political diversity in india essay

Unity in Diversity: The Essence of India’s Composite Culture | Essay Writing for UPSC by Vikash Ranjan Sir | Triumph ias

Table of Contents

India’s Mosaic: A Celebration of Unity in Diversity

(relevant for essay writing for upsc civil services examination).

India’s vibrant landscape is dotted with myriad cultures, traditions, and histories. Dive into the mesmerizing mosaic of India’s composite culture and discover how it epitomizes unity in diversity.

The Threads of Time

From the ancient Indus Valley Civilization to modern-day India, the country has imbibed, evolved, and celebrated a myriad of influences, giving birth to its unique identity.

A Symphony of Cultures

Whether it’s the resonating chants from temples, the melodic calls for prayer from mosques, or the harmonious carols from churches, India embraces them all with open arms. Languages, festivals, art – every facet of Indian life reflects its harmonious blend.

Conclusion: A Lesson for the World

In times of global divisiveness, India’s composite culture stands tall as a testament to the strength and beauty of unity in diversity.

To master these intricacies and fare well in the Sociology Optional Syllabus , aspiring sociologists might benefit from guidance by the Best Sociology Optional Teacher and participation in the Best Sociology Optional Coaching . These avenues provide comprehensive assistance, ensuring a solid understanding of sociology’s diverse methodologies and techniques

India, Composite Culture, Unity in Diversity, Religions, Languages, Festivals, Art, Architecture, Historical Evolution.

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• A set of printed booklets will be provided for each topic. These materials are succinct, thoroughly updated, and tailored for examination preparation.
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Syllabus of Sociology Optional

FUNDAMENTALS OF SOCIOLOGY

• Modernity and social changes in Europe and emergence of sociology.
• Scope of the subject and comparison with other social sciences.
• Sociology and common sense.
• Science, scientific method and critique.
• Major theoretical strands of research methodology.
• Positivism and its critique.
• Fact value and objectivity.
• Non- positivist methodologies.
• Qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Techniques of data collection.
• Variables, sampling, hypothesis, reliability and validity.
• Karl Marx- Historical materialism, mode of production, alienation, class struggle.
• Emile Durkheim- Division of labour, social fact, suicide, religion and society.
• Max Weber- Social action, ideal types, authority, bureaucracy, protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism.
• Talcott Parsons- Social system, pattern variables.
• Robert K. Merton- Latent and manifest functions, conformity and deviance, reference groups.
• Mead – Self and identity.
• Concepts- equality, inequality, hierarchy, exclusion, poverty and deprivation.
• Theories of social stratification- Structural functionalist theory, Marxist theory, Weberian theory.
• Dimensions – Social stratification of class, status groups, gender, ethnicity and race.
• Social mobility- open and closed systems, types of mobility, sources and causes of mobility.
• Social organization of work in different types of society- slave society, feudal society, industrial /capitalist society
• Formal and informal organization of work.
• Labour and society.
• Sociological theories of power.
• Power elite, bureaucracy, pressure groups, and political parties.
• Nation, state, citizenship, democracy, civil society, ideology.
• Protest, agitation, social movements, collective action, revolution.
• Sociological theories of religion.
• Types of religious practices: animism, monism, pluralism, sects, cults.
• Religion in modern society: religion and science, secularization, religious revivalism, fundamentalism.
• Family, household, marriage.
• Types and forms of family.
• Lineage and descent.
• Patriarchy and sexual division of labour.
• Contemporary trends.
• Sociological theories of social change.
• Development and dependency.
• Agents of social change.
• Education and social change.
• Science, technology and social change.

INDIAN SOCIETY: STRUCTURE AND CHANGE

Introducing indian society.

• Indology (GS. Ghurye).
• Structural functionalism (M N Srinivas).
• Marxist sociology (A R Desai).
• Social background of Indian nationalism.
• Modernization of Indian tradition.
• Protests and movements during the colonial period.
• Social reforms.

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

• The idea of Indian village and village studies.
• Agrarian social structure – evolution of land tenure system, land reforms.
• Perspectives on the study of caste systems: GS Ghurye, M N Srinivas, Louis Dumont, Andre Beteille.
• Features of caste system.
• Untouchability – forms and perspectives.
• Definitional problems.
• Geographical spread.
• Colonial policies and tribes.
• Issues of integration and autonomy.
• Social Classes in India:
• Agrarian class structure.
• Industrial class structure.
• Middle classes in India.
• Lineage and descent in India.
• Types of kinship systems.
• Family and marriage in India.
• Household dimensions of the family.
• Patriarchy, entitlements and sexual division of labour
• Religious communities in India.
• Problems of religious minorities.

SOCIAL CHANGES IN INDIA

• Idea of development planning and mixed economy
• Constitution, law and social change.
• Programmes of rural development, Community Development Programme, cooperatives,poverty alleviation schemes
• Green revolution and social change.
• Changing modes of production in Indian agriculture.
• Problems of rural labour, bondage, migration.

3. Industrialization and Urbanisation in India:

• Evolution of modern industry in India.
• Growth of urban settlements in India.
• Working class: structure, growth, class mobilization.
• Informal sector, child labour
• Slums and deprivation in urban areas.

4. Politics and Society:

• Nation, democracy and citizenship.
• Political parties, pressure groups , social and political elite
• Regionalism and decentralization of power.
• Secularization

5. Social Movements in Modern India:

• Peasants and farmers movements.
• Women’s movement.
• Backward classes & Dalit movement.
• Environmental movements.
• Ethnicity and Identity movements.

6. Population Dynamics:

• Population size, growth, composition and distribution
• Components of population growth: birth, death, migration.
• Population policy and family planning.
• Emerging issues: ageing, sex ratios, child and infant mortality, reproductive health.

7. Challenges of Social Transformation:

• Crisis of development: displacement, environmental problems and sustainability
• Poverty, deprivation and inequalities.
• Violence against women.
• Caste conflicts.
• Ethnic conflicts, communalism, religious revivalism.
• Illiteracy and disparities in education.

Mr. Vikash Ranjan, arguably the Best Sociology Optional Teacher , has emerged as a versatile genius in teaching and writing books on Sociology & General Studies. His approach to the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus is remarkable, and his Sociological Themes and Perspectives are excellent. His teaching aptitude is Simple, Easy and Exam Focused. He is often chosen as the Best Sociology Teacher for Sociology Optional UPSC aspirants.

About Triumph IAS

Innovating Knowledge, Inspiring Success We, at Triumph IAS , pride ourselves on being the best sociology optional coaching platform. We believe that each Individual Aspirant is unique and requires Individual Guidance and Care, hence the need for the Best Sociology Teacher . We prepare students keeping in mind his or her strength and weakness, paying particular attention to the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus , which forms a significant part of our Sociology Foundation Course .

Course Features

Every day, the Best Sociology Optional Teacher spends 2 hours with the students, covering each aspect of the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus and the Sociology Course . Students are given assignments related to the Topic based on Previous Year Question to ensure they’re ready for the Sociology Optional UPSC examination.

Regular one-on-one interaction & individual counseling for stress management and refinement of strategy for Exam by Vikash Ranjan Sir , the Best Sociology Teacher , is part of the package. We specialize in sociology optional coaching and are hence fully equipped to guide you to your dream space in the civil service final list.

Specialist Guidance of Vikash Ranjan Sir

The Best Sociology Teacher helps students to get a complete conceptual understanding of each and every topic of the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus , enabling them to attempt any of the questions, be direct or applied, ensuring 300+ Marks in Sociology Optional .

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The Best Sociology Teacher, Vikash Sir , ensures that there’s explanation & DISCUSSION on every topic of the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus in the class. The emphasis is not just on teaching but also on understanding, which is why we are known as the Best Sociology Optional Coaching institution.

Preparatory-Study Support

Online Support System (Oss)

Get access to an online forum for value addition study material, journals, and articles relevant to Sociology on www.triumphias.com . Ask preparation related queries directly to the Best Sociology Teacher , Vikash Sir, via mail or WhatsApp.

Strategic Classroom Preparation

Comprehensive Study Material

We provide printed booklets of concise, well-researched, exam-ready study material for every unit of the Sociology Optional Syllabus / Sociology Syllabus , making us the Best Sociology Optional Coaching platform.

Why Vikash Ranjan’s Classes for Sociology?

Proper guidance and assistance are required to learn the skill of interlinking current happenings with the conventional topics. VIKASH RANJAN SIR at TRIUMPH IAS guides students according to the Recent Trends of UPSC, making him the Best Sociology Teacher for Sociology Optional UPSC.

At Triumph IAS, the Best Sociology Optional Coaching platform, we not only provide the best study material and applied classes for Sociology for IAS but also conduct regular assignments and class tests to assess candidates’ writing skills and understanding of the subject.

Choose T he Best Sociology Optional Teacher for IAS Preparation?

At the beginning of the journey for Civil Services Examination preparation, many students face a pivotal decision – selecting their optional subject. Questions such as “ which optional subject is the best? ” and “ which optional subject is the most scoring? ” frequently come to mind. Choosing the right optional subject, like choosing the best sociology optional teacher , is a subjective yet vital step that requires a thoughtful decision based on facts. A misstep in this crucial decision can indeed prove disastrous.

Ever since the exam pattern was revamped in 2013, the UPSC has eliminated the need for a second optional subject. Now, candidates have to choose only one optional subject for the UPSC Mains , which has two papers of 250 marks each. One of the compelling choices for many has been the sociology optional. However, it’s strongly advised to decide on your optional subject for mains well ahead of time to get sufficient time to complete the syllabus. After all, most students score similarly in General Studies Papers; it’s the score in the optional subject & essay that contributes significantly to the final selection.

“ A sound strategy does not rely solely on the popular Opinion of toppers or famous YouTubers cum teachers. ”

It requires understanding one’s ability, interest, and the relevance of the subject, not just for the exam but also for life in general. Hence, when selecting the best sociology teacher, one must consider the usefulness of sociology optional coaching in General Studies, Essay, and Personality Test.

The choice of the optional subject should be based on objective criteria, such as the nature, scope, and size of the syllabus, uniformity and stability in the question pattern, relevance of the syllabic content in daily life in society, and the availability of study material and guidance. For example, choosing the best sociology optional coaching can ensure access to top-quality study materials and experienced teachers. Always remember, the approach of the UPSC optional subject differs from your academic studies of subjects. Therefore, before settling for sociology optional , you need to analyze the syllabus, previous years’ pattern, subject requirements (be it ideal, visionary, numerical, conceptual theoretical), and your comfort level with the subject.

This decision marks a critical point in your UPSC – CSE journey , potentially determining your success in a career in IAS/Civil Services. Therefore, it’s crucial to choose wisely, whether it’s the optional subject or the best sociology optional teacher . Always base your decision on accurate facts, and never let your emotional biases guide your choices. After all, the search for the best sociology optional coaching is about finding the perfect fit for your unique academic needs and aspirations.

To master these intricacies and fare well in the Sociology Optional Syllabus , aspiring sociologists might benefit from guidance by the Best Sociology Optional Teacher and participation in the Best Sociology Optional Coaching . These avenues provide comprehensive assistance, ensuring a solid understanding of sociology’s diverse methodologies and techniques. Sociology, Social theory, Best Sociology Optional Teacher, Best Sociology Optional Coaching, Sociology Optional Syllabus. Best Sociology Optional Teacher, Sociology Syllabus, Sociology Optional, Sociology Optional Coaching, Best Sociology Optional Coaching, Best Sociology Teacher, Sociology Course, Sociology Teacher, Sociology Foundation, Sociology Foundation Course, Sociology Optional UPSC, Sociology for IAS,

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Diversity of India

Last updated on April 4, 2024 by ClearIAS Team

Despite numerous foreign invasions, a vast synthesis of the cultures, faiths, and languages of the people from all castes and communities has maintained its cohesion and unity.

Even if stark economic and social disparities have prevented the formation of egalitarian social relations, national unity and integrity have been preserved. This fusion has transformed India into a singular mosque of cultures. India thus presents a situation that appears to be multicultural within the context of a single, cohesive cultural whole.

Also read: Minorities in India

Table of Contents

What does diversity mean?

The word “diversity” places more emphasis on differences than on unfairness. It refers to group disparities, or distinctions separating one group of individuals from another. These differences could be biological, religious, linguistic, or anything else. Diversity refers to the variety of races, religions, languages, castes, and cultures.

Integrity refers to unity. It is a state of social psychology. It suggests a sense of unity and togetherness. It represents the ties that keep a society’s members together. Essentially, “unity in diversity” means “diversity without fragmentation” and “unity without uniformity.” It is predicated on the idea that diversity enhances interpersonal communication.

When we refer to India as a country with rich cultural diversity, we are referring to the wide variety of social groupings and cultures that call India home. These groups identify primarily through cultural traits like language, religion, sect, race, or caste.

Also read: Environmental Racism

Forms of India’s Diversity

The different forms of India’s diversity include the following.

Religious diversity

India is a country that is home to many different religions. The Indian population is made up of Hindus (82.41%), Muslims (11.6%), Christians (2.32%), Sikhs (1.99%), Buddhists (0.77%), and Jains (0.41%), in addition to the tribal societies, many of which continue to practice animism and magic.

Hindus are divided into several sects, including Vaishnavas, Shaivites, Shaktas, and Smartas. Similarly, there are various Muslim sects, including Shi’ites, Sunnis, Ahmadis, etc.

Language diversity

The major language families among the languages spoken in India are the Dravidian languages, which are spoken by 20% of Indians, and the Indo-Aryan languages, which are spoken by 75% of Indians.

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The Austroasiatic, Sino-Tibetan, Tai-Kadai, and a few other minor language families and isolates are home to other languages.

After Papua New Guinea, India has the second-highest number of languages in the world. India’s ethnic variety was divided into the following groups according to the 1931 census: Negrito, Proto-Australoid, Mongoloid, Mediterranean, Western Brachycephals, and Nordic.

Also Read: Endangered Languages of India

The Caste Diversity

The Caste Diversity includes members of all three major world races, namely Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid: India is a nation with Both varna and jati have been referred to as “caste” in the past. According to functional differentiation, society is divided into four groups called Varna. Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Shudras, and an outcaste.

While the term “Jati” designates a hereditary endogamous status group engaged in a certain traditional profession. There are more than 3000 jatis, and there isn’t a single system for classifying and ranking them across all of India. The jati system is dynamic and allows for movement, which has allowed jatis to vary their location throughout time. M. N. Srinivas referred to this method of upward mobility as “Sanskritization.”

Ethnic diversity

Ethnic diversity Regional differences are reflected in cultural patterns. Due to demographic diversity, Indian culture is extremely diverse and is a fusion of many other cultures. Every region, caste, and religion has its unique traditions and culture. As a result, there are variations in music, dance, theatre, and architecture.

Geographic diversity

With a total land area of 3.28 million square kilometers, India is a big nation with a wide variety of natural landscapes , including deserts, evergreen forests, steep mountains, perennial and non-perennial river systems, lengthy coasts, and fertile plains.

In addition to the major forms of variety already mentioned, India also has diversity in many other areas, such as tribal, rural, and urban patterns of habitation, patterns of marriage and kinship along religious and regional lines, and more.

