dar-ul-qaza. These courts are overseen by religious magistrates known as qazi and operate under Shariah principles . For example, while the rules of inheritance for most Indians are governed by the Indian Succession Act of 1925 and the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 (amended in 2005), Islamic inheritance practices differ in some ways, including who can be considered an heir and how much of the deceased person’s property they can inherit. India’s inheritance laws also take into account the differing traditions of other religious communities, such as Hindus and Christians, but their cases are handled in secular courts. Only the Muslim community has the option of having cases tried by a separate system of family courts. The decisions of the religious courts, however, are not legally binding , and the parties involved have the option of taking their case to secular courts if they are not satisfied with the decision of the religious court.

As of 2021, there are roughly 70 dar-ul-qaza in India. Most are in the states of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Goa is the only state that does not recognize rulings by these courts, enforcing its own uniform civil code instead. Dar-ul-qaza are overseen by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board .

While these courts can grant divorces among Muslims, they are prohibited from approving divorces initiated through the practice known as triple talaq, in which a Muslim man instantly divorces his wife by saying the Arabic/Urdu word “talaq” (meaning “divorce”) three times. This practice was deemed unconstitutional by the Indian Supreme Court in 2017 and formally outlawed by the Lok Sabha, the lower house of India’s Parliament, in 2019. 1

Recent debates have emerged around Islamic courts. Some Indians have expressed concern that the rise of dar-ul-qaza could undermine the Indian judiciary, because a subset of the population is not bound to the same laws as everyone else. Others have argued that the rulings of Islamic courts are particularly unfair to women, although the prohibition of triple talaq may temper some of these criticisms. In its 2019 political manifesto , the BJP proclaimed a desire to create a national Uniform Civil Code, saying it would increase gender equality.

Some Indian commentators have voiced opposition to Islamic courts along with more broadly negative sentiments against Muslims, describing the rising numbers of dar-ul-qaza as the “Talibanization” of India , for example.

On the other hand, Muslim scholars have defended the dar-ul-qaza, saying they expedite justice because family disputes that would otherwise clog India’s courts can be handled separately, allowing the secular courts to focus their attention on other concerns.

Since 2018, the Hindu nationalist party Hindu Mahasabha (which does not hold any seats in Parliament) has tried to set up Hindu religious courts , known as Hindutva courts, aiming to play a role similar to dar-ul-qaza, only for the majority Hindu community. None of these courts have been recognized by the Indian government, and their rulings are not considered legally binding.

The seminal event in the modern history of Hindu-Muslim relations in the region was the partition of the subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan at the end of the British colonial period in 1947. Partition remains one of the largest movements of people across borders in recorded history, and in both countries the carving of new borders was accompanied by violence, rioting and looting .

More than seven decades later, the predominant view among Indian Muslims is that the partition of the subcontinent was “a bad thing” for Hindu-Muslim relations. Nearly half of Muslims say Partition hurt communal relations with Hindus (48%), while fewer say it was a good thing for Hindu-Muslim relations (30%). Among Muslims who prefer more religious segregation – that is, who say they would not accept a person of a different faith as a neighbor – an even higher share (60%) say Partition was a bad thing for Hindu-Muslim relations.

Sikhs, whose homeland of Punjab was split by Partition, are even more likely than Muslims to say Partition was a bad thing for Hindu-Muslim relations: Two-thirds of Sikhs (66%) take this position. And Sikhs ages 60 and older, whose parents most likely lived through Partition, are more inclined than younger Sikhs to say the partition of the country was bad for communal relations (74% vs. 64%).

While Sikhs and Muslims are more likely to say Partition was a bad thing than a good thing, Hindus lean in the opposite direction: 43% of Hindus say Partition was beneficial for Hindu-Muslim relations, while 37% see it as a bad thing.

Context for the survey

Interviews were conducted after the conclusion of the 2019 national parliamentary elections and after the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under the Indian Constitution. In December 2019, protests against the country’s new citizenship law broke out in several regions.

Fieldwork could not be conducted in the Kashmir Valley and a few districts elsewhere due to security concerns. These locations include some heavily Muslim areas, which is part of the reason why Muslims make up 11% of the survey’s total sample, while India’s adult population is roughly 13% Muslim, according to the most recent census data that is publicly available, from 2011. In addition, it is possible that in some other parts of the country, interreligious tensions over the new citizenship law may have slightly depressed participation in the survey by potential Muslim respondents.

Nevertheless, the survey’s estimates of religious beliefs, behaviors and attitudes can be reported with a high degree of confidence for India’s total population, because the number of people living in the excluded areas (Manipur, Sikkim, the Kashmir Valley and a few other districts) is not large enough to affect the overall results at the national level. About 98% of India’s total population had a chance of being selected for this survey.

Greater caution is warranted when looking at India’s Muslims separately, as a distinct population. The survey cannot speak to the experiences and views of Kashmiri Muslims. Still, the survey does represent the beliefs, behaviors and attitudes of around 95% of India’s overall Muslim population.

These are among the key findings of a Pew Research Center survey conducted face-to-face nationally among 29,999 Indian adults. Local interviewers administered the survey between Nov. 17, 2019, and March 23, 2020, in 17 languages. The survey covered all states and union territories of India, with the exceptions of Manipur and Sikkim, where the rapidly developing COVID-19 situation prevented fieldwork from starting in the spring of 2020, and the remote territories of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep; these areas are home to about a quarter of 1% of the Indian population. The union territory of Jammu and Kashmir was covered by the survey, though no fieldwork was conducted in the Kashmir region itself due to security concerns.

This study, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation, is part of a larger effort by Pew Research Center to understand religious change and its impact on societies around the world. The Center previously has conducted religion-focused surveys across sub-Saharan Africa ; the Middle East-North Africa region and many other countries with large Muslim populations ; Latin America ; Israel ; Central and Eastern Europe ; Western Europe ; and the United States .

The rest of this Overview covers attitudes on five broad topics: caste and discrimination; religious conversion; religious observances and beliefs; how people define their religious identity, including what kind of behavior is considered acceptable to be a Hindu or a Muslim; and the connection between economic development and religious observance.

Caste is another dividing line in Indian society, and not just among Hindus

Religion is not the only fault line in Indian society. In some regions of the country, significant shares of people perceive widespread, caste-based discrimination.

The caste system is an ancient social hierarchy based on occupation and economic status. People are born into a particular caste and tend to keep many aspects of their social life within its boundaries, including whom they marry. Even though the system’s origins are in historical Hindu writings , today Indians nearly universally identify with a caste, regardless of whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain.

Overall, the majority of Indian adults say they are a member of a Scheduled Caste (SC) – often referred to as Dalits (25%) – Scheduled Tribe (ST) (9%) or Other Backward Class (OBC) (35%). 2

Buddhists in India nearly universally identify themselves in these categories, including 89% who are Dalits (sometimes referred to by the pejorative term “untouchables”).

Members of SC/ST/OBC groups traditionally formed the lower social and economic rungs of Indian society, and historically they have faced discrimination and unequal economic opportunities . The practice of untouchability in India ostracizes members of many of these communities, especially Dalits, although the Indian Constitution prohibits caste-based discrimination, including untouchability, and in recent decades the government has enacted economic advancement policies like reserved seats in universities and government jobs for Dalits, Scheduled Tribes and OBC communities.

Roughly 30% of Indians do not belong to these protected groups and are classified as “General Category.” This includes higher castes such as Brahmins (4%), traditionally the priestly caste. Indeed, each broad category includes several sub-castes – sometimes hundreds – with their own social and economic hierarchies.

Three-quarters of Jains (76%) identify with General Category castes, as do 46% of both Muslims and Sikhs.

Caste-based discrimination, as well as the government’s efforts to compensate for past discrimination, are politically charged topics in India . But the survey finds that most Indians do not perceive widespread caste-based discrimination. Just one-in-five Indians say there is a lot of discrimination against members of SCs, while 19% say there is a lot of discrimination against STs and somewhat fewer (16%) see high levels of discrimination against OBCs. Members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are slightly more likely than others to perceive widespread discrimination against their two groups. Still, large majorities of people in these categories do not think they face a lot of discrimination.

These attitudes vary by region, however. Among Southern Indians, for example, 30% see widespread discrimination against Dalits, compared with 13% in the Central part of the country. And among the Dalit community in the South, even more (43%) say their community faces a lot of discrimination, compared with 27% among Southern Indians in the General Category who say the Dalit community faces widespread discrimination in India.

A higher share of Dalits in the South and Northeast than elsewhere in the country say they, personally, have faced discrimination in the last 12 months because of their caste: 30% of Dalits in the South say this, as do 38% in the Northeast.

Although caste discrimination may not be perceived as widespread nationally, caste remains a potent factor in Indian society. Most Indians from other castes say they would be willing to have someone belonging to a Scheduled Caste as a neighbor (72%). But a similarly large majority of Indians overall (70%) say that most or all of their close friends share their caste. And Indians tend to object to marriages across caste lines, much as they object to interreligious marriages. 3

Overall, 64% of Indians say it is very important to stop women in their community from marrying into other castes, and about the same share (62%) say it is very important to stop men in their community from marrying into other castes. These figures vary only modestly across members of different castes. For example, nearly identical shares of Dalits and members of General Category castes say stopping inter-caste marriages is very important.

Majorities of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Jains consider stopping inter-caste marriage of both men and women a high priority. By comparison, fewer Buddhists and Christians say it is very important to stop such marriages – although for majorities of both groups, stopping people from marrying outside their caste is at least “somewhat” important.

People surveyed in India’s South and Northeast see greater caste discrimination in their communities, and they also raise fewer objections to inter-caste marriages than do Indians overall. Meanwhile, college-educated Indians are less likely than those with less education to say stopping inter-caste marriages is a high priority. But, even within the most highly educated group, roughly half say preventing such marriages is very important. (See Chapter 4 for more analysis of Indians’ views on caste.)

In recent years, conversion of people belonging to lower castes (including Dalits) away from Hinduism – a traditionally non-proselytizing religion – to proselytizing religions, especially Christianity, has been a contentious political issue in India. As of early 2021, nine states have enacted laws against proselytism , and some previous surveys have shown that half of Indians support legal bans on religious conversions. 4

This survey, though, finds that religious switching, or conversion, has a minimal impact on the overall size of India’s religious groups. For example, according to the survey, 82% of Indians say they were raised Hindu, and a nearly identical share say they are currently Hindu, showing no net losses for the group through conversion to other religions. Other groups display similar levels of stability.

