Religion in India
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The major religions of India are Hinduism (majority religion), Islam (largest minority religion), Sikhism, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Ayyavazhi, Zoroastrianism, Judaism and the Bahá'í Faith.
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Hinduism
Hinduism, known to Hindus as Sanatana Dharma, believed to be the oldest of major religions, originated in northern India. Early Aryan, or Vedic, culture was the early Hinduism whose interaction with non-Aryan cultures resulted in what is known as Classical Hinduism. Much of ancient, classical and modern Indian culture has been greatly shaped by Hindu thought. The artwork of the Hindu Gupta period is famed and the acknowledged classic epics of India, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, are both sacred Hindu texts and served as India's main inspirational foundation for a great deal of literary, artistic and musical creations in subsequent millennia. The most popular form of Indian medicine, Ayurveda, was developed by Vedic seers and Jyotish, Hindu astrology, is the most popular form of astrology in India today. Yoga, an internationally-famed system of meditation, is one of six systems of Hindu thought.
The two major traditions of Indian classical music, Hindustani and Carnatic, are both founded primarily on the tradition of sound philosophy and liturgical strains of the Sama Veda (though the former was also heavily influenced by Islamic Persian musicians and thinkers). Hindus left behind a great legacy of kingdoms and monuments, some of the most inspiring including temples covering the entire face of the Indian subcontinent. However modern-day Hinduism has been very vibrant with internationally-known Hindu leaders shaping religious thought and inspiring many throughout the last two centuries, among them Shri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, Shri Aurobindo, Shri Ramana Maharshi, and B.K. Iyengar. The most popular national festivals and holidays of modern-day India are Hindu, among them Diwali and Holi. As of 2001, there were about 820 million Hindus in India.
One of the most popular but also controversial modern gurus in India is Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparthi.
Buddhism
Buddhism, known in ancient India as Buddha Dharma, originated in northern India in what is today the state of Bihar. It rapidly gained adherents during the Buddha's lifetime. Up to the 9th century, Indian followers numbered in the hundreds of millions. While the exact cause of the decline of Buddhism in India is disputed, it is known that the mingling of Hindu and Buddhist societies in India and the rise of Hindu Vedanta movements began to compete against Buddhism. Many believe that Hinduism's adaptation to Buddhism resulted in Buddhism's rapid decline. Also, Muslim invaders are recorded to have caused massive devastation on monasteries, libraries, and statuary, as they did on Hindu religious life. Many Indian Buddhist populations remained intact in or migrated to places like Sri Lanka, Tibet, and other Asian countries.
Recently, a revival of Buddhism in India has made significant progress. In 1956, B. R. Ambedkar, a freedom fighter during the Indian struggle for independence from the British, and hundreds of thousands of his followers converted to Buddhism in protest against the caste system. Subsequent mass conversions on a lesser scale have occurred since then. Three-quarters of these "neo-Buddhists" live in Maharashtra. Alongside these converts are the Vajrayana Buddhists of Ladakh, Sikkim, and Arunachal Pradesh, a small number of tribal peoples in the region of Bengal, and Tibetan refugees.
Jainism
Jainism, along with Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism, is one of the four major Dharma religions originating in India. In general, Jains are extremely well-represented inspite of the fact that they form only 0.4% (around 4.2 million) of India's total population. Many of them rich and an overwhelming majority of them are well to do. As such, it can be said that they hold power and wealth disproportionate to their small population. According to the India Census 2001, Jains have the highest literacy rate (religion-wise) of 94.1% compared to the national average of 64.8%.
Christianity
- Main article: Christianity in India
Christianity, according to tradition (and now supported by recent research), arrived in India in the first century through the apostle Thomas. It was further consolidated by the arrival of Syriac Jewish-Christians now known as Knanaya people. This ancient ethnic Christian community of Kerala is known as Nasrani or Syrian Christian. The Nasrani people and especially the Knanaya people within the Nasranis have strong Jewish historical ties. Their form of Christianity is Syriac Christianity and referred to in India as Saint Thomas Christians.