Also read: Salient features of Indian Society – ClearIAS

Factors Promoting Unity in India’s Diversity

• Constitutional identity : A single person is elected to lead the entire nation. Even Nevertheless, the majority of states adhere to a standard 3-tier structure of government, bringing
• Furthermore, regardless of their age, gender, class, caste, or religion, all citizens are guaranteed certain fundamental rights under the Constitution.
• Religion tolerance is the distinctive characteristic of faiths in India, and as a result, many different religions coexist there. The Constitution itself guarantees the freedom of religion and practice. Additionally, the state accords equal preference to all religions and has no official state religion.
• Interstate movement : Article 19 (1) (d) of the Constitution ensures freedom of movement throughout India’s territory, fostering a sense of brotherhood and solidarity among the people.
• Other elements that contribute to consistency in the criminal justice system and policy implementation include the uniformity of the law, penal code, and administrative tasks (such as All India Services).
• Economic integration : The Goods and Service Tax (GST) has paved the way for “one country, one tax, one national market,” thereby facilitating unity among different regions. The Indian Constitution also guarantees the freedom of trade, commerce, and intercourse within the territory of India under Article.
• Institution of pilgrimage and religious practices: Spirituality and religion are very important in India. Religious sites and sacred rivers can be found all over the length and breadth of the country, from Badrinath and Kedarnath in the north to Rameshwaram in the south, Jagannath Puri in the east, and Dwaraka in the west. They are closely tied to the long-standing tradition of pilgrimage, which has always drawn people to different regions of the nation and given them a feeling of geo-cultural identity.
• Fairs and festivals : These serve as integrating factors as well because people from all across the nation participate in them. Hindus around the nation celebrate Diwali, just as Muslims and Christians celebrate Id and Christmas, respectively. In India, interreligious celebrations are also observed.
• Weather integration via the monsoon : The monsoon season affects the entire Indian subcontinent’s flora and fauna, agricultural activities, and way of life, including holidays. Sports and cinema are widely popular throughout the nation, serving as unifying forces. Factors that undermine India’s unity include:
• Regionalism : Regionalism favors the interests of a certain region or region over those of the nation. It may also hurt national integration. Regional demands and the resulting law and order situation
• Polarising politics : Politicians would occasionally invoke ascriptive identities like caste, religion, etc. to gain support. Violence, feelings of mistrust, and suspicion among minorities can emerge from this kind of polarising politics.
• Unbalanced development Backwardness of a region can be brought on by uneven socioeconomic growth, poor economic policies, and the resulting economic inequities. As a result, this may spark acts of violence, ignite migrant waves, or even fuel separatist demands. For instance, numerous examples of secessionist demands and tendencies have emerged as a result of the North East’s economic underdevelopment.
• Ethnic diversity and nativism: Ethnic diversity has frequently resulted in conflicts between various ethnic groups, particularly as a result of reasons like employment competition, a lack of resources, and threats to identity For instance, Bodos and Muslims who speak Bengali frequently fight in Assam. The son of the soil idea, which links people to their place of birth and bestows upon them certain advantages, privileges, duties, and obligations that may not apply to others, has served to emphasize this.
• Geographic isolation: Isolation can also result in separatist thinking and identity problems. Geographically, the North-East is separated from the rest of the nation by a small passageway called the Siliguri corridor, sometimes known as the “Chicken’s Neck.”The area is less developed economically than the rest of the nation and has poor infrastructure. As a result, it has seen several incidents of separatist and cross-border terrorism.
• Inter-religious disputes : Inter-religious disputes not only deteriorate relations between two communities by sowing distrust and fear, but they also damage the nation’s secular fabric.
• Conflicts between states : This may cause feelings of regionalism to grow. Additionally, it may have an impact on interstate commerce and communication. For instance, the Karnataka-Tamil Cauvery River dispute
• External influences : External influences, such as foreign organizations, terrorist organizations, and extremist groups, can occasionally inspire violence and foster feelings of secession. g. Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is alleged to have supported and trained mujahideen to fight in Jammu and Kashmir and incite separatist sentiment among local groupings.

Despite the difficulties diversity might provide, there is no denying the vital role sociocultural diversity has played in maintaining and advancing Indian culture.

The handling of diversity in Indian society, not diversity itself, is the issue. Because the benefits of growth haven’t been divided fairly or certain groups’ cultures haven’t received the acknowledgment they deserve, problems like regionalism, communalism, and ethnic conflicts have emerged.

Therefore, the Constitution and its ideas must serve as the foundation of our society. Any culture that has attempted to homogenize itself has experienced eventual stagnation and decline. The most notable instance in this situation is Pakistan’s attempt to force its culture on East Pakistan, ultimately leading to Bangladesh’s establishment.

Article Written By: Atheena Fathima Riyas

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Religion in india: tolerance and segregation, indians say it is important to respect all religions, but major religious groups see little in common and want to live separately.

This study is Pew Research Center’s most comprehensive, in-depth exploration of India to date. For this report, we surveyed 29,999 Indian adults (including 22,975 who identify as Hindu, 3,336 who identify as Muslim, 1,782 who identify as Sikh, 1,011 who identify as Christian, 719 who identify as Buddhist, 109 who identify as Jain and 67 who identify as belonging to another religion or as religiously unaffiliated). Interviews for this nationally representative survey were conducted face-to-face under the direction of RTI International from Nov. 17, 2019, to March 23, 2020.

To improve respondent comprehension of survey questions and to ensure all questions were culturally appropriate, Pew Research Center followed a multi-phase questionnaire development process that included expert review, focus groups, cognitive interviews, a pretest and a regional pilot survey before the national survey. The questionnaire was developed in English and translated into 16 languages, independently verified by professional linguists with native proficiency in regional dialects.

Respondents were selected using a probability-based sample design that would allow for robust analysis of all major religious groups in India – Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains – as well as all major regional zones. Data was weighted to account for the different probabilities of selection among respondents and to align with demographic benchmarks for the Indian adult population from the 2011 census. The survey is calculated to have covered 98% of Indians ages 18 and older and had an 86% national response rate.

For more information, see the  Methodology  for this report. The questions used in this analysis can be found  here .

More than 70 years after India became free from colonial rule, Indians generally feel their country has lived up to one of its post-independence ideals: a society where followers of many religions can live and practice freely.

India’s massive population is diverse as well as devout. Not only do most of the world’s Hindus, Jains and Sikhs live in India, but it also is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations and to millions of Christians and Buddhists.

A major new Pew Research Center survey of religion across India, based on nearly 30,000 face-to-face interviews of adults conducted in 17 languages between late 2019 and early 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic ), finds that Indians of all these religious backgrounds overwhelmingly say they are very free to practice their faiths.

Related India research

This is one in a series of Pew Research Center reports on India based on a survey of 29,999 Indian adults conducted Nov. 17, 2019, to March 23, 2020, as well as demographic data from the Indian Census and other government sources. Other reports can be found here:

How Indians View Gender Roles in Families and Society

Religious composition of india, india’s sex ratio at birth begins to normalize.

Indians see religious tolerance as a central part of who they are as a nation. Across the major religious groups, most people say it is very important to respect all religions to be “truly Indian.” And tolerance is a religious as well as civic value: Indians are united in the view that respecting other religions is a very important part of what it means to be a member of their own religious community.

These shared values are accompanied by a number of beliefs that cross religious lines. Not only do a majority of Hindus in India (77%) believe in karma, but an identical percentage of Muslims do, too. A third of Christians in India (32%) – together with 81% of Hindus – say they believe in the purifying power of the Ganges River, a central belief in Hinduism. In Northern India, 12% of Hindus and 10% of Sikhs, along with 37% of Muslims, identity with Sufism, a mystical tradition most closely associated with Islam. And the vast majority of Indians of all major religious backgrounds say that respecting elders is very important to their faith.

Yet, despite sharing certain values and religious beliefs – as well as living in the same country, under the same constitution – members of India’s major religious communities often don’t feel they have much in common with one another. The majority of Hindus see themselves as very different from Muslims (66%), and most Muslims return the sentiment, saying they are very different from Hindus (64%). There are a few exceptions: Two-thirds of Jains and about half of Sikhs say they have a lot in common with Hindus. But generally, people in India’s major religious communities tend to see themselves as very different from others.

This perception of difference is reflected in traditions and habits that maintain the separation of India’s religious groups. For example, marriages across religious lines – and, relatedly, religious conversions – are exceedingly rare (see Chapter 3 ). Many Indians, across a range of religious groups, say it is very important to stop people in their community from marrying into other religious groups. Roughly two-thirds of Hindus in India want to prevent interreligious marriages of Hindu women (67%) or Hindu men (65%). Even larger shares of Muslims feel similarly: 80% say it is very important to stop Muslim women from marrying outside their religion, and 76% say it is very important to stop Muslim men from doing so.

Moreover, Indians generally stick to their own religious group when it comes to their friends. Hindus overwhelmingly say that most or all of their close friends are also Hindu. Of course, Hindus make up the majority of the population, and as a result of sheer numbers, may be more likely to interact with fellow Hindus than with people of other religions. But even among Sikhs and Jains, who each form a sliver of the national population, a large majority say their friends come mainly or entirely from their small religious community.

Fewer Indians go so far as to say that their neighborhoods should consist only of people from their own religious group. Still, many would prefer to keep people of certain religions out of their residential areas or villages. For example, many Hindus (45%) say they are fine with having neighbors of all other religions – be they Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain – but an identical share (45%) say they would not be willing to accept followers of at least one of these groups, including more than one-in-three Hindus (36%) who do not want a Muslim as a neighbor. Among Jains, a majority (61%) say they are unwilling to have neighbors from at least one of these groups, including 54% who would not accept a Muslim neighbor, although nearly all Jains (92%) say they would be willing to accept a Hindu neighbor.

Indians, then, 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.

Indeed, many take both positions, saying it is important to be tolerant of others and expressing a desire to limit personal connections across religious lines. Indians who favor a religiously segregated society also overwhelmingly emphasize religious tolerance as a core value. For example, among Hindus who say it is very important to stop the interreligious marriage of Hindu women, 82% also say that respecting other religions is very important to what it means to be Hindu. This figure is nearly identical to the 85% who strongly value religious tolerance among those who are not at all concerned with stopping interreligious marriage.

In other words, Indians’ concept of religious tolerance does not necessarily involve the mixing of religious communities. While people in some countries may aspire to create a “melting pot” of different religious identities, many Indians seem to prefer a country more like a patchwork fabric, with clear lines between groups.

The dimensions of Hindu nationalism in India

One of these religious fault lines – the relationship between India’s Hindu majority and the country’s smaller religious communities – has particular relevance in public life, especially in recent years under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP is often described as promoting a Hindu nationalist ideology .

The survey finds that Hindus tend to see their religious identity and Indian national identity as closely intertwined: Nearly two-thirds of Hindus (64%) say it is very important to be Hindu to be “truly” Indian.

Most Hindus (59%) also link Indian identity with being able to speak Hindi – one of dozens of languages that are widely spoken in India. And these two dimensions of national identity – being able to speak Hindi and being a Hindu – are closely connected. Among Hindus who say it is very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian, fully 80% also say it is very important to speak Hindi to be truly Indian.

The BJP’s appeal is greater among Hindus who closely associate their religious identity and the Hindi language with being “truly Indian.” In the 2019 national elections, 60% of Hindu voters who think it is very important to be Hindu and to speak Hindi to be truly Indian cast their vote for the BJP, compared with only a third among Hindu voters who feel less strongly about both these aspects of national identity.

Overall, among those who voted in the 2019 elections, three-in-ten Hindus take all three positions: saying it is very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian; saying the same about speaking Hindi; and casting their ballot for the BJP.

These views are considerably more common among Hindus in the largely Hindi-speaking Northern and Central regions of the country, where roughly half of all Hindu voters fall into this category, compared with just 5% in the South.

Whether Hindus who meet all three of these criteria qualify as “Hindu nationalists” may be debated, but they do express a heightened desire for maintaining clear lines between Hindus and other religious groups when it comes to whom they marry, who their friends are and whom they live among. For example, among Hindu BJP voters who link national identity with both religion and language, 83% say it is very important to stop Hindu women from marrying into another religion, compared with 61% among other Hindu voters.

This group also tends to be more religiously observant: 95% say religion is very important in their lives, and roughly three-quarters say they pray daily (73%). By comparison, among other Hindu voters, a smaller majority (80%) say religion is very important in their lives, and about half (53%) pray daily.

Even though Hindu BJP voters who link national identity with religion and language are more inclined to support a religiously segregated India, they also are  more  likely than other Hindu voters to express positive opinions about India’s religious diversity. Nearly two-thirds (65%) of this group – Hindus who say that being a Hindu and being able to speak Hindi are very important to be truly Indian  and  who voted for the BJP in 2019 – say religious diversity benefits India, compared with about half (47%) of other Hindu voters.

This finding suggests that for many Hindus, there is no contradiction between valuing religious diversity (at least in principle) and feeling that Hindus are somehow more authentically Indian than fellow citizens who follow other religions.

Among Indians overall, there is no overwhelming consensus on the benefits of religious diversity. On balance, more Indians see diversity as a benefit than view it as a liability for their country: Roughly half (53%) of Indian adults say India’s religious diversity benefits the country, while about a quarter (24%) see diversity as harmful, with similar figures among both Hindus and Muslims. But 24% of Indians do not take a clear position either way – they say diversity neither benefits nor harms the country, or they decline to answer the question. (See Chapter 2 for a discussion of attitudes toward diversity.)

India’s Muslims express pride in being Indian while identifying communal tensions, desiring segregation

India’s Muslim community, the second-largest religious group in the country, historically has had a complicated relationship with the Hindu majority. The two communities generally have lived peacefully side by side for centuries, but their shared history also is checkered by civil unrest and violence. Most recently, while the survey was being conducted, demonstrations broke out in parts of New Delhi and elsewhere over the government’s new citizenship law , which creates an expedited path to citizenship for immigrants from some neighboring countries – but not Muslims.

Today, India’s Muslims almost unanimously say they are very proud to be Indian (95%), and they express great enthusiasm for Indian culture: 85% agree with the statement that “Indian people are not perfect, but Indian culture is superior to others.”

Relatively few Muslims say their community faces “a lot” of discrimination in India (24%). In fact, the share of Muslims who see widespread discrimination against their community is similar to the share of Hindus who say Hindus face widespread religious discrimination in India (21%). (See Chapter 1 for a discussion of attitudes on religious discrimination.)

But personal experiences with discrimination among Muslims vary quite a bit regionally. Among Muslims in the North, 40% say they personally have faced religious discrimination in the last 12 months – much higher levels than reported in most other regions.

In addition, most Muslims across the country (65%), along with an identical share of Hindus (65%), see communal violence as a very big national problem. (See Chapter 1 for a discussion of Indians’ attitudes toward national problems.)

Like Hindus, Muslims prefer to live religiously segregated lives – not just when it comes to marriage and friendships, but also in some elements of public life. In particular, three-quarters of Muslims in India (74%) support having access to the existing system of Islamic courts, which handle family disputes (such as inheritance or divorce cases), in addition to the secular court system.

Muslims’ desire for religious segregation does not preclude tolerance of other groups – again similar to the pattern seen among Hindus. Indeed, a majority of Muslims who favor separate religious courts for their community say religious diversity benefits India (59%), compared with somewhat fewer of those who oppose religious courts for Muslims (50%).