Changes in India’s religious landscape over time are largely a result of differences in fertility rates among religious groups, not conversion.

Respondents were asked two separate questions to measure religious switching: “What is your present religion, if any?” and, later in the survey, “In what religion were you raised, if any?” Overall, 98% of respondents give the same answer to both these questions.

An overall pattern of stability in the share of religious groups is accompanied by little net gain from movement into, or out of, most religious groups. Among Hindus, for instance, any conversion out of the group is matched by conversion into the group: 0.7% of respondents say they were raised Hindu but now identify as something else, and although Hindu texts and traditions do not agree on any formal process for conversion into the religion, roughly the same share (0.8%) say they were  not raised Hindu but now identify as Hindu. 5  Most of these new followers of Hinduism are married to Hindus.

Similarly, 0.3% of respondents have left Islam since childhood, matched by an identical share who say they were raised in other religions (or had no childhood religion) and have since become Muslim.

For Christians, however, there are some net gains from conversion: 0.4% of survey respondents are former Hindus who now identify as Christian, while 0.1% are former Christians.

Three-quarters of India’s Hindu converts to Christianity (74%) are concentrated in the Southern part of the country – the region with the largest Christian population. As a result, the Christian population of the South shows a slight increase within the lifetime of survey respondents: 6% of Southern Indians say they were raised Christian, while 7% say they are currently Christian.

Some Christian converts (16%) reside in the East as well (the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal); about two-thirds of all Christians in the East (64%) belong to Scheduled Tribes.

Nationally, the vast majority of former Hindus who are now Christian belong to Scheduled Castes (48%), Scheduled Tribes (14%) or Other Backward Classes (26%). And former Hindus are much more likely than the Indian population overall to say there is a lot of discrimination against lower castes in India. For example, nearly half of converts to Christianity (47%) say there is a lot of discrimination against Scheduled Castes in India, compared with 20% of the overall population who perceive this level of discrimination against Scheduled Castes. Still, relatively few converts say they, personally, have faced discrimination due to their caste in the last 12 months (12%).

Though their specific practices and beliefs may vary, all of India’s major religious communities are highly observant by standard measures. For instance, the vast majority of Indians, across all major faiths, say that religion is very important in their lives. And at least three-quarters of each major religion’s followers say they know a great deal about their own religion and its practices. For example, 81% of Indian Buddhists claim a great deal of knowledge about the Buddhist religion and its practices.

Indian Muslims are slightly more likely than Hindus to consider religion very important in their lives (91% vs. 84%). Muslims also are modestly more likely than Hindus to say they know a great deal about their own religion (84% vs. 75%).

Significant portions of each religious group also pray daily, with Christians among the most likely to do so (77%) – even though Christians are the least likely of the six groups to say religion is very important in their lives (76%). Most Hindus and Jains also pray daily (59% and 73%, respectively) and say they perform puja daily (57% and 81%), either at home or at a temple. 6

Generally, younger and older Indians, those with different educational backgrounds, and men and women are similar in their levels of religious observance. South Indians are the least likely to say religion is very important in their lives (69%), and the South is the only region where fewer than half of people report praying daily (37%). While Hindus, Muslims and Christians in the South are all less likely than their counterparts elsewhere in India to say religion is very important to them, the lower rate of prayer in the South is driven mainly by Hindus: Three-in-ten Southern Hindus report that they pray daily (30%), compared with roughly two-thirds (68%) of Hindus in the rest of the country (see “ People in the South differ from rest of the country in their views of religion, national identity ” below for further discussion of religious differences in Southern India).

The survey also asked about three rites of passage: religious ceremonies for birth (or infancy), marriage and death. Members of all of India’s major religious communities tend to see these rites as highly important. For example, the vast majority of Muslims (92%), Christians (86%) and Hindus (85%) say it is very important to have a religious burial or cremation for their loved ones.

The survey also asked about practices specific to particular religions, such as whether people have received purification by bathing in holy bodies of water, like the Ganges River, a rite closely associated with Hinduism. About two-thirds of Hindus have done this (65%). Most Hindus also have holy basil (the tulsi plant) in their homes, as do most Jains (72% and 62%, respectively). And about three-quarters of Sikhs follow the Sikh practice of keeping their hair long (76%).

For more on religious practices across India’s religious groups, see Chapter 7 .

Nearly all Indians say they believe in God (97%), and roughly 80% of people in most religious groups say they are absolutely certain that God exists. The main exception is Buddhists, one-third of whom say they do not believe in God. Still, among Buddhists who do think there is a God, most say they are absolutely certain in this belief.

While belief in God is close to universal in India, the survey finds a wide range of views about the type of deity or deities that Indians believe in. The prevailing view is that there is one God “with many manifestations” (54%). But about one-third of the public says simply: “There is only one God” (35%). Far fewer say there are many gods (6%).

Even though Hinduism is sometimes referred to as a polytheistic religion , very few Hindus (7%) take the position that there are multiple gods. Instead, the most common position among Hindus (as well as among Jains) is that there is “only one God with many manifestations” (61% among Hindus and 54% among Jains).

Among Hindus, those who say religion is very important in their lives are more likely than other Hindus to believe in one God with many manifestations (63% vs. 50%) and less likely to say there are many gods (6% vs. 12%).

By contrast, majorities of Muslims, Christians and Sikhs say there is only one God. And among Buddhists, the most common response is also a belief in one God. Among all these groups, however, about one-in-five or more say God has many manifestations, a position closer to their Hindu compatriots’ concept of God.

Most Hindus feel close to multiple gods, but Shiva, Hanuman and Ganesha are most popular

Traditionally, many Hindus have a “personal god,” or  ishta devata:  A particular god or goddess with whom they feel a personal connection. The survey asked all Indian Hindus who say they believe in God which god they feel closest to – showing them 15 images of gods on a card as possible options – and the vast majority of Hindus selected more than one god or indicated that they have many personal gods (84%). 7  This is true not only among Hindus who say they believe in many gods (90%) or in one God with many manifestations (87%), but also among those who say there is only one God (82%).

The god that Hindus most commonly feel close to is Shiva (44%). In addition, about one-third of Hindus feel close to Hanuman or Ganesha (35% and 32%, respectively).

There is great regional variation in how close India’s Hindus feel to some gods. For example, 46% of Hindus in India’s West feel close to Ganesha, but only 15% feel this way in the Northeast. And 46% of Hindus in the Northeast feel close to Krishna, while just 14% in the South say the same.

Feelings of closeness for Lord Ram are especially strong in the Central region (27%), which includes what Hindus claim is his ancient birthplace , Ayodhya. The location in Ayodhya where many Hindus believe Ram was born has been a source of controversy: Hindu mobs demolished a mosque on the site in 1992, claiming that a Hindu temple originally existed there. In 2019, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the demolished mosque had been built on top of a preexisting non-Islamic structure and that the land should be given to Hindus to build a temple, with another location in the area given to the Muslim community to build a new mosque. (For additional findings on belief in God, see Chapter 12 .)

Sidebar: Despite economic advancement, few signs that importance of religion is declining

A prominent theory in the social sciences hypothesizes that as countries advance economically, their populations tend to become less religious, often leading to wider social change. Known as “secularization theory,” it particularly reflects the experience of Western European countries from the end of World War II to the present.

Despite rapid economic growth, India’s population so far shows few, if any, signs of losing its religion. For instance, both the Indian census and the new survey find virtually no growth in the minuscule share of people who claim no religious identity. And religion is prominent in the lives of Indians regardless of their socioeconomic status. Generally, across the country, there is little difference in personal religious observance between urban and rural residents or between those who are college educated versus those who are not. Overwhelming shares among all these groups say that religion is very important in their lives, that they pray regularly and that they believe in God.

Nearly all religious groups show the same patterns. The biggest exception is Christians, among whom those with higher education and those who reside in urban areas show somewhat lower levels of observance. For example, among Christians who have a college degree, 59% say religion is very important in their life, compared with 78% among those who have less education.

The survey does show a slight decline in the perceived importance of religion during the lifetime of respondents, though the vast majority of Indians indicate that religion remains central to their lives, and this is true among both younger and older adults.

Nearly nine-in-ten Indian adults say religion was very important to their family when they were growing up (88%), while a slightly lower share say religion is very important to them now (84%). The pattern is identical when looking only at India’s majority Hindu population. Among Muslims in India, the same shares say religion was very important to their family growing up and is very important to them now (91% each).

The states of Southern India (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Telangana) show the biggest downward trend in the perceived importance of religion over respondents’ lifetimes: 76% of Indians who live in the South say religion was very important to their family growing up, compared with 69% who say religion is personally very important to them now. Slight declines in the importance of religion, by this measure, also are seen in the Western part of the country (Goa, Gujarat and Maharashtra) and in the North, although large majorities in all regions of the country say religion is very important in their lives today.

Despite a strong desire for religious segregation, India’s religious groups share patriotic feelings, cultural values and some religious beliefs. For instance, overwhelming shares across India’s religious communities say they are very proud to be Indian, and most agree that Indian culture is superior to others.

Similarly, Indians of different religious backgrounds hold elders in high respect. For instance, nine-in-ten or more Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Jains say that respecting elders is very important to what being a member of their religious group means to them (e.g., for Hindus, it’s a very important part of their Hindu identity). Christians and Sikhs also overwhelmingly share this sentiment. And among all people surveyed in all six groups, three-quarters or more say that respecting elders is very important to being truly Indian.

Within all six religious groups, eight-in-ten or more also say that helping the poor and needy is a crucial part of their religious identity.

Beyond cultural parallels, many people mix traditions from multiple religions into their practices: As a result of living side by side for generations, India’s minority groups often engage in practices that are more closely associated with Hindu traditions than their own. For instance, many Muslim, Sikh and Christian women in India say they wear a bindi (a forehead marking, often worn by married women), even though putting on a bindi has Hindu origins.

Similarly, many people embrace beliefs not traditionally associated with their faith: Muslims in India are just as likely as Hindus to say they believe in karma (77% each), and 54% of Indian Christians share this view. 8  Nearly three-in-ten Muslims and Christians say they believe in reincarnation (27% and 29%, respectively). While these may seem like theological contradictions, for many Indians, calling oneself a Muslim or a Christian does not preclude believing in karma or reincarnation – beliefs that do not have a traditional, doctrinal basis in Islam or Christianity.

