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Book No. – 22 (Sociology)
Book Name – Indian Society & Culture (Nadeem Hasnain)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. Hinduism and the Hindus
2. The Buddhists
3. The Jains
4. Religious Pluralism as Ideology
5. Religious Conversions
6. Inter-religious Interaction and it’s Manifestation
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LANGUAGE
Religions and Religious Communities
Chapter – 12
Table of Contents
- The most important aspect of culture in India has been religious diversity.
- India has been home to followers of all major religions of the world: Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Bahaism.
- These religious systems have coexisted together for over two thousand years within a shared cultural space.
- Religions in India may be classified into two categories:
- Indic or Indigenous religions
- Extra-Indic religions
- Indic religions originated and evolved in India: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.
- Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism evolved from early Hinduism, which has undergone changes in content and ritual practices in response to the prevailing cultural, ethno-lingual, and ecological diversities across different regions.
- These religions can also be described as protest movements within Hinduism, leading to reforms within Hinduism itself.
- Extra-Indic religions such as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and Bahaism originated outside India:
- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam originated in West Asia.
- Zoroastrianism and Bahaism originated in Iran.
- Although religion is largely a matter of personal faith, religious identity in India is often expressed on a social plane.
- Religious identities are manifested during occasions such as mass festivals or rituals, where expressions of identity can be seen.
- Faith of different religions also fosters a community feeling, leading to both conscious and unconscious expressions of solidarity.
- A common code of social conduct based on religious faith also leads to public expressions of religious identity, such as distinct dress patterns, avoidance of certain foods, and other practices, which may have some regional variations.
Hinduism and the Hindus
- Plurality of religions in India is often obscured by the fact that Hinduism is regarded as both the demographically dominant and culturally characteristic religion of the country.
- Hinduism is considered not only the hegemonic religion in popular imagination but also factually dominant.
- Four out of every five Indians are Hindus.
- Anthropologists and sociologists have observed that many cultural components and social structures of non-Hindu communities have been either borrowed from Hindus or are survivals from their pre-conversion Hindu past, with or without significant alterations.
- Unlike other religions, Hinduism is a federation of faiths, not a single homogeneous religion.
- Hinduism has been evolving over the ages and includes several sects such as Saivite and Vaishnavite.
- Hindus are numerically predominant in India, constituting about 82 percent of the total population.
- However, in peripheral areas, Hindus are outnumbered by Muslims (e.g., Jammu and Kashmir and Lakshadweep), Sikhs (e.g., Punjab), Christians (e.g., Mizoram, Nagaland), and Buddhists (e.g., Arunachal Pradesh).
- In some regions like parts of Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh, Hindus account for more than 97 percent of the total population.
- Hindu population proportion is also above 95 percent in the sub-Himalayan districts of Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.
- The proportion of Hindus remains well above 90 percent in regions like eastern Madhya Pradesh, eastern Gujarat, southern Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and coastal Andhra Pradesh.
- On the other hand, in some districts along the west coast, Hindu percentages are significantly low, below 70 percent.
- In the tribal areas of the northeast, such as Meghalaya, Nagaland, and Mizoram, the Hindu population is less than 20 percent, and in some cases even less than 5 percent.
- Hindu proportion is higher in the rural segment of the population, with the national average being 84 percent, revealing the predominantly rural character of the Hindu population.
- In contrast, the proportion of Hindus in the urban population is around 76 percent.
- Two-fifths of the Hindu population lives in the Hindi-speaking northern states: Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh.
- The two states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar alone account for more than 27 percent of India’s Hindu population.
- Likewise, the four southern states accommodate one-fourth of the Hindu population.