Sidebar: Islamic courts in India

Since 1937, India’s Muslims have had the option of resolving family and inheritance-related cases in officially recognized Islamic courts, known as dar-ul-qaza. These courts are overseen by religious magistrates known as qazi and operate under Shariah principles . For example, while the rules of inheritance for most Indians are governed by the Indian Succession Act of 1925 and the Hindu Succession Act of 1956 (amended in 2005), Islamic inheritance practices differ in some ways, including who can be considered an heir and how much of the deceased person’s property they can inherit. India’s inheritance laws also take into account the differing traditions of other religious communities, such as Hindus and Christians, but their cases are handled in secular courts. Only the Muslim community has the option of having cases tried by a separate system of family courts. The decisions of the religious courts, however, are not legally binding , and the parties involved have the option of taking their case to secular courts if they are not satisfied with the decision of the religious court.

As of 2021, there are roughly 70 dar-ul-qaza in India. Most are in the states of Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Goa is the only state that does not recognize rulings by these courts, enforcing its own uniform civil code instead. Dar-ul-qaza are overseen by the All India Muslim Personal Law Board .

Recent debates have emerged around Islamic courts. Some Indians have expressed concern that the rise of dar-ul-qaza could undermine the Indian judiciary, because a subset of the population is not bound to the same laws as everyone else. Others have argued that the rulings of Islamic courts are particularly unfair to women, although the prohibition of triple talaq may temper some of these criticisms. In its 2019 political manifesto , the BJP proclaimed a desire to create a national Uniform Civil Code, saying it would increase gender equality.

Some Indian commentators have voiced opposition to Islamic courts along with more broadly negative sentiments against Muslims, describing the rising numbers of dar-ul-qaza as the “Talibanization” of India , for example.

On the other hand, Muslim scholars have defended the dar-ul-qaza, saying they expedite justice because family disputes that would otherwise clog India’s courts can be handled separately, allowing the secular courts to focus their attention on other concerns.

Since 2018, the Hindu nationalist party Hindu Mahasabha (which does not hold any seats in Parliament) has tried to set up Hindu religious courts , known as Hindutva courts, aiming to play a role similar to dar-ul-qaza, only for the majority Hindu community. None of these courts have been recognized by the Indian government, and their rulings are not considered legally binding.

Muslims, Hindus diverge over legacy of Partition

The seminal event in the modern history of Hindu-Muslim relations in the region was the partition of the subcontinent into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan at the end of the British colonial period in 1947. Partition remains one of the largest movements of people across borders in recorded history, and in both countries the carving of new borders was accompanied by violence, rioting and looting .

More than seven decades later, the predominant view among Indian Muslims is that the partition of the subcontinent was “a bad thing” for Hindu-Muslim relations. Nearly half of Muslims say Partition hurt communal relations with Hindus (48%), while fewer say it was a good thing for Hindu-Muslim relations (30%). Among Muslims who prefer more religious segregation – that is, who say they would not accept a person of a different faith as a neighbor – an even higher share (60%) say Partition was a bad thing for Hindu-Muslim relations.

Sikhs, whose homeland of Punjab was split by Partition, are even more likely than Muslims to say Partition was a bad thing for Hindu-Muslim relations: Two-thirds of Sikhs (66%) take this position. And Sikhs ages 60 and older, whose parents most likely lived through Partition, are more inclined than younger Sikhs to say the partition of the country was bad for communal relations (74% vs. 64%).

While Sikhs and Muslims are more likely to say Partition was a bad thing than a good thing, Hindus lean in the opposite direction: 43% of Hindus say Partition was beneficial for Hindu-Muslim relations, while 37% see it as a bad thing.

Context for the survey

Interviews were conducted after the conclusion of the 2019 national parliamentary elections and after the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status under the Indian Constitution. In December 2019, protests against the country’s new citizenship law broke out in several regions.

Fieldwork could not be conducted in the Kashmir Valley and a few districts elsewhere due to security concerns. These locations include some heavily Muslim areas, which is part of the reason why Muslims make up 11% of the survey’s total sample, while India’s adult population is roughly 13% Muslim, according to the most recent census data that is publicly available, from 2011. In addition, it is possible that in some other parts of the country, interreligious tensions over the new citizenship law may have slightly depressed participation in the survey by potential Muslim respondents.

Nevertheless, the survey’s estimates of religious beliefs, behaviors and attitudes can be reported with a high degree of confidence for India’s total population, because the number of people living in the excluded areas (Manipur, Sikkim, the Kashmir Valley and a few other districts) is not large enough to affect the overall results at the national level. About 98% of India’s total population had a chance of being selected for this survey.

Greater caution is warranted when looking at India’s Muslims separately, as a distinct population. The survey cannot speak to the experiences and views of Kashmiri Muslims. Still, the survey does represent the beliefs, behaviors and attitudes of around 95% of India’s overall Muslim population.

These are among the key findings of a Pew Research Center survey conducted face-to-face nationally among 29,999 Indian adults. Local interviewers administered the survey between Nov. 17, 2019, and March 23, 2020, in 17 languages. The survey covered all states and union territories of India, with the exceptions of Manipur and Sikkim, where the rapidly developing COVID-19 situation prevented fieldwork from starting in the spring of 2020, and the remote territories of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep; these areas are home to about a quarter of 1% of the Indian population. The union territory of Jammu and Kashmir was covered by the survey, though no fieldwork was conducted in the Kashmir region itself due to security concerns.

This study, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation, is part of a larger effort by Pew Research Center to understand religious change and its impact on societies around the world. The Center previously has conducted religion-focused surveys across sub-Saharan Africa ; the Middle East-North Africa region and many other countries with large Muslim populations ; Latin America ; Israel ; Central and Eastern Europe ; Western Europe ; and the United States .

The rest of this Overview covers attitudes on five broad topics: caste and discrimination; religious conversion; religious observances and beliefs; how people define their religious identity, including what kind of behavior is considered acceptable to be a Hindu or a Muslim; and the connection between economic development and religious observance.

Caste is another dividing line in Indian society, and not just among Hindus

Religion is not the only fault line in Indian society. In some regions of the country, significant shares of people perceive widespread, caste-based discrimination.

The caste system is an ancient social hierarchy based on occupation and economic status. People are born into a particular caste and tend to keep many aspects of their social life within its boundaries, including whom they marry. Even though the system’s origins are in historical Hindu writings , today Indians nearly universally identify with a caste, regardless of whether they are Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist or Jain.

Buddhists in India nearly universally identify themselves in these categories, including 89% who are Dalits (sometimes referred to by the pejorative term “untouchables”).

Members of SC/ST/OBC groups traditionally formed the lower social and economic rungs of Indian society, and historically they have faced discrimination and unequal economic opportunities . The practice of untouchability in India ostracizes members of many of these communities, especially Dalits, although the Indian Constitution prohibits caste-based discrimination, including untouchability, and in recent decades the government has enacted economic advancement policies like reserved seats in universities and government jobs for Dalits, Scheduled Tribes and OBC communities.

Roughly 30% of Indians do not belong to these protected groups and are classified as “General Category.” This includes higher castes such as Brahmins (4%), traditionally the priestly caste. Indeed, each broad category includes several sub-castes – sometimes hundreds – with their own social and economic hierarchies.

Three-quarters of Jains (76%) identify with General Category castes, as do 46% of both Muslims and Sikhs.

Caste-based discrimination, as well as the government’s efforts to compensate for past discrimination, are politically charged topics in India . But the survey finds that most Indians do not perceive widespread caste-based discrimination. Just one-in-five Indians say there is a lot of discrimination against members of SCs, while 19% say there is a lot of discrimination against STs and somewhat fewer (16%) see high levels of discrimination against OBCs. Members of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are slightly more likely than others to perceive widespread discrimination against their two groups. Still, large majorities of people in these categories do not think they face a lot of discrimination.

These attitudes vary by region, however. Among Southern Indians, for example, 30% see widespread discrimination against Dalits, compared with 13% in the Central part of the country. And among the Dalit community in the South, even more (43%) say their community faces a lot of discrimination, compared with 27% among Southern Indians in the General Category who say the Dalit community faces widespread discrimination in India.

A higher share of Dalits in the South and Northeast than elsewhere in the country say they, personally, have faced discrimination in the last 12 months because of their caste: 30% of Dalits in the South say this, as do 38% in the Northeast.

Overall, 64% of Indians 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 members of different castes. For example, nearly identical shares of Dalits and members of General Category castes say stopping inter-caste marriages is very important.

Majorities of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Jains consider stopping inter-caste marriage of both men and women a high priority. By comparison, fewer Buddhists and Christians say it is very important to stop such marriages – although for majorities of both groups, stopping people from marrying outside their caste is at least “somewhat” important.

People surveyed in India’s South and Northeast see greater caste discrimination in their communities, and they also raise fewer objections to inter-caste marriages than do Indians overall. Meanwhile, college-educated Indians are less likely than those with less education to say stopping inter-caste marriages is a high priority. But, even within the most highly educated group, roughly half say preventing such marriages is very important. (See Chapter 4 for more analysis of Indians’ views on caste.)

Religious conversion in India

This survey, though, finds that religious switching, or conversion, has a minimal impact on the overall size of India’s religious groups. For example, according to the survey, 82% of Indians say they were raised Hindu, and a nearly identical share say they are currently Hindu, showing no net losses for the group through conversion to other religions. Other groups display similar levels of stability.

Changes in India’s religious landscape over time are largely a result of differences in fertility rates among religious groups, not conversion.

Respondents were asked two separate questions to measure religious switching: “What is your present religion, if any?” and, later in the survey, “In what religion were you raised, if any?” Overall, 98% of respondents give the same answer to both these questions.

An overall pattern of stability in the share of religious groups is accompanied by little net gain from movement into, or out of, most religious groups. Among Hindus, for instance, any conversion out of the group is matched by conversion into the group: 0.7% of respondents say they were raised Hindu but now identify as something else, and although Hindu texts and traditions do not agree on any formal process for conversion into the religion, roughly the same share (0.8%) say they were  not raised Hindu but now identify as Hindu. 5  Most of these new followers of Hinduism are married to Hindus.

Similarly, 0.3% of respondents have left Islam since childhood, matched by an identical share who say they were raised in other religions (or had no childhood religion) and have since become Muslim.

For Christians, however, there are some net gains from conversion: 0.4% of survey respondents are former Hindus who now identify as Christian, while 0.1% are former Christians.

Three-quarters of India’s Hindu converts to Christianity (74%) are concentrated in the Southern part of the country – the region with the largest Christian population. As a result, the Christian population of the South shows a slight increase within the lifetime of survey respondents: 6% of Southern Indians say they were raised Christian, while 7% say they are currently Christian.

Some Christian converts (16%) reside in the East as well (the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal); about two-thirds of all Christians in the East (64%) belong to Scheduled Tribes.

Nationally, the vast majority of former Hindus who are now Christian belong to Scheduled Castes (48%), Scheduled Tribes (14%) or Other Backward Classes (26%). And former Hindus are much more likely than the Indian population overall to say there is a lot of discrimination against lower castes in India. For example, nearly half of converts to Christianity (47%) say there is a lot of discrimination against Scheduled Castes in India, compared with 20% of the overall population who perceive this level of discrimination against Scheduled Castes. Still, relatively few converts say they, personally, have faced discrimination due to their caste in the last 12 months (12%).

Religion very important across India’s religious groups

Though their specific practices and beliefs may vary, all of India’s major religious communities are highly observant by standard measures. For instance, the vast majority of Indians, across all major faiths, say that religion is very important in their lives. And at least three-quarters of each major religion’s followers say they know a great deal about their own religion and its practices. For example, 81% of Indian Buddhists claim a great deal of knowledge about the Buddhist religion and its practices.

Indian Muslims are slightly more likely than Hindus to consider religion very important in their lives (91% vs. 84%). Muslims also are modestly more likely than Hindus to say they know a great deal about their own religion (84% vs. 75%).

Generally, younger and older Indians, those with different educational backgrounds, and men and women are similar in their levels of religious observance. South Indians are the least likely to say religion is very important in their lives (69%), and the South is the only region where fewer than half of people report praying daily (37%). While Hindus, Muslims and Christians in the South are all less likely than their counterparts elsewhere in India to say religion is very important to them, the lower rate of prayer in the South is driven mainly by Hindus: Three-in-ten Southern Hindus report that they pray daily (30%), compared with roughly two-thirds (68%) of Hindus in the rest of the country (see “ People in the South differ from rest of the country in their views of religion, national identity ” below for further discussion of religious differences in Southern India).

The survey also asked about three rites of passage: religious ceremonies for birth (or infancy), marriage and death. Members of all of India’s major religious communities tend to see these rites as highly important. For example, the vast majority of Muslims (92%), Christians (86%) and Hindus (85%) say it is very important to have a religious burial or cremation for their loved ones.

The survey also asked about practices specific to particular religions, such as whether people have received purification by bathing in holy bodies of water, like the Ganges River, a rite closely associated with Hinduism. About two-thirds of Hindus have done this (65%). Most Hindus also have holy basil (the tulsi plant) in their homes, as do most Jains (72% and 62%, respectively). And about three-quarters of Sikhs follow the Sikh practice of keeping their hair long (76%).

For more on religious practices across India’s religious groups, see Chapter 7 .

Near-universal belief in God, but wide variation in how God is perceived

Nearly all Indians say they believe in God (97%), and roughly 80% of people in most religious groups say they are absolutely certain that God exists. The main exception is Buddhists, one-third of whom say they do not believe in God. Still, among Buddhists who do think there is a God, most say they are absolutely certain in this belief.

While belief in God is close to universal in India, the survey finds a wide range of views about the type of deity or deities that Indians believe in. The prevailing view is that there is one God “with many manifestations” (54%). But about one-third of the public says simply: “There is only one God” (35%). Far fewer say there are many gods (6%).

Even though Hinduism is sometimes referred to as a polytheistic religion , very few Hindus (7%) take the position that there are multiple gods. Instead, the most common position among Hindus (as well as among Jains) is that there is “only one God with many manifestations” (61% among Hindus and 54% among Jains).

Among Hindus, those who say religion is very important in their lives are more likely than other Hindus to believe in one God with many manifestations (63% vs. 50%) and less likely to say there are many gods (6% vs. 12%).

By contrast, majorities of Muslims, Christians and Sikhs say there is only one God. And among Buddhists, the most common response is also a belief in one God. Among all these groups, however, about one-in-five or more say God has many manifestations, a position closer to their Hindu compatriots’ concept of God.

Most Hindus feel close to multiple gods, but Shiva, Hanuman and Ganesha are most popular

Traditionally, many Hindus have a “personal god,” or  ishta devata:  A particular god or goddess with whom they feel a personal connection. The survey asked all Indian Hindus who say they believe in God which god they feel closest to – showing them 15 images of gods on a card as possible options – and the vast majority of Hindus selected more than one god or indicated that they have many personal gods (84%). 7  This is true not only among Hindus who say they believe in many gods (90%) or in one God with many manifestations (87%), but also among those who say there is only one God (82%).

The god that Hindus most commonly feel close to is Shiva (44%). In addition, about one-third of Hindus feel close to Hanuman or Ganesha (35% and 32%, respectively).

There is great regional variation in how close India’s Hindus feel to some gods. For example, 46% of Hindus in India’s West feel close to Ganesha, but only 15% feel this way in the Northeast. And 46% of Hindus in the Northeast feel close to Krishna, while just 14% in the South say the same.