Most Muslims and Christians say they don’t participate in celebrations of Diwali, the Indian festival of lights that is traditionally celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists. But substantial minorities of Christians (31%) and Muslims (20%) report that they do celebrate Diwali. Celebrating Diwali is especially common among Muslims in the West, where 39% say they participate in the festival, and in the South (33%).

Not only do some followers of all these religions participate in a celebration (Diwali) that consumes most of the country once a year, but some members of the majority Hindu community celebrate Muslim and Christian festivals, too: 7% of Indian Hindus say they celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid, and 17% celebrate Christmas.

While there is some mixing of religious celebrations and traditions within India’s diverse population, many Hindus do not approve of this. In fact, while 17% of the nation’s Hindus say they participate in Christmas celebrations, about half of Hindus (52%) say that doing so disqualifies a person from being Hindu (compared with 35% who say a person can be Hindu if they celebrate Christmas). An even greater share of Hindus (63%) say a person cannot be Hindu if they celebrate the Islamic festival of Eid – a view that is more widely held in Northern, Central, Eastern and Northeastern India than the South or West.

Hindus are divided on whether beliefs and practices such as believing in God, praying and going to the temple are necessary to be a Hindu. But one behavior that a clear majority of Indian Hindus feel is incompatible with Hinduism is eating beef: 72% of Hindus in India say a person who eats beef cannot be a Hindu. That is even higher than the percentages of Hindus who say a person cannot be Hindu if they reject belief in God (49%), never go to a temple (48%) or never perform prayers (48%).

Attitudes toward beef appear to be part of a regional and cultural divide among Hindus: Southern Indian Hindus are considerably less likely than others to disqualify beef eaters from being Hindu (50% vs. 83% in the Northern and Central parts of the country). And, at least in part, Hindus’ views on beef and Hindu identity are linked with a preference for religious segregation and elements of Hindu nationalism. For example, Hindus who take a strong position against eating beef are more likely than others to say they would not accept followers of other religions as their neighbors (49% vs. 30%) and to say it is very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian (68% vs. 51%).

Relatedly, 44% of Hindus say they are vegetarians, and an additional 33% say they abstain from eating certain meats. Hindus traditionally view cows as sacred, and laws pertaining to cow slaughter have been a recent flashpoint in India . At the same time, Hindus are not alone in linking beef consumption with religious identity: 82% of Sikhs and 85% of Jains surveyed say that a person who eats beef cannot be a member of their religious groups, either. A majority of Sikhs (59%) and fully 92% of Jains say they are vegetarians, including 67% of Jains who do not eat root vegetables . 9  (For more data on religion and dietary habits, see Chapter 10 .)

Sidebar: People in the South differ from rest of the country in their views of religion, national identity

The survey consistently finds that people in the South (the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, and the union territory of Puducherry) differ from Indians elsewhere in the country in their views on religion, politics and identity.

For example, by a variety of measures, people in the South are somewhat less religious than those in other regions – 69% say religion is very important in their lives, versus 92% in the Central part of the country. And 37% say they pray every day, compared with more than half of Indians in other regions. People in the South also are less segregated by religion or caste – whether that involves their friendship circles, the kind of neighbors they prefer or how they feel about intermarriage. (See Chapter 3 .)

Hindu nationalist sentiments also appear to have less of a foothold in the South. Among Hindus, those in the South (42%) are far less likely than those in Central states (83%) or the North (69%) to say being Hindu is very important to be truly Indian. And in the 2019 parliamentary elections, the BJP’s lowest vote share came in the South. In the survey, just 19% of Hindus in the region say they voted for the BJP, compared with roughly two-thirds in the Northern (68%) and Central (65%) parts of the country who say they voted for the ruling party.

Culturally and politically, people in the South have pushed back against the BJP’s restrictions on cow slaughter and efforts to nationalize the Hindi language . These factors may contribute to the BJP’s lower popularity in the South, where more people prefer regional parties or the Indian National Congress party.

These differences in attitudes and practices exist in a wider context of economic disparities between the South and other regions of the country. Over time, Southern states have seen stronger economic growth than the Northern and Central parts of the country. And women and people belonging to lower castes in the South have fared better economically than their counterparts elsewhere in the country. Even though three-in-ten people in the South say there is widespread caste discrimination in India, the region also has a history of anti-caste movements . Indeed, one author has attributed the economic growth of the South largely to the flattening of caste hierarchies.

Muslim identity in India

Most Muslims in India say a person cannot be Muslim if they never pray or attend a mosque. Similarly, about six-in-ten say that celebrating Diwali or Christmas is incompatible with being a member of the Muslim community. At the same time, a substantial minority express a degree of open-mindedness on who can be a Muslim, with fully one-third (34%) saying a person can be Muslim even if they don’t believe in God. (The survey finds that 6% of self-described Muslims in India say they do not believe in God; see “ Near-universal belief in God, but wide variation in how God is perceived ” above.)

Like Hindus, Muslims have dietary restrictions that resonate as powerful markers of identity. Three-quarters of Indian Muslims (77%) say that a person cannot be Muslim if they eat pork, which is even higher than the share who say a person cannot be Muslim if they do not believe in God (60%) or never attend mosque (61%).

Indian Muslims also report high levels of religious commitment by a host of conventional measures: 91% say religion is very important in their lives, two-thirds (66%) say they pray at least once a day, and seven-in-ten say they attend mosque at least once a week – with even higher attendance among Muslim men (93%).

By all these measures, Indian Muslims are broadly comparable to Muslims in the neighboring Muslim-majority countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in those countries in late 2011 and early 2012. In Pakistan, for example, 94% of Muslims said religion is very important in their lives , while 81% of Bangladeshi Muslims said the same. Muslims in India are somewhat more likely than those elsewhere in South Asia to say they regularly worship at a mosque (70% in India vs. 59% in Pakistan and 53% in Bangladesh), with the difference mainly driven by the share of women who attend.

At the same time, Muslims in India are slightly less likely to say there is “only one true” interpretation of Islam (72% in Pakistan, 69% in Bangladesh, 63% in India), as opposed to multiple interpretations.

When it comes to their religious beliefs, Indian Muslims in some ways resemble Indian Hindus more than they resemble Muslims in neighboring countries. For example, Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh almost universally say they believe in heaven and angels, but Indian Muslims seem more skeptical: 58% say they believe in heaven and 53% express belief in angels. Among Indian Hindus, similarly, 56% believe in heaven and 49% believe in angels.

Majority of Muslim women in India oppose ‘triple talaq’ (Islamic divorce)

Many Indian Muslims historically have followed the Hanafi school of thought, which for centuries allowed men to divorce their wives by saying “talaq” (which translates as “divorce” in Arabic and Urdu) three times. Traditionally, there was supposed to be a waiting period and attempts at reconciliation in between each use of the word, and it was deeply frowned upon (though technically permissible) for a man to pronounce “talaq” three times quickly in a row. India’s Supreme Court ruled triple talaq unconstitutional in 2017, and it was banned by legislation in 2019 .

Most Indian Muslims (56%) say Muslim men should not be allowed to divorce this way. Still, 37% of Indian Muslims say they support triple talaq, with Muslim men (42%) more likely than Muslim women (32%) to take this position. A majority of Muslim women (61%) oppose triple talaq.

Highly religious Muslims – i.e., those who say religion is very important in their lives – also are more likely than other Muslims to say Muslim men should be able to divorce their wives simply by saying “talaq” three times (39% vs. 26%).

Triple talaq seems to have the most support among Muslims in the Southern and Northeastern regions of India, where half or more of Muslims say it should be legal (58% and 50%, respectively), although 12% of Muslims in the South and 16% in the Northeast do not take a position on the issue either way.

Sikhism is one of four major religions – along with Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – that originated on the Indian subcontinent. The Sikh religion emerged in Punjab in the 15th century, when Guru Nanak, who is revered as the founder of Sikhism, became the first in a succession of 10 gurus (teachers) in the religion.

Today, India’s Sikhs remain concentrated in the state of Punjab. One feature of the Sikh religion is a distinctive sense of community, also known as “Khalsa” (which translates as “ones who are pure”). Observant Sikhs differentiate themselves from others in several ways, including keeping their hair uncut. Today, about three-quarters of Sikh men and women in India say they keep their hair long (76%), and two-thirds say it is very important to them that children in their families also keep their hair long (67%). (For more analysis of Sikhs’ views on passing religious traditions on to their children, see Chapter 8 .)

Sikhs are more likely than Indian adults overall to say they attend religious services every day – 40% of Sikhs say they go to the gurdwara (Sikh house of worship) daily. By comparison, 14% of Hindus say they go to a Hindu temple every day. Moreover, the vast majority of Sikhs (94%) regard their holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, as the word of God, and many (37%) say they read it, or listen to recitations of it, every day.

Sikhs in India also incorporate other religious traditions into their practice. Some Sikhs (9%) say they follow Sufi orders, which are linked with Islam, and about half (52%) say they have a lot in common with Hindus. Roughly one-in-five Indian Sikhs say they have prayed, meditated or performed a ritual at a Hindu temple.

Sikh-Hindu relations were marked by violence in the 1970s and 1980s, when demands for a separate Sikh state covering the Punjab regions in both India and Pakistan (also known as the Khalistan movement) reached their apex. In 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards as revenge for Indian paramilitary forces storming the Sikh Golden Temple in pursuit of Sikh militants. Anti-Sikh riots ensued in Northern India, especially in the state of Punjab.

According to the Indian census, the vast majority of Sikhs in India (77%) still live in Punjab, where Sikhs make up 58% of the adult population. And 93% of Punjabi Sikhs say they are very proud to live in the state.

Sikhs also are overwhelmingly proud of their Indian identity. A near-universal share of Sikhs say they are very proud to be Indian (95%), and the vast majority (70%) say a person who disrespects India cannot be a Sikh. And like India’s other religious groups, most Sikhs do not see evidence of widespread discrimination against their community – just 14% say Sikhs face a lot of discrimination in India, and 18% say they personally have faced religious discrimination in the last year.

At the same time, Sikhs are more likely than other religious communities to see communal violence as a very big problem in the country. Nearly eight-in-ten Sikhs (78%) rate communal violence as a major issue, compared with 65% of Hindus and Muslims.

