Religion and spiritual thought have at once been India's greatest gift to world civilization and a constant bone of contention between adherents of different faiths within its borders. India has provided a home for all the major religions of the world. Approximately 82 percent of the population is Hindu, slightly over 12 percent are Muslim, 2 percent are Sikh, and over 2 percent are Christian. Less than 1 percent of the population practices Buddhism and less than 1 percent Jainism.
Religious diversity has produced a rich cultural heritage evident in India's many monuments, art, music, and literature. However, religious differences have also sparked frequent controversy and bloody conflict.
Hinduism is one of the world's leading religions of personal experience, being a very individualistic search for the meaning and purpose of life and a quest for truth. It emphasizes tolerance, nonviolence, and mutual respect. Although its beginnings cannot be dated, historians trace its origins back to the amalgam of rituals, beliefs, and practices that arose in India from the cultural fusion of the Aryans (who came to India around 1500 b. c.e. to 300 B. c.E., possibly from Central Asia) and the indigenous peoples of the Indus Valley civilization (which probably arose in 2500 b. c.e.) This civilization was urban and artistic and traded extensively with the area now known as the Middle East.
One of the most significant features of Hinduism was the caste system. The centuries-old caste system provided India with a stable society and an unbroken cultural tradition going back to ancient times. Caste was initially a societal division of labor between priests, administrators, and warriors and traders, merchants, and farmers. This was similar to the system in medieval Europe. Caste provided economic support and social integration for its members. Like a guild, the caste established rules of training, funding for craftsmen, and quality control for products; it protected widows, orphans, and the elderly and was even a group source for the selection of spouses.
However, the system became rigid after India experienced the social and political disruption caused by hordes of foreign invaders. In an effort to regain some semblance of stability in an era of political upheaval and turmoil, the prevailing society became more conservative, more traditional, and less accepting of change. Serious discrimination was the result, and caste rules proliferated to the point that they adversely affected everyday life. A complicating factor was the creation of thousands of subcastes. Most insidious was the treatment of the so-called untouchables, who were not fitted into the caste system because they performed work such as tanning leather or butchering meat, which most Hindus regarded as defiling.
Caste was never linked to economic wealth. The highest caste, the Brahmin priest, was an intellectual, not necessarily a person of wealth. The merchants, the richest members of society, formed the third caste.
When India fought for freedom from British imperial rule between 1857 and 1947, the eradication of the evils of caste was a
Mohandas Gandhi (left), the primary leader behind India’s nationalist movement, addressing a crowd in 1925. (Library of Congress)
Top priority of Indian leaders such as Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi. The constitution of free India outlawed discrimination on the basis of caste and abolished untouchability. However, the key to its eventual eradication lies in education and awareness, particularly among the Dalits (oppressed), the name commonly given to the former victims of caste discrimination.
The Indian government also provided a measure of affirmative action with respect to university admissions and highly coveted civil service jobs for former untouchables and indigenous tribal peoples, renaming them scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Kocheril Raman Narayanan, a member of a scheduled caste, was elected president of India in 1997.
During the 1990's the degree of affirmative action generated
Conflict from the higher castes, who felt that the program discriminated against them and provided too much of a benefit to the scheduled castes and to other castes. Violence occasionally erupted, especially over the allocation of civil service positions. The so-called lower castes constitute about two-thirds of the population. The fine tuning of affirmative action and reverse discrimination continues to bedevil Indian politicians and to be a source of controversy.
World History