Feelings of closeness for Lord Ram are especially strong in the Central region (27%), which includes what Hindus claim is his ancient birthplace , Ayodhya. The location in Ayodhya where many Hindus believe Ram was born has been a source of controversy: Hindu mobs demolished a mosque on the site in 1992, claiming that a Hindu temple originally existed there. In 2019, the Indian Supreme Court ruled that the demolished mosque had been built on top of a preexisting non-Islamic structure and that the land should be given to Hindus to build a temple, with another location in the area given to the Muslim community to build a new mosque. (For additional findings on belief in God, see Chapter 12 .)

Sidebar: Despite economic advancement, few signs that importance of religion is declining

A prominent theory in the social sciences hypothesizes that as countries advance economically, their populations tend to become less religious, often leading to wider social change. Known as “secularization theory,” it particularly reflects the experience of Western European countries from the end of World War II to the present.

Despite rapid economic growth, India’s population so far shows few, if any, signs of losing its religion. For instance, both the Indian census and the new survey find virtually no growth in the minuscule share of people who claim no religious identity. And religion is prominent in the lives of Indians regardless of their socioeconomic status. Generally, across the country, there is little difference in personal religious observance between urban and rural residents or between those who are college educated versus those who are not. Overwhelming shares among all these groups say that religion is very important in their lives, that they pray regularly and that they believe in God.

Nearly all religious groups show the same patterns. The biggest exception is Christians, among whom those with higher education and those who reside in urban areas show somewhat lower levels of observance. For example, among Christians who have a college degree, 59% say religion is very important in their life, compared with 78% among those who have less education.

The survey does show a slight decline in the perceived importance of religion during the lifetime of respondents, though the vast majority of Indians indicate that religion remains central to their lives, and this is true among both younger and older adults.

Nearly nine-in-ten Indian adults say religion was very important to their family when they were growing up (88%), while a slightly lower share say religion is very important to them now (84%). The pattern is identical when looking only at India’s majority Hindu population. Among Muslims in India, the same shares say religion was very important to their family growing up and is very important to them now (91% each).

The states of Southern India (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Puducherry, Tamil Nadu and Telangana) show the biggest downward trend in the perceived importance of religion over respondents’ lifetimes: 76% of Indians who live in the South say religion was very important to their family growing up, compared with 69% who say religion is personally very important to them now. Slight declines in the importance of religion, by this measure, also are seen in the Western part of the country (Goa, Gujarat and Maharashtra) and in the North, although large majorities in all regions of the country say religion is very important in their lives today.

Across India’s religious groups, widespread sharing of beliefs, practices, values

Despite a strong desire for religious segregation, India’s religious groups share patriotic feelings, cultural values and some religious beliefs. For instance, overwhelming shares across India’s religious communities say they are very proud to be Indian, and most agree that Indian culture is superior to others.

Similarly, Indians of different religious backgrounds hold elders in high respect. For instance, nine-in-ten or more Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists and Jains say that respecting elders is very important to what being a member of their religious group means to them (e.g., for Hindus, it’s a very important part of their Hindu identity). Christians and Sikhs also overwhelmingly share this sentiment. And among all people surveyed in all six groups, three-quarters or more say that respecting elders is very important to being truly Indian.

Within all six religious groups, eight-in-ten or more also say that helping the poor and needy is a crucial part of their religious identity.

Beyond cultural parallels, many people mix traditions from multiple religions into their practices: As a result of living side by side for generations, India’s minority groups often engage in practices that are more closely associated with Hindu traditions than their own. For instance, many Muslim, Sikh and Christian women in India say they wear a bindi (a forehead marking, often worn by married women), even though putting on a bindi has Hindu origins.

Similarly, many people embrace beliefs not traditionally associated with their faith: Muslims in India are just as likely as Hindus to say they believe in karma (77% each), and 54% of Indian Christians share this view. 8  Nearly three-in-ten Muslims and Christians say they believe in reincarnation (27% and 29%, respectively). While these may seem like theological contradictions, for many Indians, calling oneself a Muslim or a Christian does not preclude believing in karma or reincarnation – beliefs that do not have a traditional, doctrinal basis in Islam or Christianity.

Most Muslims and Christians say they don’t participate in celebrations of Diwali, the Indian festival of lights that is traditionally celebrated by Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists. But substantial minorities of Christians (31%) and Muslims (20%) report that they do celebrate Diwali. Celebrating Diwali is especially common among Muslims in the West, where 39% say they participate in the festival, and in the South (33%).

Not only do some followers of all these religions participate in a celebration (Diwali) that consumes most of the country once a year, but some members of the majority Hindu community celebrate Muslim and Christian festivals, too: 7% of Indian Hindus say they celebrate the Muslim festival of Eid, and 17% celebrate Christmas.

Religious identity in India: Hindus divided on whether belief in God is required to be a Hindu, but most say eating beef is disqualifying

While there is some mixing of religious celebrations and traditions within India’s diverse population, many Hindus do not approve of this. In fact, while 17% of the nation’s Hindus say they participate in Christmas celebrations, about half of Hindus (52%) say that doing so disqualifies a person from being Hindu (compared with 35% who say a person can be Hindu if they celebrate Christmas). An even greater share of Hindus (63%) say a person cannot be Hindu if they celebrate the Islamic festival of Eid – a view that is more widely held in Northern, Central, Eastern and Northeastern India than the South or West.

Hindus are divided on whether beliefs and practices such as believing in God, praying and going to the temple are necessary to be a Hindu. But one behavior that a clear majority of Indian Hindus feel is incompatible with Hinduism is eating beef: 72% of Hindus in India say a person who eats beef cannot be a Hindu. That is even higher than the percentages of Hindus who say a person cannot be Hindu if they reject belief in God (49%), never go to a temple (48%) or never perform prayers (48%).

Attitudes toward beef appear to be part of a regional and cultural divide among Hindus: Southern Indian Hindus are considerably less likely than others to disqualify beef eaters from being Hindu (50% vs. 83% in the Northern and Central parts of the country). And, at least in part, Hindus’ views on beef and Hindu identity are linked with a preference for religious segregation and elements of Hindu nationalism. For example, Hindus who take a strong position against eating beef are more likely than others to say they would not accept followers of other religions as their neighbors (49% vs. 30%) and to say it is very important to be Hindu to be truly Indian (68% vs. 51%).

Relatedly, 44% of Hindus say they are vegetarians, and an additional 33% say they abstain from eating certain meats. Hindus traditionally view cows as sacred, and laws pertaining to cow slaughter have been a recent flashpoint in India . At the same time, Hindus are not alone in linking beef consumption with religious identity: 82% of Sikhs and 85% of Jains surveyed say that a person who eats beef cannot be a member of their religious groups, either. A majority of Sikhs (59%) and fully 92% of Jains say they are vegetarians, including 67% of Jains who do not eat root vegetables . 9  (For more data on religion and dietary habits, see Chapter 10 .)

Sidebar: People in the South differ from rest of the country in their views of religion, national identity

The survey consistently finds that people in the South (the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana, and the union territory of Puducherry) differ from Indians elsewhere in the country in their views on religion, politics and identity.

For example, by a variety of measures, people in the South are somewhat less religious than those in other regions – 69% say religion is very important in their lives, versus 92% in the Central part of the country. And 37% say they pray every day, compared with more than half of Indians in other regions. People in the South also are less segregated by religion or caste – whether that involves their friendship circles, the kind of neighbors they prefer or how they feel about intermarriage. (See Chapter 3 .)

Hindu nationalist sentiments also appear to have less of a foothold in the South. Among Hindus, those in the South (42%) are far less likely than those in Central states (83%) or the North (69%) to say being Hindu is very important to be truly Indian. And in the 2019 parliamentary elections, the BJP’s lowest vote share came in the South. In the survey, just 19% of Hindus in the region say they voted for the BJP, compared with roughly two-thirds in the Northern (68%) and Central (65%) parts of the country who say they voted for the ruling party.

Culturally and politically, people in the South have pushed back against the BJP’s restrictions on cow slaughter and efforts to nationalize the Hindi language . These factors may contribute to the BJP’s lower popularity in the South, where more people prefer regional parties or the Indian National Congress party.

These differences in attitudes and practices exist in a wider context of economic disparities between the South and other regions of the country. Over time, Southern states have seen stronger economic growth than the Northern and Central parts of the country. And women and people belonging to lower castes in the South have fared better economically than their counterparts elsewhere in the country. Even though three-in-ten people in the South say there is widespread caste discrimination in India, the region also has a history of anti-caste movements . Indeed, one author has attributed the economic growth of the South largely to the flattening of caste hierarchies.

Muslim identity in India

Most Muslims in India say a person cannot be Muslim if they never pray or attend a mosque. Similarly, about six-in-ten say that celebrating Diwali or Christmas is incompatible with being a member of the Muslim community. At the same time, a substantial minority express a degree of open-mindedness on who can be a Muslim, with fully one-third (34%) saying a person can be Muslim even if they don’t believe in God. (The survey finds that 6% of self-described Muslims in India say they do not believe in God; see “ Near-universal belief in God, but wide variation in how God is perceived ” above.)

Like Hindus, Muslims have dietary restrictions that resonate as powerful markers of identity. Three-quarters of Indian Muslims (77%) say that a person cannot be Muslim if they eat pork, which is even higher than the share who say a person cannot be Muslim if they do not believe in God (60%) or never attend mosque (61%).

Indian Muslims also report high levels of religious commitment by a host of conventional measures: 91% say religion is very important in their lives, two-thirds (66%) say they pray at least once a day, and seven-in-ten say they attend mosque at least once a week – with even higher attendance among Muslim men (93%).

By all these measures, Indian Muslims are broadly comparable to Muslims in the neighboring Muslim-majority countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in those countries in late 2011 and early 2012. In Pakistan, for example, 94% of Muslims said religion is very important in their lives , while 81% of Bangladeshi Muslims said the same. Muslims in India are somewhat more likely than those elsewhere in South Asia to say they regularly worship at a mosque (70% in India vs. 59% in Pakistan and 53% in Bangladesh), with the difference mainly driven by the share of women who attend.

At the same time, Muslims in India are slightly less likely to say there is “only one true” interpretation of Islam (72% in Pakistan, 69% in Bangladesh, 63% in India), as opposed to multiple interpretations.

When it comes to their religious beliefs, Indian Muslims in some ways resemble Indian Hindus more than they resemble Muslims in neighboring countries. For example, Muslims in Pakistan and Bangladesh almost universally say they believe in heaven and angels, but Indian Muslims seem more skeptical: 58% say they believe in heaven and 53% express belief in angels. Among Indian Hindus, similarly, 56% believe in heaven and 49% believe in angels.

Majority of Muslim women in India oppose ‘triple talaq’ (Islamic divorce)

Many Indian Muslims historically have followed the Hanafi school of thought, which for centuries allowed men to divorce their wives by saying “talaq” (which translates as “divorce” in Arabic and Urdu) three times. Traditionally, there was supposed to be a waiting period and attempts at reconciliation in between each use of the word, and it was deeply frowned upon (though technically permissible) for a man to pronounce “talaq” three times quickly in a row. India’s Supreme Court ruled triple talaq unconstitutional in 2017, and it was banned by legislation in 2019 .

Most Indian Muslims (56%) say Muslim men should not be allowed to divorce this way. Still, 37% of Indian Muslims say they support triple talaq, with Muslim men (42%) more likely than Muslim women (32%) to take this position. A majority of Muslim women (61%) oppose triple talaq.

Highly religious Muslims – i.e., those who say religion is very important in their lives – also are more likely than other Muslims to say Muslim men should be able to divorce their wives simply by saying “talaq” three times (39% vs. 26%).

Triple talaq seems to have the most support among Muslims in the Southern and Northeastern regions of India, where half or more of Muslims say it should be legal (58% and 50%, respectively), although 12% of Muslims in the South and 16% in the Northeast do not take a position on the issue either way.

Sikhs are proud to be Punjabi and Indian

Sikhism is one of four major religions – along with Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – that originated on the Indian subcontinent. The Sikh religion emerged in Punjab in the 15th century, when Guru Nanak, who is revered as the founder of Sikhism, became the first in a succession of 10 gurus (teachers) in the religion.

Today, India’s Sikhs remain concentrated in the state of Punjab. One feature of the Sikh religion is a distinctive sense of community, also known as “Khalsa” (which translates as “ones who are pure”). Observant Sikhs differentiate themselves from others in several ways, including keeping their hair uncut. Today, about three-quarters of Sikh men and women in India say they keep their hair long (76%), and two-thirds say it is very important to them that children in their families also keep their hair long (67%). (For more analysis of Sikhs’ views on passing religious traditions on to their children, see Chapter 8 .)

Sikhs are more likely than Indian adults overall to say they attend religious services every day – 40% of Sikhs say they go to the gurdwara (Sikh house of worship) daily. By comparison, 14% of Hindus say they go to a Hindu temple every day. Moreover, the vast majority of Sikhs (94%) regard their holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, as the word of God, and many (37%) say they read it, or listen to recitations of it, every day.

Sikhs in India also incorporate other religious traditions into their practice. Some Sikhs (9%) say they follow Sufi orders, which are linked with Islam, and about half (52%) say they have a lot in common with Hindus. Roughly one-in-five Indian Sikhs say they have prayed, meditated or performed a ritual at a Hindu temple.

Sikh-Hindu relations were marked by violence in the 1970s and 1980s, when demands for a separate Sikh state covering the Punjab regions in both India and Pakistan (also known as the Khalistan movement) reached their apex. In 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards as revenge for Indian paramilitary forces storming the Sikh Golden Temple in pursuit of Sikh militants. Anti-Sikh riots ensued in Northern India, especially in the state of Punjab.

According to the Indian census, the vast majority of Sikhs in India (77%) still live in Punjab, where Sikhs make up 58% of the adult population. And 93% of Punjabi Sikhs say they are very proud to live in the state.

Sikhs also are overwhelmingly proud of their Indian identity. A near-universal share of Sikhs say they are very proud to be Indian (95%), and the vast majority (70%) say a person who disrespects India cannot be a Sikh. And like India’s other religious groups, most Sikhs do not see evidence of widespread discrimination against their community – just 14% say Sikhs face a lot of discrimination in India, and 18% say they personally have faced religious discrimination in the last year.

At the same time, Sikhs are more likely than other religious communities to see communal violence as a very big problem in the country. Nearly eight-in-ten Sikhs (78%) rate communal violence as a major issue, compared with 65% of Hindus and Muslims.

The BJP has attempted to financially compensate Sikhs for some of the violence that occurred in 1984 after Indira Gandhi’s assassination, but relatively few Sikh voters (19%) report having voted for the BJP in the 2019 parliamentary elections. The survey finds that 33% of Sikhs preferred the Indian National Congress Party – Gandhi’s party.