The BJP has attempted to financially compensate Sikhs for some of the violence that occurred in 1984 after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, but relatively few Sikh voters (19%) report having voted for the BJP in the 2019 parliamentary elections. The survey finds that 33% of Sikhs preferred the Indian National Congress Party – Gandhi’s party.

• Ahmed, Hilal. 2019. “ Siyasi Muslims: A story of political Islams in India .” ↩
• All survey respondents, regardless of religion, were asked, “Are you from a General Category, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class?” By contrast, in the 2011 census of India, only Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists could be enumerated as members of Scheduled Castes, while Scheduled Tribes could include followers of all religions. General Category and Other Backward Classes were not measured in the census. A detailed analysis of differences between 2011 census data on caste and survey data can be found here . ↩
• According to the 2004 and 2009 National Election Studies by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), roughly half of Indians or more said that marriages of boys and girls from different castes should be  banned . In 2004, a majority also said this about people from different religions. ↩
• In both the 2004 and 2009 National Election Studies (organized by CSDS), roughly half of Indians said that “There should be a legal ban on religious conversions.” ↩
• This includes 0.2% of all Indian adults who now identify as Hindu but give an ambiguous response on how they were raised – either saying “some other religion” or saying they don’t know their childhood religion. ↩
• Puja is a specific worship ritual that involves prayer along with rites like offering flowers and food, using vermillion, singing and chanting. ↩
• Fifteen named deities were available for selection, though no answer options were read aloud. Respondents could select up to three of those 15 deities by naming them or selecting the corresponding image shown on a card. The answer option “another god” was available on the card or if any other deity name was volunteered by the respondent. Other possible answer options included “I do not have a god I feel closest to” and “I have many personal gods,” though neither was on the card. See the questionnaire or topline for the full list of gods offered. ↩
• The religious origins of karma are debated by scholars, but the concept has deep roots in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. ↩
• For an analysis of Jain theology on the concept of  jiva  (soul) see Chapple, Christopher K. 2014. “Life All Around: Soul in Jainism.” In Biernacki, Loriliai and Philip Clayton, eds. “ Panentheism Across the World’s Traditions .” ↩

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7 (page 120) p. 120 Conclusion

• Published: January 2007
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Towards the end of the last century, it was thought that politics and religion were drifting part. Political theorists believed that in different ways, secularization was intergral to modernization. By the 1980s, it became clear that religious activism was far from being confined to the Islamic world and new politicized movements were occurring in virtually every religious tradition. The Conclusion summarizes reasons for the recent revival of religion generally, and the rise of fundamentalism in particular. Religion, or in certain cases, religious difference, is a vital component in the construction of national identity. Religious feeling has also been invoked in the course of the struggle against colonialism. Religious rhetoric can still mobilize and motivate.

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Hindutva as a Political Religion: An Historical Perspective

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• Robert E. Frykenberg  

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This essay attempts to show how — from an analytical or from an historical perspective — Hindutva is a melding of Hindu fascism and Hindu fundamentalism. Claims that it is a profoundly religious and profoundly, even aggressively, political form of militant nationalism are clear. From earliest glimmerings of its inception, its agents have combined ambiguity with confrontation, compromise, and contradiction as tactical devices for achieving long range corporatist designs for gaining paramount power and imposing a totalistic agenda upon all of India. This agenda of ‘Hindutva’ or ‘Ram Rajiya’ (‘Rama’s Realm’) aims to forge ‘One Nation (in One State), One Culture, One Religion, and One Language.’ In Lord Rama’s name, a single ‘Hindu Nation’ for the whole Indian Continent must be ruled by the precepts of Arya Dharm , or Sanāt ana Dharma . 1 Sanskriti icons, norms, and symbols, invoking cosmic and eternal verities of Vedic Law, must be reflected in principles on which this Nation must stand. Under this regime, a changeless social structure of the Four Colour Categories ( Chatur Varnya ), as manifest in varnās hramadharma , both reflected the proper place of each birth ( jāt ) or caste ( j¯at i ) in its rightful rank and status — its strata of purity or impurity. Birth and Earth, Genomes in Sacred Blood and Molecules of Sacred Soil, determined everyone’s place and rank within an all-encompassing and cosmic ‘World Order’ ( Vishwa Dharma ).

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Frykenberg, R.E. (2008). Hindutva as a Political Religion: An Historical Perspective. In: Griffin, R., Mallett, R., Tortorice, J. (eds) The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230241633_10

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Global Analysis

The rise of hindu fundamentalism.

Implications for India and global mission

There has been increasing concern around the world for some years about the rise of Hindu fundamentalism or Hindutva. [1]

The political party in India which embodies Hindutva is the BJP , which first came to power at national level in 1996 for just 13 days, then for some 13 months in 1998–1999, and for the third time from 1999 to 2004. On each occasion, the BJP led a coalition government. In the 2014 national elections, the BJP won an absolute parliamentary majority.

The current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, has been a lifelong enthusiast for the main Hindutvan [2] organization, the RSS , which focuses on imposing its own particular understanding of dharma (the right behaviour, right economics and right social order) on the whole of India.

As Dr BR Ambedkar, the father of the Indian Constitution put it, Hindutva is a ‘menace to liberty, equality and fraternity . . . incompatible with democracy’, [3] primarily because Hindutvans do not hesitate to use lies and violence to attain their ends.

The political ideology of Hindutva is an assertion of ‘Indian identity’ and ‘Indian nationhood’.

Hindutva—what is it?

The political ideology of Hindutva is, according to its followers, an assertion of ‘Indian identity’ and ‘Indian nationhood’. Hindutva claims to be cultural, civilizational, and nonreligious, working for the well-being of all Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Ayyavazhis, Jains, and Lingayats, as well as those Muslims, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians who accept India as their ‘fatherland’ [4] and their ‘holy land’. [5]

Hindutva promotes the Gita —which, historically, has been a holy text only for some Hindu sects. Although the Gita is accepted as inspirational by many Hindus, particularly since the end of the nineteenth century, the texts that are accepted as sacred by all Hindus are, rather, the different and millennia-old Vedas .

A 19th-century Sanskrit manuscript of the Bhagavad Gita, Devanagari script

Hindutvans promote ‘Hindu values’, the ‘Hindu way of life’, a ‘common history’, ‘common ancestry’ and ‘common Indian culture’ as well as a ‘common Civil Code’ [6] and economic growth that accords with ‘native ethics and morals’. However, the BJP and RSS refuse to define these terms. For example, it is not clear if they include:

• the caste system;
• getting up before dawn for a ritual bath so that one can pray to idols;
• arranged marriage;
• the traditional ‘joint family’ [7] system;
• eating only vegetarian food;
• being ‘anti-Western’ ( eg not wearing jeans if you’re a man, and not wearing slacks or skirts if you’re a woman);
• speaking, reading and writing only in Sanskrit.

That is why many Indians see Hindutvans as representing only themselves, trying to gain political power in order to benefit mainly the community of businesspeople who support and are in turn patronized by them.

Hindutva rise

Despite such vagueness and self-interest, Hindutva has grown for two reasons:

• Hindutva presents itself as clean and dedicated to building up the nation, in contrast to the greed and selfishness of the generations of political leaders that followed the idealists who led India to independence.
• The RSS and BJP have been able to find backers to fund the training into a disciplined cadre of those who are cut off from the immense privileges of the top castes.

Alarming consequences

Since Modi’s election in 2014, as part of a strategy to channel foreign-origin funds only to Hindutvan organizations, over 20,000 non-Hindutvan civil society organizations have had their registration cancelled. Others such as Amnesty International , Greenpeace , the Ford Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have been harassed and their funds blocked.

Threats are increasingly used to intimidate ordinary people

Furthermore, threats are increasingly used to intimidate ordinary people, with marauding bands hired for physical attacks on all who disagree with Hindutva—especially if they are Hindus. The BJP-run state apparatus has even been implicated in the killing of police officers and judges who adhere to the Constitution and therefore refuse to align with the anti-democratic wishes of the BJP/ RSS. Hindu terrorism against non-Hindutvan Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Dalit-Bahujans, and other groups, which has gradually increased since the 1980s, has received a massive boost as violence now has official support .

India’s refugee and citizenship policies have also changed radically. For example, citizenship laws have been amended to make it easier to strip Indian Muslims of citizenship and to confer Indian citizenship on Hindu refugees from Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, in the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir (India’s only Muslim-majority state), the BJP’s anti-Muslim policies have turned an increasing number of Kashmiris against the Indian government.

The next national elections are scheduled to be held at the latest by May this year. Only a few months ago, despite Modi’s political missteps, it would have been a very brave or foolish person who predicted anything other than a consolidation of his position, perhaps even such an overwhelming majority as to enable him to change the Constitution (the BJP’s aim). However, there has been a growing feeling that Modi’s government has made too many claims and promises and delivered very little, except to its cronies . The rebuff delivered to the BJP in the five recent State elections may be a harbinger of defeat in May.

At present, there appear to be six possible scenarios for the immediate future:

• RSS creates such pre-election internal chaos as to enable Modi to take over complete power indefinitely by declaring a national emergency and so suspending the Constitution.
• Modi holds the election and wins an increased mandate or at least the same number of seats as now.
• Modi wins by a reduced majority but still enough to be an effective ruler.
• Modi returns to power but only in an alliance with other parties.
• Modi is removed as leader by the BJP and scenarios 2-4 play out under another leader.
• BJP loses so badly as to be forced to return to the Opposition benches, whether led by Modi or by someone else.

However, what happens now is less important than the long-term future.

Hindutva has no real answers for the country.

Long-term implications

Hindutva has no real answers for the country. Harking back to an imagined glorious past is not going to help India face its enormous challenges today. It is therefore inevitable that there will be widespread disillusionment with Hindutva.

That will provide an opportunity: we can finally move from trying to reach the poor and marginalized as individuals to addressing also national challenges [8] and influencing both the masses and the leaders of our country.

Mission, therefore, now needs to be directed not just to the materially poorest (as is currently the case) but to the vast mass of those who will be (and are already beginning to be) disillusioned with Hindutva. That needs to be done, not with traditional approaches, but with new ones that take seriously the desire of Indians to solve our very real national problems so that we can hold our heads high in the world—not on the basis of illusions but on the basis of the gospel that enables our people to be liberated from ancient and modern structures that result in bondage, ignorance, disease, and exploitation.