Roman Catholicism reached India during the period of European colonization, which began in 1498 when the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrived on the Malabar coast. Almost all of India came under Portuguese, Dutch, French but mostly British control until the mid-20th century. Christian missionary activity increased in the early 1800s. Today Christians are most prevalent in the northeast, major metro areas, and in western states such as Goa.
Islam
- Main article: Islam in India
Islam arrived in India as early as the 8th century CE. During the following decades, significant numbers of Indians converted to Islam. A spotted record of kingship followed the influx of several Persian dynasties, some devastating the Hindu landscape and others encouraging halcyon days of coexistence between Muslims and Hindus. In the 1500s, the primary Mughal Empire was formed. Muslims contributed greatly to the cultural enhancement of an already rich Indian culture, shaping not only the shape of Northern Indian classical music (Hindustani, a melding of Indian and Middle Eastern elements) but encouraging a grand tradition of Urdu (a melding of Hindi, Arabic and Persian languages) literature both religious and secular. Among other monuments, the Taj Mahal is a gift of the Mughals. As of 2001, there are about 130 million Muslims in India, most of whom live in the north and west of the country.
Zoroastrianism
A form of the ancient Persian religion Zoroastrianism continues to be practiced in India, where its followers are called Parsis. Suffering persecution from Muslim rulers in what is now modern-day Iran, Zoroastrian immigrants were granted protection under a Hindu king in the Western section of India many centuries ago.
Sikhism
Sikhism, was founded in India's northwestern Punjab region about 400 years ago. As of 2001 there were 35 million Sikhs in India. Many of today's Sikhs are situated in Punjab, the largest Sikh province in the world and the ancestral home of Sikhs. The most famous Sikh temple is the Golden Temple, located in Amritsar, Punjab. Many Sikhs serve in the Indian Army. The current prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, is a Sikh. Punjab is the spiritual home of Sikhs and is the only state in India where Sikhs form a majority.
Judaism
- Main article: Jews in India
Trade contacts between the Mediterranean region and the west coast of India probably led to the presence of small Jewish settlements in India as long ago as the early first millennium B.C. In Kerala a community of Jews tracing its origin to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 has remained associated with the cities of Cranganore and Kochi (formerly known as Cochin) for at least 1,000 years. The Pardesi Synagogue in Kochi, rebuilt in 1568, is in the architectural style of Kerala but preserves the archaic ritual style of the Sephardic rite, with Babylonian and Yemenite influence as well. The Jews of Kochi, concentrated mostly in the old "Jew Town," were completely integrated into local culture, speaking Malayalam and taking local names while preserving their knowledge of Hebrew and contacts with Southwest Asia. A separate community of Jews, called the Bene Israel, had lived along the Konkan Coast in and around Bombay, Pune, and Ahmadabad for almost 2,000 years. Unlike the Kochi Jews, they became a village-based society and maintained little contact with other Jewish communities. They always remained within the Orthodox Jewish fold, practicing the Sephardic rite without rabbis, with the synagogue as the center of religious and cultural life. A third group of Jews immigrated to India, beginning at the end of the eighteenth century, following the trade contacts established by the British Empire. These Baghdadi Jews came mostly from the area of modern Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan and settled in Bombay and Calcutta, where many of them became wealthy and participated in the economic leadership of these growing cities. Many of them were later forced to convert to Islam.
The population of the Kochi Jews, always small, had decreased from 5,000 in 1951 to about fifty in the early 1990s. During the same period, the Bene Israel decreased from about 20,000 to 5,000, while the Baghdadi Jews declined from 5,000 to 250. Emigration to Australia, Israel, Britain, and North America accounts for most of this decline. According to the 1981 Indian census, there were 5,618 Jews in India, down from 5,825 in 1971. The 1991 census showed a further decline to 5,271, most of whom lived in Maharashtra and Mizoram.
There are also Knanaya and Nasrani Christians with strong Jewish historical ties.
Bahá'í Faith
- Main article: Bahá'ís in Indiafr:Religions de l'Inde