• Ahmed, Hilal. 2019. “ Siyasi Muslims: A story of political Islams in India .” ↩
• All survey respondents, regardless of religion, were asked, “Are you from a General Category, Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class?” By contrast, in the 2011 census of India, only Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists could be enumerated as members of Scheduled Castes, while Scheduled Tribes could include followers of all religions. General Category and Other Backward Classes were not measured in the census. A detailed analysis of differences between 2011 census data on caste and survey data can be found here . ↩
• According to the 2004 and 2009 National Election Studies by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), roughly half of Indians or more said that marriages of boys and girls from different castes should be  banned . In 2004, a majority also said this about people from different religions. ↩
• In both the 2004 and 2009 National Election Studies (organized by CSDS), roughly half of Indians said that “There should be a legal ban on religious conversions.” ↩
• This includes 0.2% of all Indian adults who now identify as Hindu but give an ambiguous response on how they were raised – either saying “some other religion” or saying they don’t know their childhood religion. ↩
• Puja is a specific worship ritual that involves prayer along with rites like offering flowers and food, using vermillion, singing and chanting. ↩
• Fifteen named deities were available for selection, though no answer options were read aloud. Respondents could select up to three of those 15 deities by naming them or selecting the corresponding image shown on a card. The answer option “another god” was available on the card or if any other deity name was volunteered by the respondent. Other possible answer options included “I do not have a god I feel closest to” and “I have many personal gods,” though neither was on the card. See the questionnaire or topline for the full list of gods offered. ↩
• The religious origins of karma are debated by scholars, but the concept has deep roots in Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. ↩
• For an analysis of Jain theology on the concept of  jiva  (soul) see Chapple, Christopher K. 2014. “Life All Around: Soul in Jainism.” In Biernacki, Loriliai and Philip Clayton, eds. “ Panentheism Across the World’s Traditions .” ↩

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About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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Unity In Diversity In India Essay - 100, 200, 500 Words

India is known for its unique ability to unite its people through diversity . India is a secular nation that offers equal support to all major religions. People from these various states have various cultures and a variety of languages. Despite their language, region, culture, and religious differences, they all share the same nationality. India serves as an illustration of diversity and unity.

100 Words Essay on Unity in Diversity in India

200 words essay on unity in diversity in india, 500 words essay on unity in diversity in india.

In its diverse society, India is a nation that is united. Even though our country's population is diverse in terms of religions, languages, and clothing, they are all united. Being a nation with a rich cultural heritage, every state and every region within each state is home to various cultural treasures and traditional practices.

Everything is different from one state to the next, including dances, plays, music, writing, and languages. However, if we carefully observe Indians, we will notice that they respect and adhere to the traditions and cultures of India as a whole. The most admirable quality of our nation is its strength right now: "Unity in Diversity." .

Harmony and unity among various disparate people are called "Unity in Diversity.". These differences might result from cultural norms, political views, religious perspectives, or political beliefs. The idea is known by several other names, including "diversity without fragmentation" and "unity without uniformity" .

According to historical records, this concept was first used by the indigenous people of North America around 400–500 BC. The phrase may also be much older, evolving with societies and civilizations. Additionally, it is a constant fact that people are highly diverse by nature. Conflicts consequently easily develop as a result of these differences.

The phrase "unity in diversity" is rather intriguing from a grammatical standpoint. This is due to the statement's oxymoron construction, which combines the words "unity" and "diversity" . Interestingly, the phrase significantly impacts politics; pacifist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ernesto Teodoro Moneta first used it.

An American equivalent of this phrase is E Pluribus Unum, Latin for " One out of many" or "Out of many, one." . It typically appears as a motto above the Great Seal, a seal used by a head of state to authenticate important and legal documents.

Therefore, the phrase "Unity in Diversity" has broad and profound implications. Its primary purposes are to prevent wars and advance international peace.

"Unity in diversity" suggests that humans are one despite variances in food, clothes, language, traditions, faiths, customs, beliefs, values, and habits . India has a rich cultural and historical past, where people have deep ties and remain united despite cultural diversity. India is the origin of great legends who have taught the world about brotherhood, tolerance, and nonviolence. India boasts one of the world's oldest cultures.

Indian Cultural Diversity

India is a country that is proud of its rich culture and traditions. Food, dress, religion, language, music, dance, food, beliefs, rituals, customs, art, and architecture are all part of Indian culture. Indian culture is becoming increasingly popular all over the world.

Indian Religion

Religion plays an essential role in shaping culture and customs in India. Hinduism is the world's oldest religion, having evolved from the Vedas. Thus, all Hindu scriptures are written in Sanskrit. Following Lord Buddha's preaching,

Buddhism arose as a separate religion that primarily taught about nirvana, ahimsa, and the eightfold path. Jainism of Vardhamana Mahavira traces its existence to the Indus valley Civilisation. The British and French introduced Christianity during colonial authority. Islam appeared in India when the Arabs conquered Sindh. Sikhism began in India towards the end of the 15th century.

Indian Custom

According to Indian custom, you should extend your greetings by folding your hands and uttering "namaste." Children touch the feet of elders to ask for blessings. They favour nuclear families and adhere to the idea of prearranged marriage. Indian traditions instil in people a respect for the elderly and a duty to aid the destitute and needy.

Indian Music, Architecture, and Art

Indian music consists of both classical and traditional styles. Qawwali, thumri, kirtan, Gurbani, and bhajan are common genres. The classical dances Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Odissi, kathakali, Kuchipudi, Manipuri, and others are performed in various ways. Bihu, Chhau, bhangra, and thirayattam are examples of folk dances.

Indian Literature

The epic genres of Indian literature are the Vedic and Sanskrit texts. Other well-known works of Indian literature include the Mahabharata, Vedas, Ramayana, Arthasahtra, Shakuntala, Meghduta etc. Reading their biographies, we can learn about the reigns and accomplishments of various kings.

Indian Food

There are regional variations in Indian eating habits. It includes both traditional and regional cuisines. Indian cuisine relies heavily on millet, rice, whole wheat, and various lentils as its main ingredients. Spices are utilised as flavourings, and vegetable oil is used for cooking the food.

Indian Festivals

Festivals bring Indians together. They have a significant role in tradition and culture. Diwali, Shiv Ratri, Ganesh Chaturthi, Dussehra, Navratri, Janmashtami, Chhath puja, Onam, Lohri, Makar Sankranti, and others are some of the well-known Indian holidays observed by Hindus. Christians observe Christmas, Sikhs observe Gurupurab, and Muslims observe Eid-ul-Fitr, Bakr-id, and Moharram.

My Experiences With Unity in Diversity

My house is in a gated community where people with different religions, castes, creeds and languages live together. But at every festival, all the people of the apartment gather to celebrate the festival, whether it be Diwali, Christmas, Pongal, Onam or Ramzan, which gives me a feeling of unity in our diversity.

Explore Career Options (By Industry)

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Data Administrator

Database professionals use software to store and organise data such as financial information, and customer shipping records. Individuals who opt for a career as data administrators ensure that data is available for users and secured from unauthorised sales. DB administrators may work in various types of industries. It may involve computer systems design, service firms, insurance companies, banks and hospitals.

Bio Medical Engineer

The field of biomedical engineering opens up a universe of expert chances. An Individual in the biomedical engineering career path work in the field of engineering as well as medicine, in order to find out solutions to common problems of the two fields. The biomedical engineering job opportunities are to collaborate with doctors and researchers to develop medical systems, equipment, or devices that can solve clinical problems. Here we will be discussing jobs after biomedical engineering, how to get a job in biomedical engineering, biomedical engineering scope, and salary. 

Ethical Hacker

A career as ethical hacker involves various challenges and provides lucrative opportunities in the digital era where every giant business and startup owns its cyberspace on the world wide web. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path try to find the vulnerabilities in the cyber system to get its authority. If he or she succeeds in it then he or she gets its illegal authority. Individuals in the ethical hacker career path then steal information or delete the file that could affect the business, functioning, or services of the organization.

GIS officer work on various GIS software to conduct a study and gather spatial and non-spatial information. GIS experts update the GIS data and maintain it. The databases include aerial or satellite imagery, latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, and manually digitized images of maps. In a career as GIS expert, one is responsible for creating online and mobile maps.

Data Analyst

The invention of the database has given fresh breath to the people involved in the data analytics career path. Analysis refers to splitting up a whole into its individual components for individual analysis. Data analysis is a method through which raw data are processed and transformed into information that would be beneficial for user strategic thinking.

Data are collected and examined to respond to questions, evaluate hypotheses or contradict theories. It is a tool for analyzing, transforming, modeling, and arranging data with useful knowledge, to assist in decision-making and methods, encompassing various strategies, and is used in different fields of business, research, and social science.

Geothermal Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as geothermal engineers are the professionals involved in the processing of geothermal energy. The responsibilities of geothermal engineers may vary depending on the workplace location. Those who work in fields design facilities to process and distribute geothermal energy. They oversee the functioning of machinery used in the field.

Database Architect

If you are intrigued by the programming world and are interested in developing communications networks then a career as database architect may be a good option for you. Data architect roles and responsibilities include building design models for data communication networks. Wide Area Networks (WANs), local area networks (LANs), and intranets are included in the database networks. It is expected that database architects will have in-depth knowledge of a company's business to develop a network to fulfil the requirements of the organisation. Stay tuned as we look at the larger picture and give you more information on what is db architecture, why you should pursue database architecture, what to expect from such a degree and what your job opportunities will be after graduation. Here, we will be discussing how to become a data architect. Students can visit NIT Trichy , IIT Kharagpur , JMI New Delhi . 

Remote Sensing Technician

Individuals who opt for a career as a remote sensing technician possess unique personalities. Remote sensing analysts seem to be rational human beings, they are strong, independent, persistent, sincere, realistic and resourceful. Some of them are analytical as well, which means they are intelligent, introspective and inquisitive. 

Remote sensing scientists use remote sensing technology to support scientists in fields such as community planning, flight planning or the management of natural resources. Analysing data collected from aircraft, satellites or ground-based platforms using statistical analysis software, image analysis software or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is a significant part of their work. Do you want to learn how to become remote sensing technician? There's no need to be concerned; we've devised a simple remote sensing technician career path for you. Scroll through the pages and read.

Budget Analyst

Budget analysis, in a nutshell, entails thoroughly analyzing the details of a financial budget. The budget analysis aims to better understand and manage revenue. Budget analysts assist in the achievement of financial targets, the preservation of profitability, and the pursuit of long-term growth for a business. Budget analysts generally have a bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, economics, or a closely related field. Knowledge of Financial Management is of prime importance in this career.

Underwriter

An underwriter is a person who assesses and evaluates the risk of insurance in his or her field like mortgage, loan, health policy, investment, and so on and so forth. The underwriter career path does involve risks as analysing the risks means finding out if there is a way for the insurance underwriter jobs to recover the money from its clients. If the risk turns out to be too much for the company then in the future it is an underwriter who will be held accountable for it. Therefore, one must carry out his or her job with a lot of attention and diligence.

Finance Executive

Product manager.

A Product Manager is a professional responsible for product planning and marketing. He or she manages the product throughout the Product Life Cycle, gathering and prioritising the product. A product manager job description includes defining the product vision and working closely with team members of other departments to deliver winning products.  

Operations Manager

Individuals in the operations manager jobs are responsible for ensuring the efficiency of each department to acquire its optimal goal. They plan the use of resources and distribution of materials. The operations manager's job description includes managing budgets, negotiating contracts, and performing administrative tasks.

Stock Analyst

Individuals who opt for a career as a stock analyst examine the company's investments makes decisions and keep track of financial securities. The nature of such investments will differ from one business to the next. Individuals in the stock analyst career use data mining to forecast a company's profits and revenues, advise clients on whether to buy or sell, participate in seminars, and discussing financial matters with executives and evaluate annual reports.

A Researcher is a professional who is responsible for collecting data and information by reviewing the literature and conducting experiments and surveys. He or she uses various methodological processes to provide accurate data and information that is utilised by academicians and other industry professionals. Here, we will discuss what is a researcher, the researcher's salary, types of researchers.

Welding Engineer

Welding Engineer Job Description: A Welding Engineer work involves managing welding projects and supervising welding teams. He or she is responsible for reviewing welding procedures, processes and documentation. A career as Welding Engineer involves conducting failure analyses and causes on welding issues. 

Transportation Planner

A career as Transportation Planner requires technical application of science and technology in engineering, particularly the concepts, equipment and technologies involved in the production of products and services. In fields like land use, infrastructure review, ecological standards and street design, he or she considers issues of health, environment and performance. A Transportation Planner assigns resources for implementing and designing programmes. He or she is responsible for assessing needs, preparing plans and forecasts and compliance with regulations.

Environmental Engineer

Individuals who opt for a career as an environmental engineer are construction professionals who utilise the skills and knowledge of biology, soil science, chemistry and the concept of engineering to design and develop projects that serve as solutions to various environmental problems. 

Safety Manager

A Safety Manager is a professional responsible for employee’s safety at work. He or she plans, implements and oversees the company’s employee safety. A Safety Manager ensures compliance and adherence to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) guidelines.

Conservation Architect

A Conservation Architect is a professional responsible for conserving and restoring buildings or monuments having a historic value. He or she applies techniques to document and stabilise the object’s state without any further damage. A Conservation Architect restores the monuments and heritage buildings to bring them back to their original state.

Structural Engineer

A Structural Engineer designs buildings, bridges, and other related structures. He or she analyzes the structures and makes sure the structures are strong enough to be used by the people. A career as a Structural Engineer requires working in the construction process. It comes under the civil engineering discipline. A Structure Engineer creates structural models with the help of computer-aided design software. 

Highway Engineer

Highway Engineer Job Description:  A Highway Engineer is a civil engineer who specialises in planning and building thousands of miles of roads that support connectivity and allow transportation across the country. He or she ensures that traffic management schemes are effectively planned concerning economic sustainability and successful implementation.

Field Surveyor

Are you searching for a Field Surveyor Job Description? A Field Surveyor is a professional responsible for conducting field surveys for various places or geographical conditions. He or she collects the required data and information as per the instructions given by senior officials. 

Orthotist and Prosthetist

Orthotists and Prosthetists are professionals who provide aid to patients with disabilities. They fix them to artificial limbs (prosthetics) and help them to regain stability. There are times when people lose their limbs in an accident. In some other occasions, they are born without a limb or orthopaedic impairment. Orthotists and prosthetists play a crucial role in their lives with fixing them to assistive devices and provide mobility.

Pathologist

A career in pathology in India is filled with several responsibilities as it is a medical branch and affects human lives. The demand for pathologists has been increasing over the past few years as people are getting more aware of different diseases. Not only that, but an increase in population and lifestyle changes have also contributed to the increase in a pathologist’s demand. The pathology careers provide an extremely huge number of opportunities and if you want to be a part of the medical field you can consider being a pathologist. If you want to know more about a career in pathology in India then continue reading this article.

Veterinary Doctor

Speech therapist, gynaecologist.

Gynaecology can be defined as the study of the female body. The job outlook for gynaecology is excellent since there is evergreen demand for one because of their responsibility of dealing with not only women’s health but also fertility and pregnancy issues. Although most women prefer to have a women obstetrician gynaecologist as their doctor, men also explore a career as a gynaecologist and there are ample amounts of male doctors in the field who are gynaecologists and aid women during delivery and childbirth. 

Audiologist

The audiologist career involves audiology professionals who are responsible to treat hearing loss and proactively preventing the relevant damage. Individuals who opt for a career as an audiologist use various testing strategies with the aim to determine if someone has a normal sensitivity to sounds or not. After the identification of hearing loss, a hearing doctor is required to determine which sections of the hearing are affected, to what extent they are affected, and where the wound causing the hearing loss is found. As soon as the hearing loss is identified, the patients are provided with recommendations for interventions and rehabilitation such as hearing aids, cochlear implants, and appropriate medical referrals. While audiology is a branch of science that studies and researches hearing, balance, and related disorders.