Recommendations

Indian organizations.

Reallocate resources in theological education as well as in frontline work to focus on national challenges, specifically for the educated elite in the key cities: the national and state capitals, the IT-leading cities (Bengaluru, Pune, Noida/Gurgaon), small and medium-sized business owners, young professionals, journalists, writers, broadcasters, thinkers, and those who are active on social media.

Wherever Hindutva has invested the most are exactly the areas and groups that will become most responsive once disillusionment sets in. Specifically, focus on developing and communicating a biblical perspective on topics such as national development, eliminating corruption, [9] education, family, love, suffering, health, and technology.

Non-Indian organizations

Abandon the unbiblical mindset which focuses on best returns on financial investment. Basing support on earthly ‘results’ is a huge incentive to malpractice and blatant lying—using wrong methods to make illusory converts and then using those faked numbers to raise funds.

While the rise of Hindutva has made non-Indian sponsorship of mission work harder, that is no bad thing: externally funded chaff is falling away, and genuine spiritual life will shine all the brighter. However, Hindutvans attack not only lives but also livelihoods, so the capacity of Indian believers to earn money needs to be increased by awarding scholarships for higher studies in professional and academic fields other than theology and by partnering in business.

Individual Indian followers of Jesus

We need to be prepared to suffer persecution, marginalization, and even death in order to continue to be faithful witnesses to him who has transformed us. We also need to focus on working in the public square to ensure the saltiness of the Constitution, the legal system, medicine, health, education, roads, railways, mapping, engineering, accountancy, technology, etc. so that the whole nation will acknowledge the debt in all these that is owed to Christ.

Indian and other believers

Some Christians unintelligently pray for Modi to lose these elections. Is it not possible that someone worse may replace him? So how should we pray? As Scripture instructs us, we should pray:

• right now, against wrong-headed policies and practices and for Modi and other leaders to be led by the Lord, even unconsciously;
• for the elections to raise up the best possible leaders;
• and after the election of new leaders (whoever they are), for them to become better and wiser as they experience the challenges of leading the development of our nation.

We all need to make clear that individuals may oppose or support any political party (including the BJP) but our primary commitment as a body is good governance so that all Indians (and not just a few) may flourish.

Broader implications

Sadly, in general, the global church has moved in the direction of extracting from the Scriptures just enough truth to make a sort of aspirin for individuals to feel comforted. Doing that leaves out what makes God’s Word a whip and a hammer for social and political structures. The Bible is intended by God to be a fire by which whole nations or indeed the whole globe can be kept alight.

While there have been several good contributions towards developing a biblical view of globalization, there have been very few efforts at exploring a biblical view of nations, specifically in view of the rise of nationalisms. For example:

• Iran has Shia Muslim nationalism.
• India has Hindutvan nationalism.
• Sri Lanka has Buddhist nationalism.
• China has Xi-inspired Maoist nationalism.
• Russia has Putin-inspired Eastern Orthodox nationalism.

What is also needed is a biblical view of each particular nation, given its own peculiar history and characteristics.

All nationalisms have certain elements in common, but each also has several unique ingredients. So, while a global theology of nations needs to be developed, what is also needed is a biblical view of each particular nation, given its own peculiar history and characteristics. Finally, that individual theology of the particular nation needs to be communicated to ordinary believers in that country so that they can express it in relation to their families, neighbourhoods, professional challenges, and—most importantly—national debates in the mainstream media.

In other words, the discipling of believers needs to be taken much more seriously. Even if we had many more evangelists, they cannot exercise their gifts in public where nationalisms become dominant. That is why, in an age of rising nationalisms, the primary requirement for the global church is more believers embodying and communicating the gospel in their neighbourhoods and places of work.

• Editor’s Note: See article by Tehmina Arora, entitled, ‘Religious Identity, Nationalism, and Violence’, in May 2018 issue of Lausanne Global Analysis https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2018-05/religious-identity-nationalism-and-violence .
• Or ‘Hindutvavaadi’—although that is a North Indian linguistic construction. South Indian languages would tend to produce a word something like ‘Hindutvan’. Although the BJP and RSS have tried to establish themselves in South India, the tenets and practices they follow are basically North Indian.
• Dr B. R. Ambedkar, Thoughts on Pakistan (Writings and Speeches, Vol 8, p 358).
• In most Indian languages, including Sanskrit, the land is considered female. It is a peculiarity of BJP/ RSS that, in search of muscularity, and particularly under the influence of Hitler’s Mein Kampf , they prefer to refer to India as ‘fatherland’ rather than ‘motherland’.
• ‘Holy land’ in the same sense as Jews regard Israel, or Muslims regard Saudi Arabia.
• The Indian Constitution recognizes different family laws for Hindus, Muslims, etc. Hindutvans would like every Indian to be under a Civil Code that is aligned with the Hindutvan view.
• That is, an extended family, consisting of at least three generations and their spouses, living together as a single household.
• Editor’s Note: See article by Ken Gnanakan and Atul Aghamkar, entitled, ‘India’s Water Crisis’, in March 2018 issue of Lausanne Global Analysis https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2018-03/indias-water-crisis .
• Editor’s Note: See article by Arpit Waghmare, entitled, ‘Choosing to be Salt & Light’, in November 2012 issue of Lausanne Global Analysis https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2012-11/choosing-to-be-salt-light-can-the-church-in-india-become-a-model-in-the-fight-for-anti-corruption .

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‘ i’ve voted! ‘ by Parthan ( CC BY-SA 2.0 ).

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Fundamentalism

In today’s world, Fundamentalism is a concept whose reach and relevance is a hotly debated topic. Usually fundamentalism is closely associated with religious beliefs and it’s the most visible of all manifestations of fundamentalism.

In India, fundamentalism can take many forms with religion being at its core. What are its types and what are its implications in India and how is it different from communalism?

These questions will be answered in this article. The information from this article will be useful in IAS Exam

Definition of Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism is defined as a tendency among certain groups – more often, but not being exclusively – in religious terms, to strictly and literally follow certain specific scriptures, dogmas or ideologies with a strong importance of maintaining ingroup and outgroup distinctions.

Fundamentalists emphasize on purity and have a strong desire to return to previous ideals which they believe its members have strayed from. Rejection of diversity of opinion as applied to these established “fundamentals” and their accepted interpretation within the group often results from this tendency.

Entirely depending on the context at hand “fundamentalism” is a pejorative term rather than being a neutral characterization. It comes with a set of its own negative connotations that its own adherents will hesitate to associate with.

Fundamentalism – Download PDF Here

Origin of Fundamentalism

The origin concept of “fundamentalism” was found in a set of four-volume books published in 1909 – “The Fundamentals”. Published by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Now the Biola University) between 1909 and 1920, these books appealed to Christian to affirm certain fundamental doctrines in Christianity. It would come to represent the “ Fundamentalist Modernist controversy” that would rage in the late 19th century within the Protestant churches of the United states and continued through the 1920s.

Soon it came to be associated with a particular segment of evangelical Protestantism, who set themselves apart from the separatist approach towards modernity and towards other Christians who would not agree with their views. It would also apply to other religious groups both within and without, who would stick to only certain beliefs while completely disregarding other views.

What is the rationale behind Fundamentalism?

As mentioned earlier, fundamentalism refers to religious beliefs. Most forms of religious fundamentalism have similar traits. Religious fundamentalists believe that their sacred books and scriptures are the literal word of God. Since, scriptures themselves are seen as something that is without any errors, fundamentalism believed that no one has to right to change them or disagree with it as they believe that God made these scriptures for His followers and thus no mistakes can be found in them

Fundamentalists also commonly believe that their way of life and treasured truths are under attack by the forces of secularism and liberalism.

Fundamentalists believed that their cause will have cosmic importance. They see themselves as protectors of a way of life and a distinctive doctrine. Community, comprehensively centered upon a clearly defined religious way of life in all of its aspects, is the promise of fundamentalist movements.

Types of Fundamentalism

There are two types of Fundamentalism

• Religious Fundamentalism
• Non-religious Fundamentalism.

The forms of religious fundamentalism are as follows:

• Christian Fundamentalism
• Islamic Fundamentalism
• Buddhist Fundamentalism
• Sikh and Hindu Fundamentalism
• Jewish Fundamentalism

Non-religious fundamentalism

It should be noted that any intolerant philosophy, which sees itself being the ultimate truth, is referred to as fundamentalism, regardless of religious affiliation and beliefs. An example of this is when Albania, under communist rule during the Cold War , declared itself an “atheist state”, it was seen by many as a form of “fundamentalist atheism”

In France, the imposition of restrictions on public display of religion has been labeled by some as “secular fundamentalism.”  The very idea of fundamentalism is about the idea of purity and is self-applied rather than a counter culture principle.

What is the difference between Fundamentalism and Communalism?

Fundamentalism has gained wide currency in the contemporary world and it refers to a variety of norms, values, attitudes which either judge the fundamentalists or condemn them outright. This world is sometimes used in place of communalism. However, there is subtle difference between the two in below aspects:

While communalism is all about political or economic interests of a particular community, fundamentalism is enforcement of sectarianism with all rigidity for political mobilisation of a community for the power-goals of its elite.

While communalism is the exploitation of sentiments of a religion-based community for a secular goal, fundamentalism is enforcing narrow sectarian practices for strengthening religious orthodoxy as well as achieving political power.

Thus, there is a very thin line that differentiates fundamentalism with communalism. However, in today’s context, both are political instruments and try to mobilize people on religious grounds.

Learn the Difference between communalism, regionalism and secularism in the linked article.

Frequently Asked Question about Fundamentalism

What is an example of fundamentalism, what are fundamentalist beliefs.

Candidates can refer to the following links for further government exam preparation as well as other links which will help the candidates.

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Essay on “Religious Fundamentalism ” Complete Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.

Religious fundamentalism .

Religious fundamentalism is increasing in the entire world including India. It is rampant in Islamic countries like Egypt, Algeria, and Pakistan. Even China is not bereft of it. Pakistan was created on the basis of religion. Hostilities between two major communities in India is not a new thing. In recent years since the demolition of Babri Mosque feeling of mistrust has increased between Hindus and Muslims. Hindu fundamentalism has also increased due to the aggressive policies and postures practiced by Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena and Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP).

