Indians support religious tolerance: Pew research

• A recent survey by the Pew Research Center (‘Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation’) suggests that most Indians respect religious diversity.

• However, they prefer to keep their religious communities in segregated spheres in terms of marriage and residential areas.

Key findings of survey:

ReligiousTolerance:

• 84% of Indians believe that respecting all religions is very important to being truly Indian
• 80% believe respecting other religions is a very important part of their religious identity
• However, about two in every three Indians put a high priority on stopping interfaith and inter-caste marriages
• On the question of inter-religious marriage, most Hindus (67%), Muslims (80%), Sikhs (59%), and Jains (66%) felt it was ‘very important’ to stop the women in their community from marrying outside their religion (similar rates of opposition to men marrying outside religion)

• Relatively few Indians (13%) had a mixed friends circle.
• Nearly half (47%) of Hindus said that all their close friends shared their religious identity
• A majority of both groups also says a person cannot be Hindu or Muslim, respectively, if they celebrate each other’s festivals.

Religion and shared beliefs:

• Survey also revealed a number of shared beliefs that cut across religious barriers.
• Example: 77% of Hindus said they believed in karma, an identical percentage of Muslims said so as well.
• Majority in all the major faiths said respecting elders is very important to their religion.

Religion and Neighbour:

• Majorities in all the religious groups were, hypothetically, willing to accept members of other religious groups as neighbours
• Among Hindus, most were willing to live near a member of a religious minority, such as Muslim (57%), a Christian (59%), or a Jain (59%).
• But altogether 36% of Hindus were willing to live near a Muslim, with 31% saying the same for Christians.
• Buddhists were most likely to voice acceptance of other religious groups as neighbours, with roughly 80% of them wiling to accept a Muslim, Christian, Sikh or Jain as a neighbour.
• About 78% of Muslims said they would be willing to have a Hindu as a neighbour

Religion and Geography:

• people in the south of India more religiously integrated and less opposed to inter-religious marriages
• People in the South “are less likely than those in other regions to say all their close friends share their religion (29%)

Religious identity and nationalism

• Hindus tend to see their religious identity and Indian national identity as closely intertwined,
• 64% hindus said that it was ‘very important’ to be Hindu to be “truly” Indian.
• Most Hindus (59%) also linked Indian identity with being able to speak Hindi.