An oncologist is a specialised doctor responsible for providing medical care to patients diagnosed with cancer. He or she uses several therapies to control the cancer and its effect on the human body such as chemotherapy, immunotherapy, radiation therapy and biopsy. An oncologist designs a treatment plan based on a pathology report after diagnosing the type of cancer and where it is spreading inside the body.

Are you searching for an ‘Anatomist job description’? An Anatomist is a research professional who applies the laws of biological science to determine the ability of bodies of various living organisms including animals and humans to regenerate the damaged or destroyed organs. If you want to know what does an anatomist do, then read the entire article, where we will answer all your questions.

For an individual who opts for a career as an actor, the primary responsibility is to completely speak to the character he or she is playing and to persuade the crowd that the character is genuine by connecting with them and bringing them into the story. This applies to significant roles and littler parts, as all roles join to make an effective creation. Here in this article, we will discuss how to become an actor in India, actor exams, actor salary in India, and actor jobs. 

Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats create and direct original routines for themselves, in addition to developing interpretations of existing routines. The work of circus acrobats can be seen in a variety of performance settings, including circus, reality shows, sports events like the Olympics, movies and commercials. Individuals who opt for a career as acrobats must be prepared to face rejections and intermittent periods of work. The creativity of acrobats may extend to other aspects of the performance. For example, acrobats in the circus may work with gym trainers, celebrities or collaborate with other professionals to enhance such performance elements as costume and or maybe at the teaching end of the career.

Video Game Designer

Career as a video game designer is filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. A video game designer is someone who is involved in the process of creating a game from day one. He or she is responsible for fulfilling duties like designing the character of the game, the several levels involved, plot, art and similar other elements. Individuals who opt for a career as a video game designer may also write the codes for the game using different programming languages.

Depending on the video game designer job description and experience they may also have to lead a team and do the early testing of the game in order to suggest changes and find loopholes.

Radio Jockey

Radio Jockey is an exciting, promising career and a great challenge for music lovers. If you are really interested in a career as radio jockey, then it is very important for an RJ to have an automatic, fun, and friendly personality. If you want to get a job done in this field, a strong command of the language and a good voice are always good things. Apart from this, in order to be a good radio jockey, you will also listen to good radio jockeys so that you can understand their style and later make your own by practicing.

A career as radio jockey has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. If you want to know more about a career as radio jockey, and how to become a radio jockey then continue reading the article.

Choreographer

The word “choreography" actually comes from Greek words that mean “dance writing." Individuals who opt for a career as a choreographer create and direct original dances, in addition to developing interpretations of existing dances. A Choreographer dances and utilises his or her creativity in other aspects of dance performance. For example, he or she may work with the music director to select music or collaborate with other famous choreographers to enhance such performance elements as lighting, costume and set design.

Social Media Manager

A career as social media manager involves implementing the company’s or brand’s marketing plan across all social media channels. Social media managers help in building or improving a brand’s or a company’s website traffic, build brand awareness, create and implement marketing and brand strategy. Social media managers are key to important social communication as well.

Photographer

Photography is considered both a science and an art, an artistic means of expression in which the camera replaces the pen. In a career as a photographer, an individual is hired to capture the moments of public and private events, such as press conferences or weddings, or may also work inside a studio, where people go to get their picture clicked. Photography is divided into many streams each generating numerous career opportunities in photography. With the boom in advertising, media, and the fashion industry, photography has emerged as a lucrative and thrilling career option for many Indian youths.

An individual who is pursuing a career as a producer is responsible for managing the business aspects of production. They are involved in each aspect of production from its inception to deception. Famous movie producers review the script, recommend changes and visualise the story. 

They are responsible for overseeing the finance involved in the project and distributing the film for broadcasting on various platforms. A career as a producer is quite fulfilling as well as exhaustive in terms of playing different roles in order for a production to be successful. Famous movie producers are responsible for hiring creative and technical personnel on contract basis.

Copy Writer

In a career as a copywriter, one has to consult with the client and understand the brief well. A career as a copywriter has a lot to offer to deserving candidates. Several new mediums of advertising are opening therefore making it a lucrative career choice. Students can pursue various copywriter courses such as Journalism , Advertising , Marketing Management . Here, we have discussed how to become a freelance copywriter, copywriter career path, how to become a copywriter in India, and copywriting career outlook. 

In a career as a vlogger, one generally works for himself or herself. However, once an individual has gained viewership there are several brands and companies that approach them for paid collaboration. It is one of those fields where an individual can earn well while following his or her passion. 

Ever since internet costs got reduced the viewership for these types of content has increased on a large scale. Therefore, a career as a vlogger has a lot to offer. If you want to know more about the Vlogger eligibility, roles and responsibilities then continue reading the article. 

For publishing books, newspapers, magazines and digital material, editorial and commercial strategies are set by publishers. Individuals in publishing career paths make choices about the markets their businesses will reach and the type of content that their audience will be served. Individuals in book publisher careers collaborate with editorial staff, designers, authors, and freelance contributors who develop and manage the creation of content.

Careers in journalism are filled with excitement as well as responsibilities. One cannot afford to miss out on the details. As it is the small details that provide insights into a story. Depending on those insights a journalist goes about writing a news article. A journalism career can be stressful at times but if you are someone who is passionate about it then it is the right choice for you. If you want to know more about the media field and journalist career then continue reading this article.

Individuals in the editor career path is an unsung hero of the news industry who polishes the language of the news stories provided by stringers, reporters, copywriters and content writers and also news agencies. Individuals who opt for a career as an editor make it more persuasive, concise and clear for readers. In this article, we will discuss the details of the editor's career path such as how to become an editor in India, editor salary in India and editor skills and qualities.

Individuals who opt for a career as a reporter may often be at work on national holidays and festivities. He or she pitches various story ideas and covers news stories in risky situations. Students can pursue a BMC (Bachelor of Mass Communication) , B.M.M. (Bachelor of Mass Media) , or  MAJMC (MA in Journalism and Mass Communication) to become a reporter. While we sit at home reporters travel to locations to collect information that carries a news value.  

Corporate Executive

Are you searching for a Corporate Executive job description? A Corporate Executive role comes with administrative duties. He or she provides support to the leadership of the organisation. A Corporate Executive fulfils the business purpose and ensures its financial stability. In this article, we are going to discuss how to become corporate executive.

Multimedia Specialist

A multimedia specialist is a media professional who creates, audio, videos, graphic image files, computer animations for multimedia applications. He or she is responsible for planning, producing, and maintaining websites and applications. 

Quality Controller

A quality controller plays a crucial role in an organisation. He or she is responsible for performing quality checks on manufactured products. He or she identifies the defects in a product and rejects the product. 

A quality controller records detailed information about products with defects and sends it to the supervisor or plant manager to take necessary actions to improve the production process.

Production Manager

A QA Lead is in charge of the QA Team. The role of QA Lead comes with the responsibility of assessing services and products in order to determine that he or she meets the quality standards. He or she develops, implements and manages test plans. 

Process Development Engineer

The Process Development Engineers design, implement, manufacture, mine, and other production systems using technical knowledge and expertise in the industry. They use computer modeling software to test technologies and machinery. An individual who is opting career as Process Development Engineer is responsible for developing cost-effective and efficient processes. They also monitor the production process and ensure it functions smoothly and efficiently.

AWS Solution Architect

An AWS Solution Architect is someone who specializes in developing and implementing cloud computing systems. He or she has a good understanding of the various aspects of cloud computing and can confidently deploy and manage their systems. He or she troubleshoots the issues and evaluates the risk from the third party. 

Azure Administrator

An Azure Administrator is a professional responsible for implementing, monitoring, and maintaining Azure Solutions. He or she manages cloud infrastructure service instances and various cloud servers as well as sets up public and private cloud systems. 

Computer Programmer

Careers in computer programming primarily refer to the systematic act of writing code and moreover include wider computer science areas. The word 'programmer' or 'coder' has entered into practice with the growing number of newly self-taught tech enthusiasts. Computer programming careers involve the use of designs created by software developers and engineers and transforming them into commands that can be implemented by computers. These commands result in regular usage of social media sites, word-processing applications and browsers.

Information Security Manager

Individuals in the information security manager career path involves in overseeing and controlling all aspects of computer security. The IT security manager job description includes planning and carrying out security measures to protect the business data and information from corruption, theft, unauthorised access, and deliberate attack 

ITSM Manager

Automation test engineer.

An Automation Test Engineer job involves executing automated test scripts. He or she identifies the project’s problems and troubleshoots them. The role involves documenting the defect using management tools. He or she works with the application team in order to resolve any issues arising during the testing process. 

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Troubled Diversity: The Political Process in Northeast India

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Diversity as a social fact always existed in the world at large but it becomes a problem when it exists within the territory of a state or when the cultural or racial differences become the basis of group inequality or when the different groups perceive one another as threats to their identity. The nature of diversity in India's Northeast represents bewildering mosaics of different collective identities—religious, linguistic, and ethnic—that overlap and cut across one another in innumerable ways. The intensification of identity politics centering around ethnicity is one of the distinguishing features of recent political history of Northeast India. For creating and consolidating its respective identities every ethnic group makes efforts to construct its ‘other’. As the number of identities increases, list of others also multiplies. The logic of the ‘other’ is always seen in relation to the community to which she/he belongs. ‘The other’ is one who has come to dominate and exploit. The ideology of ‘the other’ motivates and guides identity politics in Northeast India. The atmosphere of mistrust generated by fears of domination and vengeance over one group by another has been heightened in the wake of various ethnic conflicts in Northeast India in past few years. Moreover, the cultural processes, values, and practices of ethnic groups are increasingly becoming political resources for elites in competition for political power or economic advantage. They become symbols and referents for the identification of members of the group which are called up in order to create a political identity more easily.

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Regionalism and Issues: Understanding Indian Unity in Diversity Through Literature

To understand regionalism, we need to know various dimensions of the region. Region as a social system, reflects the relation between different human beings and groups whereas a geographical unit, is delimited form each other. Regionalism is an ideology and political movement to advance the causes of regions. At the international level, regionalism refers to transnational cooperation, at national level refers to a process in which sub-states become increasingly powerful. Regionalism is defined as a feeling of loyalty to a part of a country and a wish for it to be more politically independent. Positive regionalism means love towards one’s culture, region and language. Negative regionalism may pose a threat to the unity and integrity of the country. In the Indian context, the term regionalism has been used in the negative sense. INDIA, a country of 29 states, 1500 language, 6400 castes, approximately 6 religion and 29 major festival, a lot of variety further divided in different direc...

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Regionalism was the first and foremost manifestation of the diversity of India. Whereas communalism meant the love of the community in preference to the nation, regionalism meant the love of a particular region in preference to the country and in certain cases, in preference 10 the state of which the region was a part. Whereas communalism was limited largely to two communities, namely, Hindus and Muslims, regionalism was a country-wide phenomenon and often took the form of well-conceived and well-organized agitations and campaigns. It assumed in the political field, mainly, four forms: demand of people of certain states for secession from the Indian Union, demand of people for separate statehood, demand for full-fledged statehood, inter-state disputes. Each of these was important in it and needed a fuller discussion. This paper try to explain the concept of Regionalism in India.

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Regionalism is characterized as a sentiment of dependability to a specific piece of a nation and a desire for it to be all the more politically autonomous. It isn't only a regional unit yet a summit of financial and political components. Regionalism can be characterized in meanings both positive and negative. Positive regionalism means love towards one's way of life, area, language and so forth though negative regionalism is an over the top connection to one's districts in inclination to the nation of the state. Positive regionalism manufactures Brotherhood and regularity based on normal language, religion or authentic foundation and it helps a specific local gathering to keep up their free character. It gives self-assurance to individuals and engages them to feel glad. Negative regionalism may represent a danger to the solidarity and honesty of the nation. In the Indian setting commonly the term regionalism has been utilized in the negative sense.

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Regionalism is the extreme loyalty and shown to a particular region. It expresses in such a distorted notions like development of one's own region even at the cost of interests of other regions and people, and unwillingness to allow people from other regions to work or settle in region. Here we attempt to look at the basis of regionalism that emerged when Indian state was committed towards the nation building process, but following, the principle of "Unity in Diversity" yet, the nation building process couldn't able to accommodate all the smaller nationalities. Emergence of different smaller nationalities in the different parts of the country in post-independence period signifies the failure of the nation building process. Here also attempt to conclude with the analysis of how regionalism can pose a threat to national integration as well as what are the factors that are responsible for its growth in Indian politics so far.

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Regionalism in India is a product of historical evolution. After independence it has been nurtured both by constitutional as well as extra-constitutional processes, that is, within and outside the framework of the structural arrangements of the constitution as well as its functioning. Indian society is a plural society and sub-structure on which modern political super structure has been built up is characterized by a large number of diverse primordial cultural factors. The combined effect of all these diversities has produced a multi-cultural ethos or what Kothari would call " a civilization type ". The processes of integration and modernization during the stage of nation-building could not properly emerge. The uneven pace of modernization and resultant asymmetrical development of different units have given birth to tensions hear and there during consolidation and maturation of the system itself. Rationalistic tendency of Indian politics, therefore is the manifestation of the crises of a transitional society and polity. Under such circumstances, regionalism in India is multi-dimensional and poly-typical depending upon multifarious components which interplay with one another in different degrees. Of these, the economic component leading to 'maldevelopment syndrome' is the 'crux' of the problem. Regionalism also indicates the maturity of the federal polity. Apart from various contributory factors, the problem of regionalism in this sub-continent is, in the main, the product of retarded growth of national capitalism due to its structural dependence on pre-capitalist forces and class-relations as well as on international capitalist forces for its survival. Regionalism leads to an awareness of regional unity which may be extended to the national level with the goal of human evolution fixed at the creation of an all-nations universal commonwealth with internationalism as the new order and socialism as the sustaining philosophy. This paper deals with the issues and challenges of Regionalism in india and mainly focused on understanding the Concept of Regionalism. Paper is based on the secondary data.

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This paper will discuss the history and future of preservation of cultural regionalism in Pakistan. It will take into focus the facts and fears in order to get a more concrete understanding of the issues involved. Pakistan is a country which came into being on basis of an ideology. We have a long history of promoting ideological nationalism vs. regionalism. The apparent failure in imposing this on the majority population with diverse and deep rooted regional cultural affiliations over a prolonged period of time gave rise to a gradual change in thinking pattern of the Academia and decision makers. This change in attitude reflected in the slogan of "Unity in Diversity" which is slowly but firmly gaining roots in current thinking pattern of masses and elite. "Unity in Diversity" means Pakistan would not be a melting pot of different ethno-linguistic cultures and sub cultures into a single entity. Rather Pakistan would be house to a national culture alongside diverse regional cultures. "Diversity maintains Unity" will be the guiding principle and it could be the best tool to produce national integrity. HISTORY OF DEBATE OVER PRESERVING REGIONAL CULTURES VS. PROMOTING A NATIONAL CULTURE In a recent research done at COMSATS institute of Information technology, Abbottabad researchers conclude that: "…Research findings show an existence of a cultural diversity among different provinces of Pakistan…The distinctive provincial culture of Pakistan, despite its similarities and differences across other provinces makes a unique national culture."