Fundamentalism is basically going back to the fundamentals of religion which is really good because all the religions preach noble ideas like universal brotherhood, peace and compassion. But the different religions follow different doctrines. i.e ., their paths are different which make the real difference. When historically seen, two world religions, i.e., Christianity and Islam fought crusades for domination having serious doctrinaire differences. Islam was referred as conquering religion. It conquered even India and ruled for five centuries. Mahmood Gazni attacked India seventeen times, destroyed temples and looted the wealth of India. Similar has been the case with Arabs and Israel. They had serious difference. Even the basis of creation of Israel was separate land for Jews based on the religion of Judaism. Whenever the main religion has been in minority in a country, the religious fundamentalism had increased in that country to assert its identity, culture and language.

Religious fundamentalism is very dangerous. It propagates the use of violence. It is involved in terrorist violent almost all over the world. Middle East countries are mostly affected by religious fundamentalism. The countries practice the rigid religious practices of purda system. It is the women who suffer the most. They are very particular about the Allah or God. If anyone does not follow the true teachings of Islam, he/she is forced to do. If he/she refuses to do, he might be killed also. People are forced to live life in strict accordance with religious fundamentals. There are lot of restrictions on liberty in this sense. Religious fundamentalists take extreme step of issuing Fatwa if somebody says blasphemous against God. They issued Fatwa against Salman Rushdie and tried to kill him for blasphemy. Iran is a leading country in pursuing the policies of religious fundamentalism. Other countries are Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Egypt, Pakistan, etc. Sometimes the great secular leaders or those who oppose these policies become the easy target of fundamentalists. Turkey used to be very progressive and secular nation but effort have been made towards driving it under the influence of fundamentalist leaders.

Ethnicity has also contributed towards religious fundamentalism. Every nation has differences on the basis of race, language, culture. Different identities coexist in various countries. They are heterogenous in nature. If differences start cropping up, it immediately leads to violence. Bosnia, Lebanon are the worst victims. Sometimes it takes such an extreme step that ethnic cleansing takes place. Ethnic cleansing is not a good sign of civilized society. Natural respect for other’s religious differences is missing which needs to be taken care of. The countries of Commonwealty of Independent States (CIS) are no exception. Ethnicity has been on increase and ethnic tensions are quite old. But the religious fundamentalism can be seen in Turkhenistan. Uzbekistan, Kazkistan, etc. due to its proximity with Iran and Afghanistan. In Iran and Afghanistan religious fundamentalism and related terrorist activities are already there which can spread to these neighbouring CIS states. This can disturb the security conditions in south and south west Asia. Thaat is why even Unites States also consider religious fundamentalism to be a threat to security. Its security can be in danger if religious fundamentalism and related violence and terrorist activites increase in third world countries. So it has become a serious security threat for the developed countries. They have started on strategic lines to contain this threat in the post cold war era.

India too cannot be left out from its influences if disturbances keep on cropping on either side of border, that is Pakistan and Bangladesh. Both the countries are theocratic states but India is a secular state. Muslims in India constitute 12% of Indian population. Indian Muslims are influenced by what is happening in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Kashmir is still an unresolved issue. Serious disturbances are there on the border. Pakistan keeps on flaring the issue. It helps in training the militants to fight in Kashmir and create conditions which weaken India. ISI is often involved in subversive activities like bomb blasts and terrorist activities. Religious fundamentalism is growing in India. Muslims are very conscious of their religion and identity. In Shah Bano case, the Supreme Court gave judgment for giving maintenance to divorces women. But fundamentalists made hue and cry and pressurised the Rajiv Gandhi government to change the decision by legislation. Hindu fundamentalism have also grown in recent years due to Hindutva politics which is again very pernicious for the country.

In order to overcome religious fundamentalism, we have to give a lot of emphasis on education. Education among Muslims is very low. Education can broaden the outlook and can look for change in orthodoxies prevalent in Islamic religion. Efforts should be made towards giving due recognition to religious identities so that problems do not crop up. Anything should not be imposed on their culture, language and religion and feeling should be created in such a positive way that they are fully integrated into the mainstream.

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26 The ideology and practice of communalism in India

Narendra Kumar

Introduction :

In a democratic system, it is quite common that people use different methods for expressing solidarity and achieving political power. The social diversities and disparities in our country are understood in terms of the existence of many groups linked to religion. Tensions have prevailed for a long time among them due to suspicion, economic deprivation and social dissemination. Playing up these factors and pitting one group against another describes the politics of communalism. Regarding these nuances, Bipan Chandra says that communalism is a phenomenon where the majority and minority religious ideology and practices confirms the notion of ‘Our belief alone is true’ and ‘rest is untrue or incomplete’. In India, religion is the core weapon which creates the communal ideology with a different practice. Communalism is seen as existing primarily between Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians. In contemporary India, “communalism” designates not only the conflicts between extremist religious communities, commentators for long have argued that politicians play an important role in creating communal tension and provoking violence (see for example Engineer 1984, 1989, 1995).1

Communalism, then, is a particular kind of politicization of religious identity, an ideology that seeks to promote conflict between religious communities. In the context of a multi-religious country, the phrase “religious nationalism” has come to acquire a similar meaning. In such a country, any attempt to see a religious community as a nation would mean sowing the seeds of antagonism against some other religions.2 In the context of ideological approach, we see that the pervasiveness of a communal ideology within society as an explanation for the occurrence of the communal violence. Bipan Chandra (1987:5), for example sees riots as a ‘bitter and virulent manifestation and consequence’ of a communal ideology and Jafferlot (2003a:2) argues that riots largely originates from a distorted idea like ideology of the ‘other’.3

This module deals with the ideology and practices of communalism in India. In this module, communalism as a part of ideology has been discussed with the notion of otherness. This essay further investigates the practices of communalism with the time and space and a particular kind of politicization of religious identity, an ideology that seeks to promote conflict between religious communities. It also investigates the relationship between religious revivalism and religious fundamentalism with hindutva ideology. This module also seeks to understand communalism with social, political and economic disparities.

What is communalism ?

1  Ward Berenschot (2011), Riot Politics, Columbia University Press, New York, p.8

2   (http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/2087/17/17_conclusion%20.pdf

3   Berenschot Ward.(2011), Riot Politics, Columbia University Press, New York, p.23

Generally understood, communalism is rivalry kept and practiced by one community or religion towards another or each other. Bothering only about the well being of one’s own religion and viewing the welfare of another community as a threat is a common characteristic of communalism. In his book ‘social problems in India’ Ram Ahuja argues that “Communalism can be considered an ideology which states that society is divided into religious communities whose interests differ and are at times even opposed to each other. The antagonism practiced by members of one community against the people of other community and religion can be termed communalism. This antagonism goes to the extent of falsely accusing, harming and deliberately insulting a particular community and extends to looting, burning down the homes and shops of the helpless and the weak, dishonouring women and even killing persons.”4

In the words of Satish Sabarwal, “communalism in our sense means the channeling of personal sentiments and actions primarily with reference to the ascriptive group whose boundaries are determined by the accident of one’s birth.”5 In his book Gyanendra Pandey argues that “the opposition to each other’s of religious communities is commonly designated as communalism.”6 Many scholars hold the view that communalism is not essentially a product derived out of religious feelings; it is a form of politics also. Prabha Dixit in her book, ‘Communalism, a Struggle for Political Power’ states that: “Communalism in India is neither the reaction to anti communalism nor an outgrowth of religious and cultural differences but it is a triangular power struggle of the elite.”7

4  Ram Ahuja, Social Problems in India, Rawat Publications, Jaipur, 1992, p.104

5   Zenab Banu, Politics of Communalism , Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1989, p.2

6  Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in The Colonial North India,. Oxford University

Press, 1990, p. 6

7  Zenab Banu, Politics of Communalism , Popular Prakashan, Bombay, 1989, p.18

According to Bipan Chandra “communalism is the belief that because a group of people follow a particular religion, they have as a result, common social political and economic interests.”8

In a concluding remark we can say that communalism is an ideology which consists of three elements:-

1.      A belief that people who follow the same religion have common secular interests.

2.    A notion that, in a multi-religious society like India, these common secular interests of one religion is

dissimilar and divergent from the interests of the follower of another religion.

3.    The interests of the follower of the different religion or of different

‘communities’ are seen to be completely incompatible, antagonist and hostile. Communalism is political trade in religion.

Meaning of communalism and communal violence:

In seeking to explain the persistence of communal violence, Brass draws on a functionalist theory and argues that communal riots have functional utility and benefits for a wide range of groups and organizations in society, particularly the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other political organizations affiliated to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He points out that the Hindu–Muslim divide and polarization, which is rooted in the discourse of communalism and militant Hindu nationalism, has been extremely valuable to the political fortunes of the BJP.9 In a Bourdieu sense, different societies have different norms but the ‘practice’ has importance to create the hegemony and domination.

8  Bipin Chandra, Communalism in Modern India, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1984, p.2

9  Paul. R. Brass . (2003) The Production of Hindu–Muslim Violence in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Regarding these nuances we can say that communalism is a phenomenon where the majority and minority religious ideology and practices confirms the notion of ‘Our belief alone is true’ and ‘rest is untrue or incomplete’.

Therefore the construction of the ‘otherness’ (Paul Brass) perform the ideology of the communalism. In his book “communalism and communal violence in India” Asghar Ali Engineer states that “Communalism is a modern phenomenon and its fundamental causes are secular like competition for share in political power or government jobs. Religion is not its fundamental cause but an instrumental cause because it has great mobilizing power.”10

In other words he argue that one must distinguish between religious violence- the reason for which lay in sectarian and doctrinaire differences- and communal violence- the reason for which lay in conflict over controlling political power and economic resources between the elites of the two communities. It is precisely for this reason that communalism is born of secular issues and communal parties are led by, or communalism is promoted by, secular leaders. It is not, therefore, surprising that the Muslim league in the pre-partition period was led by M. A. Jinnah, a thoroughly westernized, even modernized Muslim and the chief ideologue of Hindu-Mahasabha happened to be a Savarkar who had a modern outlook and stood for reforming Hinduism for within. Neither the Muslim league nor Hindu-Mahasabha was led by a mullah or Shankara Charya. Communalism is all about secular issues without involving any religious sectarian doctrine. So the instrumentality of religion should not cause us any confusion as to the real nature of communalism.11 The thing is that communalism does not only

10Asghar Ali Engineer, Communalism in India – A Historical and Empirical Study, Vikas Publishing House,

New Delhi, 1995, p.52

11Asghar Ali Engineer, ‘Communalism and Communal violence in India’, Ajanta publications, Delhi, 1989. p.3  astonished with the religious sanction, it is also a practice to gain political and economic power.

