Being Indian is respecting all religions: Pew Study

New Delhi

The majority of the Indians -84 per cent – feel being Indian means having respect for all religions and 80 per cent say this respect is part of their personal faith. Also, Indians cutting across religions feel they are ‘very free to practice their faith.’

This is the conclusion of a study  - Religion in India: tolerance and segregation- done by the American Think tank Pew Research centre. The study is based on the response of 2,999 Indians belonging to six religions – Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists and Christians – and covers all the zones.

Earlier Pew had projected that India’s Muslim population will grow to 311 million by 2050 making the country home to the world’s largest Muslim population.

Though the sample used for conclusions is very small for a country of 1.3 billion people with all the religions of the world, it generally reflects the general perceptions even among the Indians.

The finds that while most Indians believe in respecting other faiths they also remain strongly opposed to interfaith marriages. Interestingly, while there is a politically motivated campaign against Muslims luring women of other faiths for marrying their men, this community came across as the most opposed to the interfaith marriages in the study.

About 80% of Muslims say it is very important to stop Muslim women from marrying outside their religion, and 76% say the same about Muslim men.

In comparison, about 67% of Hindus are opposed to their women marrying outside while 65% feel the men should not do the same.

Another key conclusion of the study is that the Muslims favour continuation of the personal court based on Shariah to resolve conflicts and family disputes. Muslims in India have the option of resolving matters related to family and inheritance in the officially recognized Islamic courts, known as dar-ul-qaza headed by a Qazi. Though their decision is not legally binding, there is a growing clamour for bringing Indians under Uniform Civil Code. Even the Supreme court had recommended the same law for all concepts.

The survey finds that 74 per cent of Muslims support the current system of the Qazi-headed personal law court.

Also among all the religious denominations, Muslims are more likely than Hindus to say the 1947 partition establishing the separate states of India and Pakistan harmed Hindu-Muslim relations. Only three-in-10 Muslims say it was a good thing.

Sikhs, who suffered the most during the partition in terms of loss of property, homeland and human lives, are even more likely than Muslims to say the event was bad for Hindu-Muslim relations: Two-thirds of Sikhs (66%) take this position.

The study finds that Indians of all religions strongly believe in the caste system, otherwise a Hindu concept. “Regardless of whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain, Indians nearly universally identify with a caste. Members of lower caste groups historically have faced discrimination and unequal economic opportunities. Most people – including most members of lower castes – say there is not a lot of caste discrimination in India.”

Still, a large majority of Indians (70%) say that most or all of their close friends share their caste. Much as they object to interreligious marriages, a large share of Indians (64%) 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 different castes.

It finds out that religious conversions do happen in India, in the end, it has a minimal impact on demography.  Across India, 98% of survey respondents give the same answer when asked to identify their current religion and, separately, their childhood religion.

An overall pattern of stability in religious groups' share is accompanied by little net change from movement into, or out of, most religious groups.

Conversions only seem to give a small advantage to Christians as 0.4% of survey respondents are former Hindus who now identify as Christian, while 0.1% were raised Christian but have since left Christianity.

Most Indians believe in God and say religion is very important in their lives. Nearly all Indians say they believe in God (97%), and roughly 80% of people in most religious groups say they are certain that God exists.

The exception is Buddhists, one-third of whom say they do not believe in God. However, this must be seen in the light of the fact that God is not the epicentre of the Buddhist religion.

Indians do not always agree about the nature of God: Most Hindus say there is one God with many manifestations, while Muslims and Christians are more likely to say, simply, “there is only one God.” But across all major faiths, the vast majority of Indians say that religion is very important in their lives, and significant portions of each religious group also pray daily and observe a range of other religious rituals.

India’s religious groups share several religious practices and beliefs. After living side by side for generations, India’s minority groups often engage in practices or hold beliefs that are more closely associated with Hindu traditions than with their own. For instance, many Sikh (29%), Christian (22%) and Muslim (18%) women in India say they wear a bindi – the forehead marking often worn by married women – even though the bindi has Hindu origins.

Meanwhile, Muslims in India are just as likely as Hindus to say they believe in karma (77% each), as do 54% of Indian Christians.

Some Hindu community members celebrate Muslim and Christian festivals: 7% of Indian Hindus say they celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid, and 17% celebrate Christmas.