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Causality Between Cultural Diversity and Economic Growth in India: Cross-State Study, 1990–1991 through 2017–2018

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• Published: 05 April 2023
• Volume 60 , pages 388–401, ( 2023 )

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• Abdul Shaban   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2008-9394 1 &
• Philippe Cadene   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2779-7438 2  

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Existing studies have examined only the unidirectional impact of cultural diversity on the economic performance of countries, regions, and cities, not the other ways. They have assumed the diversity as given, while it may also grow, due to in-migration of workers and entrepreneurs, with economic growth and may be dependent on it. This paper models diversity and economic growth in a bi-directional causal frame and demonstrates that economic growth has a substantial impact on religious, language, and overall cultural diversities in the major states of India. However, the Granger causality between economic growth to language diversity and overall cultural diversity is found to be stronger and more widespread across the states than the causality from economic growth to religious diversity. The findings of this paper may have significant theoretical and empirical implications, as mainly the unidirectional way the impact of cultural diversity on economic growth has been advocated and the empirical studies have been modelled to date.

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Introduction

Mainstream theories and empirical studies on determinants of ‘economic’ growth have long neglected the impacts of cultural factors. Max Weber’s theory on the active role of ascetic Protestants in the development of capitalism (1904–1905| 1992 ) has largely been discussed among philosophers and sociologists from the beginning of the twentieth century, but economic and development studies have rarely taken his views into account (Ruttan, 1991 ). In general, economic literature has considered religion as an impediment to economic growth. Weber also pointed out the adverse relationship between religions of Asia and development ( 1951 ; 1958 ). He also highlighted the negative role of the caste system in India in its economic development. In fact, an entire intellectual tradition in the West embraces Auguste Comte’s thesis (Harrison, 2017 ) and analyses economic and social progress as a triumph of science against cultural traditions and religious immobility.

In the 1950s, exploring the determinants of economic growth and the differentiating factors between countries, Hoselitz ( 1952 ) argued that culture can be favourable to development only on the condition that it allows the dissemination of technical progress, innovation, social mobility as well as political environment and institutions conducive to change. In the following decade, Hirschman ( 1965 ) highlighted the importance of cultural barriers to development. At the same time, Myrdal ( 1968 ) also argued that culture blocked development in Asian countries. With a particular interest in India, he argued that the caste system is a handicap for its economic growth. However, Altekar ( 1929 ) considers that the caste system played an important role in the division of labour as such provided economic advantages. In this debate, the question of cultural divisions and the existence of significant cultural differentiation, even strong inequalities, between groups are considered to be key factors for growth. Entrepreneurial groups also emerge and benefit from specific cultures.

The link between culture and economy brings us also to the debate on the embeddedness of economic factors into social systems, which puts forward that the economy functions within the social system (Polanyi, 1944 ; Granovetter, 1985 ). In this regard, one of the important questions is how cultural homogeneity or diversity influences the capacity of a society to produce wealth. According to some scholars on club theory (Landa, 1981 ) and game theory (Aoki, 2010 ), cultural homogeneity would make exchanges more fluid and would limit transaction costs. Perceiving trust as a factor favourable to economic growth, others consider that cultural diversity introduces a feeling of mistrust between the economic agents and is detrimental to economic activities (La Porta et al., 1999 ). Studies also show that developed countries attract a significant number of migrants. This adds to their cultural heterogeneity. However, to date, studies on cultural diversity and economic growth have largely examined the unidirectional impact of cultural diversity on the economic performance of countries, regions, and cities, and have not considered the reverse causation or mutual causations.

The literature on cultural diversity and economic growth have largely been based on the experience of western countries, especially the USA. The immigration of skilled workers from different cultural contexts enhances the cultural diversity of the USA. These diverse groups from across the countries also bring their ways of thinking and working, and interaction among these groups in the liberal economic environment creates higher possibilities of innovation, economic growth, and mobility. In contrast to the western, especially American, cultural diversities, the cultural diversity of India is largely sui generis, internally born, and product of its regional and cultural geographies.

The following differences between Indian and the cultural diversity in the USA, which we consider as architype of western cultural diversity, for comparison with India, may be kept in mind. First, the USA cultural diversity is of recent origin and based on immigration of workers, while the Indian cultural diversities is organic in nature and grown from its soil itself. In recent centuries, there has not been any large-scale immigration in India. In 2018, 13.7% of the US population was foreign born that accounted for about 44.8 million persons (Budiman, 2020 ). In India, the foreign-born population was very minuscule, only 5.36 million, that is 0.44% of the total population in 2011 (Census of India 2011 ). Whereas the USA has immigrants from around the world, and since 2009 Asians (37% in 2018 of the total immigrants) have outnumbered Hispanics (31% of total immigrants in 2018), in India, foreign born population is mainly from South Asian stock or neighbouring countries (Census of India, 2011 ).

Second, custom, ascriptions, social norms, and values have largely determined the social and economic mobilities in India, except after the Independence in 1947 and adaptation of the Constitution in 1950 banning many ascriptive and discriminatory practices against different social groups and guaranteeing equality, liberty, and fraternity to all, while in the USA, equal opportunity through liberal democracy has paved way to the American dream based on meritocracy for a long time, though it is not to deny the fact that ethnicity and race do hinder the progress of Hispanic, Asian, and people from Africa (Hochschild, 1995 ; Vickerman, 1999 ). Third, the diversity may create high discontent as it gets associated with discriminations (Khare, 1998 ). Because of meritocracy, inequality along plane of diversity gets accepted in the western context such as the USA (Wiley and Deaux 2012 ). Meritocracy attracts the immigrants and enhances the diversity in the USA. However, in India, it is not so — foreigners do find that their status is often predetermined by custom, religion, caste, or racial origins. In India, the internal movement of population through migration has been main source of changes in cultural diversity at the state level.

Third, meritocracy leads individuals to act alone to improve their lots. However, when their success is blocked based on their belief, origin, caste, gender, etc., individuals often pursue collective actions to negotiate barriers with government and/or dominant groups (Ellemers, 1993 ; Verkuyten & Reijerse, 2008 ). As such, one finds negative association between meritocracy and assertion of ethnic identity and/or collective action (Wiley & Deaux 2012 ; Naylor 1997 ). The ethnic identity will be stronger among the low strata or groups, who feel being discriminated. In India, collective or group actions to improve their lots are quite common. India though represents a multicultural society where religious and linguistic groups cuts across many social traits and live together, equal opportunities in employment, politics, public offices remain a dream for many. The anti-discrimination and positive discrimination laws are very caste and tribe based and do not protect and empower religious and linguistic minorities in equal ways (Government of India, 2006 ).

Besides, there are many social values and attitudinal differences between western and Indian societies like those related to time (Indian are still more in social time rather than modern clock time), individuality (Indians are more inclined towards family values rather than individualism), religiosity (Indians are more religious than rational in their dispositions), and communication (Indian are less direct while westerners communicate more direct ways). In this paper, though we assume that diversity will have similar association with economic growth across societies, one also needs to keep in mind these subtler differences between the cultural diversity in western countries, like the USA, and India.

The contribution of this paper is three-fold. First, it extends the usual hypothesis of cultural diversity determining the economic performance to economic performance also constituting cultural diversity. It assumes that diversity and economic growth may be mutually evolving and causing. This hypothesis is based on the fact that economically growing regions often attract migrants from other regions, bringing different cultures. This adds to the diversity of regions and also helps in the economic growth, not only because of cheap labour, but also due to the introduction of newer ideas and specializations. The globalized cities all around the world (Taylor et al., 2011 ) seem to have evolved through this process of economic growth and diversity feeding each other and mutually constituting each other.

Second, with its enormous social diversity, India presents an excellent case study for research on such a theme. The Indian cultural diversity has evolved through centuries due to its varied geographies, and in-migration and settling down of different communities within the Indian space in ancient and medieval ages. Historically, the cultural give-and-takes between the communities led to the evolution of new cultural strands and communities (Subbarao, 1956 ). However, in recent decades, it is also experiencing a change because of internal migration (Bhagat, 2010 ). Today, the country has many official languages, each of them having ancient literature, their own cinema, television, and most recently their digital media. India also has followers of many beliefs. About 80% of the population follows Hinduism, but it is a polytheistic religion whose rites and expressions are extremely diverse. The rest of the population are followers of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, and Judaism. There are also followers of various forms of animism in many parts of the country.

Third, this paper uses the bootstrap panel Granger causality method developed by Kónya ( 2006 ) to measure the direction of causality between cultural diversity and economic growth among the major states of India from 1990–1991 to 2018–2019. This method overcomes the cross-sectional dependence across the spatial units. The cross-sectional dependence is difficult to overcome in panel data and often becomes a source of inconsistent and biased results (Baia & Kaob, 2006 ).

The findings of this paper of economic development–led growth of cultural diversity demonstrate that India is undergoing aspiration-led disruption in the usual residence of the people and they are moving to the states with higher economic growth and development. This accumulation of diversity in economically growing regions may later further accelerate economic growth, as we find in the case of cities, where diversity leads to economic development (Ottaviano & Peri, 2006 ; Stone 2021 ). For India, therefore, it can be important to allow the full play of the market forces to rearrange the diversity through the internal migration process for prospects of higher economic growth.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. After a review of the existing literature on the relationship between economic growth and cultural diversity, the next section discusses the diversity in India in spatial context. Thereafter, we discuss data and statistical methods employed in this study. Next, the levels of language, religious diversity, and overall cultural diversity, as well as of economic development among Indian states, are examined. The findings are presented next, while the last section concludes the paper.

Cultural Diversity and Economic Growth: a Review of Literature

The common understanding rooted in the Aristotelian framework has been that cultural diversity leads to social conflict (Lian & Oneal, 1997 ). It assumes that cultural diversity is associated with political instability which in turn retards economic growth and development. However, it is also argued that diversity will lead to flexibility, learning, adaptation, development of specialization, innovation, and socio-economic sustainability, which can also positively impact ecological sustainability.

The first specific studies on this topic were conducted in the 1960s. Adelman and Morris ( 1967 ) using data on language, religion, and ethnicity for 74 less developed countries from 1957 through 1962 found that culturally homogenous countries had higher economic growth rates. Marie Haug ( 1967 ) examining data of 114 countries found that diversity (language, religion, and race) had a negative correlation with Gross National Product (GNP) and political stability. Similarly, Lijphart ( 1977 ) considers that it can be difficult to achieve and maintain stable democratic governments in countries with deep religious, ideological, linguistic, cultural, or ethnic cleavages, and this may undermine economic growth and development. Reynolds ( 1985 ) in his study of 37 less developed countries from 1950 to 1987 also found that diversity leads to lower economic growth rates. Then, Easterly and Levine ( 1997 ) attribute 28% of the income growth differential between African countries and East Asia to the higher ethnic diversity of African countries.

Alesina et al. ( 2003 ) argue that ethnic diversity and conflict cost Uganda 2 percentage points of economic growth rate in comparison to more culturally homogenous South Korea. Montalvo and Reynal-Querol ( 2005 ) support that political instability and cultural conflict may undermine economic institutions and policies and may result in corruption and poor economic performance (see also Treisman, 2000 ; Glaeser & Saks, 2006 ). In the 2010s, Dincer and Wang ( 2011 ) using provincial-level data of China from 1982 to 2007 found a negative relationship between ethnic diversity and economic growth, and Hashmi et al. ( 2017 ) using least square estimates and data of 144 developing countries show more diverse countries are more prone to poverty.

However, from the beginning of the 2000s, globalization appears as a period of development at the world level accompanied by an increase in migrations and cultural diversity. China multiplied its GDP by 10 in two decades, India by 6, to evoke only two countries having the largest population in the world. This situation caused an explosion of inequalities (Piketty, 2013 ), but has also led to the rise of a large middle class in many countries (Kharas, 2010 ). This global economic development introduces a new organization of production and a new industrial relationship to the world in which emerging countries play a very important role. Capitalism has changed in this process, presenting different paths of development. While a new field opens for studies in comparative economics (Hall & Soskice, 2001 ), interesting academic publications focus on the construction of new diversities in a globalized world (Abeles, 2008 ). Research on global cities emphasizes the role of migrants and diaspora and the impact of media in the building of multicultural societies (Appadurai, 2013 ).

This new situation requires further exploration of the relationship between cultural diversity and economic growth. The idea of a positive link between the two is not new. In his work on the history of cities, Paul Bairoch ( 1988 ) called the cultural diversity of urban areas as an ‘engine’ of economic growth. People of various cultural origins, with various ways of producing things and with varieties of preferences of goods and services of consumption, help in diversifying the economy. In other words, the agglomerations of diverse cultures also lead to the agglomerations of diverse factors of production. Cultural diversity helps in innovation and entrepreneurship as various cultural groups with different orientations can do the same work in different ways. Introducing her thesis on the emergence of global cities, Saskia Sassen ( 1994 ) also defends the idea that the success of such places is linked to their cultural diversities. Then, Fujita et al. ( 1999 ), with their conception of ‘love of variety’, argue that diversity in the production of goods and services is key in the spatial development and enhancing the productivity of people. Further, Lazear ( 1999 ) shows that cultural diversity may raise productivity in the presence of complementarity of skills. Hong and Page ( 2001 ) argue that problem-solving ability is higher in heterogeneous groups than in homogenous ones. Glaeser et al. ( 2001 ) and Quigley ( 1998 ) state that the cultural diversity of cities also contributes to the diversity of goods and services in cities (Jacobs, 1969 ). However, the diversity of culture becomes more useful when it is accompanied by human capital or talent helpful in the production process and creation of a tolerant-syncretic and multicultural society (Shaban and Khan, 2022 ). The role of cultural diversity in cities came to increased emphasis with Florida’s recognition of the linkage between cultural diversity, creativity, and creative class. For him, creativity and creative class are ‘engines’ to economic growth and development of cities (Florida, 2002a ; 2002b ). Collier ( 2000 ) made a distinction of cultural diversity with modern political and economic institutions to that of the past and argued that in democracies and under capitalism, the culturally diverse societies perform economically better than homogeneous ones. Bove and Elia ( 2017 ) using data from 1960 to 2010 of migrants’ stock of 135 countries find that cultural heterogeneity positively impacts the growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and the impact is higher in the case of developing countries. They conclude that “immigration-fuelled diversity is generally good for economic growth” (p. 236). Ottaviano and Peri ( 2006 ) using data from 160 US cities from 1970 to 1990 and the index of fractionalization as a measure of diversity find that cultural diversity has a “net positive impact on the productivity of US born citizens” (p. 11). In one of the recent studies, Chris Clarke using data from the UK’s 285 councils outside of big cities between 2011 and 2019 found that “migration and ethnic diversity are inextricably linked to economic growth in … towns and regions” (Stones, 2021 ). He also found strong linkages between “rising prosperity and rising diversity” (Stones, 2021 ), indicating the bi-directional causality between cultural diversity and economic growth.