In the context of macro-level, ‘communalism is the class nature of the society, on the one hand and the underdevelopment of the economy and scarcity of the resources, on the other. The underdevelopment of economy often results in its uneven development, both communities as well as region-wise and this uneven development throws up the problem of communal or regional identity, example like kokrajhar’.12

In the opinion of T.K. Oommen there are many dimensions of communalism and he suggests six important dimensions “assimilationalist, welfarist, retreatist, retaliatory, seperatist and secessionist. Assimilationist communalism is one in which small religion groups are assimilated/integrated into big religious groups. Such communalism claims that Scheduled tribes are Hindus or that Jains, Sikhs and Buddhists are covered under Hindu Marriage Act. Welfarist communalism aims at the welfare of a particular community, say improving living standards and providing for education and health; for example, Christian Associations are working for the betterment of Christians. Such communal mobilization aims at working only for the members of one’s own community. Retreatist communalism is one in which a small religious community keeps itself away from politics for example, Bahai community. Retaliatory communalism attempts to harm, hurt, and injure the members of other religious communities. Separatist communalism is one in which one religious group wants to maintain its cultural specificity and demands a separate territorial state within the country. Lastly secessionist communalism is one in which a religious community wants a separate identity and demands an independent state.

A very small militant section of Sikh population demanding Khalistan is engaged in practicing this type of communalism.”13

According to Asghar there are two categories religious revivalism and religious fundamentalism as far as the Indian socio religious scene is concerned. In the context of religious revivalism he include the babas, yogis, and other religious gurus, who cash in on the growing sense of insecurity, urban tensions, and other stresses generated by the modern industrial pattern of life. Such religious frauds are rapidly multiplying in our society in urban as well as rural areas strengthening and promoting irrationalism. This irrationalism generates illusions and false consciousness among the masses. They propagate the ideology of dominant religious sanction in the indirect form.

In the second category i,e. religious fundamentalism he includes the movements like that of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and rise of Islamic fundamentalism. These movements have political aims and reflect the ideology through media. Here the religious revivalism has clearly directed political goals. The Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang dal, and Hindu Mahasabha seizing upon the opportunity provided by the conversions of few harijans to islam, launched in a calculated way, a propaganda offensive, intensifying communal conflict in the country. Many communal riots occur like Ahemdabad, Pune, Solapur, Gujarat, and Muzzafarnagar.14

The Genesis of Communalism :

13Ram Ahuja, Social Problems in India Rawat Publications, Jaipur, 1992, p.105

14  Asghar Ali Engineer, ‘Communalism and Communal violence in India’, Ajanta publications, Delhi, 1989. p.5

When we trace the genesis of communalism, we can see that it is not a very old phenomenon. Studies in this area prove that communalism was not developed or practiced as an ideology in ancient period or in the medieval periods. Ram Ahuja argues that “Communalism was not a remnant of the past-a hangover from the medieval period……

Communalism was a modern phenomenon that arouse as a result of British colonial impact and the response of several Indian social strata.”15 Gyanendra Pandey states that “Many have underlined the fact that communalism as we know it is a new phenomenon, far from being of hoary origins, or even of very long standing it is a development of the late colonial period arising concurrently with nationalism if not being brought forward as a counterweight to it.”16

Communalism began to spring up only in the colonial and capitalist society and reached its heights in the democratic society. As the basis of communalism lies in the competition for Modern achievement and urge for political supremacy, this cannot be traced in the ancient or medieval period. If we discuss about Indian society, we will find that, ancient India was united and no such communal feelings were there. People lived peacefully together; there was acceptance for each other’s culture and tradition. For example, Ashoka followed religious tolerance and focused mainly on Dhamma.17

In Medieval period, we have examples such as- Akbar, who was epitome of secular practices and believed in propagating such values by abolishing Jajhiya tax and starting of Din-I- Elahi and Ibadat Khana. Same acceptance for different cultures and tradition was practiced in

15Ram Ahuja, Social Problems in India Rawat Publications, Jaipur, 1992, p.105

16Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in the Colonial North India, Oxford University

Press , 1990, p.13

17 Bipin Chandra, Communalism in Modern India, Vikas Publishing House, New Delhi, 1984,

several kingdoms throughout India, because of which there was peace and harmony, barring few sectarian rulers like Aurangzeb, who was least tolerant for other religious practices. But, such motives were guided purely for their personal greed of power and wealth.18

Communalism in India is result of the emergence of modern politics, which has its roots in partition of Bengal in 1905 and feature of separate electorate under Government of India Act, 1909. Later, British government also appeased various communities through Communal award in 1932, which faced strong resistance from M.K. Gandhi and others. All these acts were done by the British government to appease Muslims and other communities, for their own political needs. This feeling of communalism has deepened since then, fragmenting the Indian society and being a cause of unrest (by Communal award colonial government mandated that consensus over any issue among different communities (i.e. Hindu, Muslims, Sikhs and others) is precondition for any further political development) Communal consciousness arose as a result of the transformation of Indian society under the impact of colonialism and the need to struggle against it.19

Bipin Chandra argues that communalism developed in certain areas and sections of society due to their failure to develop the new national consciousness. In other words, communalism was generated by the lack of deeper penetration of nationalist outlook and ideology.20

What happened in 1920 or thereabouts to bring about this great change when nationalism and communalism emerged as contrapuntal ideologies, intimately related to each other in mutual antagonism? According to Pandey, secular nationalism “contributed substantially”(p

261) to the emergence of communalism because it resolutely side-stepped religion in the public sphere (p 260), and instead emphasised religious tolerance and a distancing from parochial ties (p 261). To recapitulate: In the first phase of colonialism the state encroached upon the terrain of the local community (p 159) and loosened those community bondings that held people together through generations. The damage was completed by the emergence of the secular nationalist movement whose insistence on steering clear of religious loyalties bred increasingly well articulated communal ideologies as “counter constructions” (p 261).21

The invasions of Muslim rulers were primarily not of religious motives. They fought wars and conquered parts of Indian sub continent because of their political ambitions rather than propagation of faiths.

Why communalism still persists and increasing in modern India?

Regarding the many definitions like communalism is above all an ideology, a false consciousness, a struggle for scarce resources, competition for jobs, and instruments of ruling class politics and so on. According to Wilfred Cantwell Smith, “that ideology which has emphasized as the social, political, and the economic unit the group of adherents of each religion and has emphasized the distinction even the antagonism, between such groups”.22

Regarding some questions like, Is communalism a static phenomenon, or it is something which has changed over a period of time? Is communalism of pre-Independence time the same as communalism today or is communalism in its myriad and complex expression the same in different parts of the country? We can see that communalism operates at different levels, ranging from individual relations and interest to the local, institutional and national politics and to communal riots.

21Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in the Colonial North India, Oxford University Press , 1990

22  Selected writing on Communalism, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, May 1994. p. 66

K.M. Panikkar argues that, there is a whole range of social relations and politics over which communalism pervades today, this spread of communalism involves two interrelated central issues. First is the state of consciousness in the society and the second is communalism as an instrument of power, not purely for capturing state power, but operating in political, social, and economic domains and at almost all levels of social organization.23 That is communalism and communal mobilization is based on a perception that there are identities which are based on religious belonging. Such an identity can be manipulated for purpose of power at various levels. In Indian politics the main root of maximization of votes is communal mobilization on local level to urban level. In this context Panikkar says that political parties organized around communal ideologies and organized their programmes around communal goals.

For instance, the Muslim league during the pre-independence period had an Islamic state as its goal. The Hindu Mahasabha during the same period stood for Hindu Rashtra. They had explicit religious and communal goals. In contemporary India, the best example of this political formation is the BJP. We can see that BJP main plank is Hindu nationalism on the basis of hindutva ideology. They explicitly make their political programmed around a communal goal that is hindu nationalism. This aim is expressed in all that they do, beginning with the choice of the colour of their flag to the distribution of trisuls to Ramshila puja, to Advani’s rathyatra and to the instigation of riots.24

In his article ‘what is communalism today’ Pandey states that, the first major manifestation of that trend was the Hindu Kalash Yatra which was in fact the precursor of what the BJP, the VHP etc are doing today, viz the creation of a religious symbol around which Hindus could be rallied. By openly blessing and supporting the yatra, Indira Gandhi tried to identify herself with Hinduism. The most desperate and despicable political act of the Congress was Rajiv Gandhi’s election campaign with

23Ibid 66-67.

24  Ibid p.68

the ‘Rama Rajya’ speech at Ayodhya and the exploitation of Hindu sentiments about the Ramjanma bhoomi issue.25 The present day Hindu nationalist movement in India dates back to 1925, when the RSS was founded.

Its call for a revival of Hinduism combined with a fervent nationalist pride proved to be a popular and the organization grew rapidly.26 We are familiar with Golwalkar’s pitribhumi-punyabhumi qualification for a true national. Of course, muslims, and Christians, on account of their holy land being outside the boundaries of Bharatmata, are perpetual suspects. Ghar wapsi is an ideological project to produce the loyal citizen for the hindu nation-state. For the VHP, therefore a change of faith from hinduism to Buddhism, Jainism or Sikhism, for that matter, doesn’t dismember the Hindu nation, but one to islam and Christianity does. In the context of ideological state apparatus, we want to draw the attention that RSS has open many schools hospitals, and charity work.

