Understanding the Role of Religion in Indian Public Life

Last week, the Pew Research Centre, New York, released a novel survey about the role of religion in Indian public life. The report, Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation, provides some perspectives on the changing role of religion and the place for secularism in the country. In the context of the rise of right-wing politics, this report can provide a new frame of reference on perceptions about social relations and help examine what space remains for alternatives to it.

Among its many findings is the observation that 66% of Hindus see themselves as very different from Muslims, a sentiment that most—64%—of Muslims, echo. It concludes that Indians "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. While Indians respect diversity, they also value difference in a way that segregates identities. It is important to note that this is the dominant ethos across religious communities. Segregation, here, refers to avoiding common neighbourhoods and resisting inter-religious marriages. It seems like Indians find it challenging to separate legitimate anxieties about recognition from popular prejudices. At least some part of prejudice is integral to how communities construct and self-represent themselves; and this is where right-wing politics comes in, with attempts to exaggerate anxieties over differences and undermine the acknowledgement of diversity.

In the survey, the majority of those surveyed felt that diversity is beneficial to India. It records that nearly two-thirds (65%) of Hindus who voted for the BJP in 2019 felt that being Hindu and speaking Hindi are crucial to be truly Indian. This cohort also felt that religious diversity benefits India, compared with about half (47%) of other Hindus, who voted for non-BJP parties in 2019, and who do not think India benefits from diversity.

Many of the campaigns of the Right, be it "ghar wapasi", "love jihad", "forced conversions" or "anti-Romeo squads" are meant to appeal to this underlying conflation of being Hindu and Indian that prevails among the Hindu community. However, the secular formations undermine this paradoxical mode of making sense of community identities using counter-campaigns based on the false notion of "Islamophobia". (As I wrote earlier, when majoritarian mobilisation is making a claim to a phobia, merely reiterating that 'there is Islamophobia' makes very little sense to the majority community). Such campaigns are singularly unhelpful in making sense of the continuum between diversity and difference on the one hand and recognition and prejudice on the other.