Commentator have often pointed Gujarat is considered to be a ‘laboratory of Hindutva’ because of the entrenchment of organization like the VHP and the RSS in Gujarat society in politics and in state institutions.27 To understand the actual embeddedness of the state we should not just focus on the symbolic ‘language of stateness’ that shapes the everyday experience of the state, we should also study that ‘blurred boundary’ between state and society as a ‘field of power’(Bourdieu 1977,1991) marked by intense competition for access to state resources. It is attached with the strategies of state institution and needy citizen.28

Violence seems most likely in areas where there are politicians are supported by local networks of extremist organizations and individual who specialize in creating and maintaining communal tensions. These networks according to Brass (1998, 2003), are ‘institutionalized riot

25Ibid p.68

26  Ward Berenschot (2011), Riot Politics, Columbia University Press, New York, p.24

27  Ibid, p.25

28  Ibid, p.10

systems’. As such actors keep communal tensions alive throughout the years through a steady infusion of communal ideology (Jafferlot 2003), a precipitating incident can easily be interpreted as an instance of broader communal conflict. If the activities of these networks are not kept in check, either by the police or by civic bodies large scale violence may develop (cited in Riot Politics, 2011, Ward Berenschot).29

Another boost for the morale of the rioters was the tacit- and sometimes very open support that the Hindu mobs received from the police. As the slogan ran at that time: ‘Andar ki bat hai, police hamare sath hai’.30 Both Brass and Wilkinson argue for a close relation between elections and the occurrence of violence. Wilkinson used an extensive dataset on incidences of rioting throughout India to point out that riots occur significantly more often in the six months before or after elections.31 We can take the example of Muzzaffarnagar riots before Lok Sabha election.

Economic and social disparities :

Economic tensions between the two communities lead to social tensions which can easily be turned into communal tension by exploiting certain situations on the occasion of religious festivals. Economic distrust between different strata of society has taken the shape of communal conflicts in many areas during the pre–independence period. Several communal riots are having a back ground of economic issues. The worst occurrence has taken place in Bombay, Surat, Ahmedabad, Malegaon, Aurangabad, Moradabad, Pune, Meerut, Aligarh, Jamshadpur, and Bhiwandi. Such commercial centers where Muslims have managed to come up economically. In the aftermath they were practically wiped out.

The behaviour of the society is based on the culture prevailing in that society. Social imbalance due to unequal growth of population can be pointed as a factor constructing the growth of communalism. In her

29Ibid, p.8

30  Ibid, p.165

31  Ibid, p.125

article ‘censuses, communalism, gender, and identity’ Charu Gupta explain that how the fertility rate checked with the domination in the context of population and control sexuality. She covered the form of communalism in the context of gender and sexuality. Hindu propagandists argue that a loss of a Hindu widow was not just the loss of one person, but also of many more. Moreover, these numbers were subtracted from the Hindu population, but added to the Muslims, doubling the loss to Hindus. One tract, Humara Bhishan Haas, a collection of articles reprinted from newspapers, dwelt on the catastrophic decline of Hindus due to growing conversion. Here we see a combination of the ‘negative’ portrayals of Muslims, stereotypes about the sexual desires of widows, as well as fears of agency of the widow.32

Judiciary and the communalization:

The role of judiciary in the matter of religious arena, we see that it holds the debate between secular and communal. In her article ‘religious freedom and state intervention’ Gurpreet Mahajan argues that, the judgments of the court are not free from biasness and perform the ideology and practice in the context of hindu ceremonial law. We can see that in the case of UP Prevention of Cow Slaughter Act, 1956, Supreme Court has upheld the prohibition of cow slaughter on the grounds that the ban was in the interest of ‘public order’. The validity of this act was questioned from another perspective in M.H. Quereshi vs. state of Bihar (SCR 1959:629). Here petitioner claimed that the proposed ban on cow slaughter prevented him from observing the muslim community’s religious practice of sacrificing a cow on the occasion of Bakr-Id. In this case Supreme Court argues that sacrificing a cow is a optional practice for a muslim which mention in the Quran, because a person could easily sacrifice a goat. Since cows are valued as divine entities by hindus, so cow is not obligatory for muslims. Once

32 Charu Gupta. (2004). Censuses, Communalism, Gender and Identity: A Historical Perspective. EPW, 39 (39), 4302-04

again it was assumed that hurting the sentiments of any community would not be in the interest of ‘public order’.33 It is clear that the judgment performs the ideology of false consciousness and construction of otherness.

Conclusion:

Communalism has been a topic of detailed study for the past several years and many research works have been done in this field. One of the most important threats that India is facing, is the rising communalism in the context of ideology and practices. When we trace the genesis of communalism in India in the context of ideology and practice then we find that, as a process it contains religious pluralism and the contradictions between the faiths tend to create communal identities. Religion, when deliberately used as a tool for attaining political gains often nourished the growth of communalism. Politics of appeasement is another cause of development of communalism. The increased communal consciousness and the support received from some religious leaders make the phenomenon of communalism more venomous and dangerous. Violence is a very powerful instrument to inculcate a politically advantageous perception of the social world. In Bourdieu sense ‘the production of ideas about the social world is always in fact subordinated to the logic of the conquest of power, which is the logic of the mobilization of the greatest number for example hindutva ideologue.’ The majority community which alleges minority about their anti-national approach and the minority pointing about the insecurity

33Gurupreet Mahajan. (1998). Identities and rights: aspects of liberal democracy in India, OUP: New Delhi.

they are facing in their nation often collides and trigger tensions. In the words of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar: “It is for the majority to realize its duty not to discriminate against minorities, the moment the majority loses the habit of discriminating against the minority, the minorities can have no ground to exist. They will vanish.” We can see that the vandalism of church by RSS bhakt, draw the phenomenon of consciousness of the ‘other’. We can observe that the continuity of the others and the politics of appeasement is the main root of communalism in India. And the role of the state is very narrow to vanish it. In the context of nationalism, according to Ernest Gellner there is no place of sentimentality (Marshal Mauss) in nationalism, while rationality, creativity and objectivity perform the characters of nationalism.

Reference bibliography:

• Ahuja, Ram (1992). Social problems in India. Jaipur: Rawat Publication.
• Berenschot, Ward. (2011). Riot Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Bourdieu, Pierre (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. London:Cambridge.
• __________.  (1991). Language  and Symbolic  power.  Cambridge:Polity Press.
• Brass, P. R. (2003). The Production of Hindu–Muslim Violence in Contemporary India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press
• Chandra, Bipin (1984). Communalism in Modern India. New Delhi:Vikas Publishing House.
• Engineer, A. A. (1989). ‘Communalism and Communal violence in India. Delhi: Ajanta Publications.
• Jaffrelot, C. (1996). The Hindu nationalist movement and Indian politics. London: Hurst & Co.
• Pandey, Gyanendra (1990). The Construction of Communalism in the Colonial North India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press
• Selected writing on Communalism, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, May 1994.
• Pandey, Gyanendra. (2001). The ‘silent When majority’ Backs a Violent Minority. Economic and Political weekly, 37 (13), 1183-1185.
• Gupta, Charu (2004). Censuses, Communalism, Gender and Identity: A Historical Perspective. EPW, 39 (39), 4302-04.

What is religious fundamentalism? Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Religious fundamentalism is a focus on differences between members of society on the basis of their subscription or non subscription to a particular faith. It leads to discrimination and divides people into righteous and unrighteous dichotomies. Furthermore, non believers are often the target of blame when problems arise in society. Johnstone (206) affirms that religious fundamentalists reject secularization and insist on adherence to traditional practice.

Fundamentalism is existent in almost all religions of the world. In Islam, it is manifested when followers oppose writings in books, articles or speeches that criticize the Islamic faith.

A case in point was the depiction of Prophet Mohamed in a French newspaper. This sparked riots and violence across various Islamic nations around the world despite the fact that the cartoon was not maliciously motivated. Additionally, several political groups in Islamic nations, such as Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt and Iraq, regard political extremism as a central part of their lives.

For instance, the Muslim Brotherhood is just one of the numerous institutions that has brought Islamic fundamentalism back into the political sphere of a Muslim nation. As a consequence, these nations reject consumerism, feminism and several other tenets of the modern era. It is not uncommon to see loggings, mutilations, and female mistreatment in the public sphere within these fundamentalist nations (Coreno 335).

In the Christian faith, Protestant fundamentalism stemmed from an early twentieth century publication designed to outline the fundamentals of the Christian faith. Its purpose was to unite American Protestants by clarifying the beliefs that were non-negotiable in their faith.

In modern times, Protestant fundamentalism takes the form of reaffirming literal interpretations and applications of the bible. This school of thought moves away from institutional Christianity and the use of sacraments. Instead, it advocates conversion and intimate spiritual experiences. Just like the Islamic fundamentalists mentioned above, Christian fundamentals are also politically conservative. However, their brand of conservatism started in the late nineteenth century.

First, a number of them were worried about the effect of science on their followers as the latter phenomenon challenged the Bible’s central claim to truth. In line with this issue was the development of Darwinism, which questioned the authenticity of the Christian creation story.

Furthermore, sociological theories like Marxism claimed that Christianity pacified the masses to protect elitist interests. Johnstone (212) explains that the fundamentalists responded by focusing on traditional Christian messages rather than on the social aspect. In essence, they were reacting to the disenfranchisement of religion.

Evangelical groups now manifest their fundamentalist inclinations through the political sphere, education (in the form of primary and secondary schools), as well as their publications. Several schools are either funded or run by Christian fundamentals. These groups often endorse political parties that support their conservative beliefs. Some of them may lobby against laws that they perceive as secular. Examples include abortion and legalization of gay marriage.

In essence, all fundamentalist groups, regardless of which religion they subscribe to, have certain characteristics in common. First, they emerge out of a need to defend religious tradition. Usually, modernization may manifest in one form or another, and thus could be perceived as an attack against the church.

Besides this trait, religious fundamentalism is also selective in nature. It will use an aspect of modernity as well as religion to delineate itself from conventional religion. Cases in point include the use of the internet to spread Islamic fundamentalist teaching and opposition of American

Protestants to abortion. Fundamentalists also perceive the world dualistically, in that it is either evil or righteous. Another trait is their propensity towards absolutism. Members must accept their main texts (e.g. Bible or Torah) as accurate and unquestionable. Finally, these schools of thought often have a messianic promise. They assure their followers that they will be rewarded in the end times for their suffering (Emerson & Hartman 130).

Works Cited

Coreno, Timothy. “Fundamentalism as a class culture.” Sociol. Relig, Journal 63(2002): 335–60. Print.

Emerson, Michael & Hartman. David. “The rise of religious fundamentalism.” American Rev. Sociol. 32(2006): 127-144. Print.

• Critical Insights Concerning the Concept of Religion in the Ronald L. Johnstone’s Book “Religion in Society”
• The Rise of American Christian Fundamentalism (the Late 1800s and Early 1900s)
• Impact of the Religious Fundamentalism on Society
• Tirmidhi and His Characteristics
• Create Your Own Religion
• Literature Study on Myth Related Theories
• The Parable of the Sower
• Understanding of Christian Sacraments
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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