In India, there are only a few studies that have examined the linkage of diversity with economic growth. These studies have largely been in community (caste relations and development in villages) or enterprise contexts. Iversen et al. ( 2014 ) report mixed findings on social diversity and development in Indian villages. They find that upper-caste Hindus and Other Backward Classes (middle castes) perform better in their own villages, but Muslims and Scheduled Tribes benefit more when they live with diverse communities. The Scheduled Castes also perform better in their own villages, but upper-caste dominance compromises their development in caste-diverse villages. In a case study of two villages in rural India, Anderson ( 2011 ) also found that lower caste performs better in their own villages in the absence of dominance of upper castes. Anderson’s case study shows that for the lower castes, it was difficult to buy water (or trade) from upper castes for irrigation compromising about 45% of their crop yields. However, Kaul ( 2015 ) argues that India’s diversity has huge potential for innovation and economic growth.

Many studies in India also find positive perceptions of employees about the impact of a culturally diverse workforce on firm productivity and growth. Kundu ( 2003 ) argues that sustainable competitive advantage firms must hire and retain culturally diverse employees. Vijayalakshmi et al. ( 2006 ) highlight the problem of discrimination in Indian business organizations based on their caste, religion, language, gender, etc. Jauhari and Singh ( 2013 ) with a study of 229 employees found that a culturally diverse workforce in Indian IT industry is responsible for the increased performance of the industry. Similarly, Singh ( 2016 ) finds positive relations between business performance and diversity of the workforce in Indian IT Inc. like Oracle, IBM, TCS, and Infosys. Kundu et al. ( 2019 ) using a sample of 619 employees from Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) find positive perceptions of employees between diversity and productivity.

On the contrary, Saxena ( 2014 ) cautions that an unmanaged diverse workforce can be detrimental to the performance of organizations as it may lead to problems of ineffective communication, attitude clashes, or difference in perceptions. It is not surprising then that several studies in India have been carried out to understand the management of workforce diversity and its relation to organizational performance (Cooke and Saini, 2010 , 2012 ). Similar to the organizational level, at the country level as well, India needs to manage its diversity for improving its economic performance; the mismanaged diversity may create conflict and end up becoming a liability rather than an asset.

Given this, the contribution of this paper is not only to understand and add to the empirical literature on cultural diversity and economic growth in India but also to demonstrate that diversity can be both the outcome of economic growth (due to in-migration) and a cause of economic growth. The relationship may be determined by the institutional framework in which the cultural diversity works as pointed out by Collier ( 2000 ).

Cultural Diversity in India in Spatial Contexts

Studying India is specifically interesting as this country presents an enormous socio-cultural diversity. The complex geography of Indian languages reflects a history going back to several thousand years. The Dravidian languages spoken in the southern part of the peninsula, namely Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, and Tamil, are believed to have come down from the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation. In the north, the most widely spoken language is Hindi derived from Sanskrit. There are several other languages close to Hindi belonging to the Indo-European family: Kashmiri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya, Bengali, Nepali, and Assamese. In the mountainous regions of the north and north-east, Tibeto-Burmese languages belonging to the Sino-Tibetan family are widely spoken. Finally, in isolated pockets in Central and North-East India, tribes are belonging to the Munda and Mon-Khmer sub-groups who speak the languages of the Austro-Asian family. It is not uncommon to find people who speak at home the dialect of a distant region that the family left long ago, watch television programmes in English, use the official language of their state in their place of work, and use in the street and at the marketplace the local vernacular of the state or territory.

At the time of Independence, Hindi was chosen as the official language by North Indian elites who were in power in Delhi while the representatives of the Dravidian South insisted on the continuance of English. It was agreed that English would remain the official language for a transitory period. However, numerous demands for the recognition of regional identities led to the acceptance of regional linguistic differences. While Hindi and English are used by the central government, 22 official languages have been recognized over the years by the Indian Constitution. Every state ensures that one or more languages are constitutionally recognized as official languages. A total of 19,569 dialects as counted by linguistic experts are spoken in India (Census of India, 2011 ). The official languages are the ones spoken by the majority in most of the states, especially in the larger states where they are spoken by more than 80% of the population, like Hindi in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarati in Gujarat, Telugu in Andhra Pradesh, or Tamil in Tamil Nadu. However, in some states, the official language is spoken only by a minority of the population. In other states, the declaration of the regional language as the official language has strengthened an already strong linguistic identity and encouraged regional cultural creativity in areas as diverse as literature, vocal music, theatre, and cinema.

In this complex linguistic context, between 1991 and 2011, in 8 out of the 16 states selected for the study, the share of major languages has declined (especially in relatively economically developed states). Such states are Maharashtra (the share of Marathi speakers in the total population of the state declined from 73.34% in 1991 to 68.93%), Gujarat (the Gujarat speakers declined from 91.49 to 85.97%), Haryana (Hindi speakers declined from 91.00 to 88.05%), and Punjab (Punjabi speakers declined from 92.22 to 89.82%) due to adaptation of other languages by natives and also because of interstate migrations. The decline of the number of speakers of major mother tongues between 1991 and 2011 is also seen in Rajasthan and Orissa. Also, in all the major states selected for this study, the number of mother tongues with more than 10,000 speakers has increased. For instance, in Gujarat, the number of mother tongues with more than 10,000 speakers has increased from 43 in 1991 to 91 in 2011, in Uttar Pradesh from 68 to 101, in Delhi 77 to 106, and in Kerala 43 to 79 during the same period (Appendix Table 4 ).

The religious diversity of India is the second parameter of its great cultural diversity. Hinduism is the dominant religion. Its followers constitute 79.8% of the total population of the country (Census of India, 2011 ). But it is a polytheistic religion, which easily adapts itself to syncretism and coexists with several other minority religions. The first of these minority religions is Islam, mainly Sunni, having more than 140 million followers (14.2% of the Indian population), which makes India the world’s third-largest Muslim country. It is followed by Christianity (follower 2.3% of the Indian population), Sikhism (1.7%), Buddhism (0.7%), Jainism (0.4%), and others (0.9%). There are also other religions practiced by even smaller minorities, particularly animistic cults followed by tribals living on the fringes of Hinduism and Indian society.

The share of Hindus in different states varies. They are for example only 54.7% in Kerala and 38.5% in Punjab (Census of India 2011 ); Muslims are in a majority in Kashmir and some districts of the north-east India. They are present in large numbers in some areas, especially in the Indo-Gangetic plain, in Assam to the east of Bangladesh and also in Gujarat in areas close to the border with Pakistan, as well as in Kerala, where there is also a sizeable Christian minority dating back to the establishment of the Syrian church by the apostle Thomas. The Christians, about two-thirds of them Catholics, are present in large numbers in the north-eastern states where the tribal populations were converted by missionaries during the colonial era. Sikhism is concentrated in Punjab with its principal shrine, the Golden Temple, at Amritsar. This syncretic faith combining the principles of Hinduism and Islam was founded at the end of the fifteenth century. Buddhism is practiced mainly in the Himalayan region bordering China. Situated to the south of Bihar and to the west of Kolkata, Jharkhand has a large tribal population practicing animistic religions or converted to Christianity. Jainism, a religion close to Hinduism, was founded in the sixth century BCE. Zoroastrianism is the religion of the Parsis that prevailed in pre-Islamic Iran. The followers of both the latter religions constitute small minorities, even though they play an important role in the economy of some of the states and cities. The Jains play especially an important role in economic activities in Gujarat and Rajasthan while the Parsis in case of cities like Mumbai.

Both linguistic and religious diversities are protected by the Indian Constitution adopted after the Independence in 1947. The Constitution is a diversity guaranteeing documents and successive governments of India have attempted to respect the same. In fact, the pillars of the Constitution are Justice (social, economic, and political), Liberty (of thought, expression, belief, faith, and worship), and Equality (of status and opportunity). Article 350A of the Constitution specially directs the Government to promote and provide education to children in mother tongues at the primary stage while Article 350B guarantees protections and promotion of languages of linguistic minorities (Government of India, 2019 ). The Constitution, in fact, attempts to bind Indians with the ‘idea of unity in diversity’. Part III of the Constitution on Fundamental Rights especially acknowledges the ethnic, religious, and language diversities of the country, and provides guarantees to preserve and sustain the same.

In recent decades, the Indian states are undergoing interesting transformations in terms of religious diversity. The religious diversity scores are showing increasing trends (Appendix Table 5 ). Except in Goa, the religious diversity has increased in all the selected states and at the all-India level, but mother tongue or language diversity has declined in 9 out of the 16 states and at the all-India level (see the average exponential growth rate) between 1990–1991 and 2017–2018. This shows that domination of major languages is increasing in those states, mainly in relatively underdeveloped states, while the opposite process is underway in the case of major religions. However, the cultural diversity score (average of the language and religion scores) shows a rising trend during the period, except in 3 states (Appendix Table 6 ).

During the same period (1990–1991 to 2017–2018), India has experienced a surge in economic growth. During the period, the average exponential growth rate of real per capita income (Net National Income) at all-India level has been 5.16%, while it was barely 3.5% before the liberalization (Shaban, 2006 ; Dholakia, 2009 ). Out of the 16 states selected for this study, eight have experienced a higher growth rate than the national average and all these states have also experienced an increase in cultural diversity.

Material and Method

The two major axes through which Indian culture can be represented are language and religion. The languages reflect the regional cultural groups while religions represent the broader segmentations of Indian population based on faiths having their own specific ways of life within the linguistic groups. Castes are integral part of the religious groups, mainly manifesting itself in Hinduism, and are hierarchical in nature. Castes exclude groups based on their birth (create pure and polluted ascriptive labels) and occupations. Castes do not allow the occupational competition within the religion as each caste are supposed to pursue their ascribed occupations, but caste groups between religions do compete. Further, the caste data from Census of India for recent years are not available. The last population census in India which counted castes was held in 1931. Therefore, we have not included caste while computing cultural diversity index in this paper.

This paper uses data from 1990–1991 to 2017–2018 on share of the population speaking different languages (mother tongues with more than 10,000 speakers) and following various religions in 16 major Indian states, which together accounted for 90.0% of the total population of India in 1991 and 85.8% in 2018 (Census of India, 1991 ; 2001 ; 2011 ; National Commission on Population, 2020 ). The data on per capita state domestic product (PCI) at 2011–2012 prices have been obtained from Reserve Bank of India ( 2019 ).

We have used method suggested by Juan Molinar ( 1991 ) to construct the score of linguistic and religious diversity as it “better reflects the distance between the two largest groups without overstating the influence of the largest” (Lian & Oneal, 1997 : 65). We have computed the average of linguistic and religious diversity scores and called it as overall ‘cultural’ diversity score of the states. The Molinar method gives a score that is higher when the diversity within a state is higher, and zero when there is only one cultural group.

We have used augmented bootstrap panel Granger causality (Granger, 2003 ; Breitung, 2005 ) method (see the Appendix of this paper) suggested by Kónya ( 2006 ) as this method has several advantages over other panel Granger causality test methods (see Kar et al. 2011 ; Pesaran, 2006 ; Zellner, 1962 ; Hurlin 2008 ; Pesaran et al., 1999 ).

Results of Causality Between Cultural Diversity and Per Capita Income

Our panel data shows presence of CSD (Table 1 ), and thus appropriateness of use of Konya’s ( 2006 ) method of augmented bootstrap Granger causality. The results presented in Tables 2 and 3 can be summarised and interpreted as follows. First, largely, there is an absence of Granger causality from religious diversity, language diversity, and overall cultural diversity to economic growth, but a large number of states show reverse causality, i.e., unidirectional Granger causality from economic growth to the variables of cultural diversities mentioned above. The reverser unidirectional Grange causality from per capital income to religious diversity is present in four states (out of 5 showing significant Granger causality); from per capita income to language diversity in 10 states (out of 12 states showing the significant Granger causality); and per capita income to overall cultural diversity again in 10 states (out of 11 states showing the significant Granger causality). Second, the results as such show that these are not religious and language diversities that are Granger causing economic growth, but the economic growth is Granger causing/increasing the diversities among Indian states. This implies that diversities can also be caused by economic growth, and this may be happening mainly because of inter-state migration and language adaptation. The migration of the population has implications for composition of religious and linguistic diversities in both the source and destinations states, as the shares of population of different religious and linguistic groups in both groups of the states change.

The inter-state migration has acquired its significance in India with rising options for better transport. In 1991, about 27.3 million persons migrated (counted as per the place of birth) from one state to another, and another 6.9 million were international immigrants in India (Census of India, 1991 ). But in 2001, 42.34 million people moved from one state to another state and another about 6.2 million were international immigrants (Census of India, 2001 ). The number of inter-state migrants in India rose to 56.3 million in 2011, but the number of international immigrants declined to 5.4 million (Census of Indian, 2011). In the absence data from Census 2021 as it is yet to be conducted, it is estimated that inter-state migrants in 2021 may be around 100 million and international immigrants approximately 7 million. It is also estimated that two-thirds of such migrants move because of work (Rajan and Bhagat 2022 ). This migration or mobility churning is reshaping and changing the cultural diversities of states. The dominant presence of unidirectional causality from economic growth to cultural diversity shows that people are largely following economic growth and moving to the states where they find better possibilities of personal economic prospects.

The cultural diversities, especially language diversity, among Indian states are also changing because in-migrant not only bringing their own languages, but these migrants also adopt the language of the source regions. This is why we find that where the number of mother tongues spoken have increased, the share of major languages spoken have also increased during the period in all the states (Appendix Table 4 ). Besides, there is another important process underway that is of acquiring proficiencies of languages of market, i.e., English language and Hindi. The middle class of India associates English language with the potential of employability or finding better paid jobs and even emigration to developed countries for education and work and/or permanent residence. This has led even lower middle classes to educate their children in English medium schools. This has generated significant demand for English medium schools across the country. As such, the younger generations are becoming multi-lingual — where they know their mother tongues, speak regional languages, and/or acquire knowledge of Hindi (which is a lingua franca in large part of northern, eastern, central, and western India) and English. Thus, multi-lingualism in almost all states is increasing. English is not spoken as mother tongue by any significant number of persons in India, but it is used as a second or third language. In 2011, only 0.26 million claimed English as their mother tongues, but 86 million and 46 million respectively claimed it as their second and third language, respectively. This made English as the second most widely spoken language after Hindi, which was spoken by 528 million persons as their primary language, 139 million as their second language, and about 24 million as their third language (Census of India 2011 ). As English is acquired after rise in the income, and so is acquisition of Hindi in non-Hindi belt (South and Eastern India) by middle and lower classes of families, it helps in raising cultural diversities of states, especially language diversity, with rise in income.

The result underscores our assumption of (a) presence of reverse causality from economic growth to cultural diversity which the empirical literature in this area have largely neglected, and as such we argue that (b) the theoretical problematization of causality between the cultural diversity and economic growth needs to be bi-directional rather than unidirectional.

Conclusions

The role of cultural diversity in economic growth has been contentious. The theoretical literature argues both its negative and positive impacts on economic growth. Both the theoretical and empirical studies assume cultural diversity as the independent variable. Furthermore, they do not consider cultural diversity and economic growth causing each other and evolving together, or cultural diversity also as a function of economic growth. The present study attempts to fill this gap by modelling the relationship between cultural diversity and economic growth as bi-directional. To test the relationship, the paper uses data from 16 major Indian states of India from 1990–1991 to 2017–2018 on religious diversity, language diversity, overall cultural diversity, and real per capita income, and bootstrap panel Granger causality method. The study finds (a) there is a substantial presence of cross-sectional dependence among the panel member and therefore bootstrap panel Granger causality method is a more efficient method for the estimation of the causality; (b) the Granger causality is largely unidirectional among the Indian states — from economic growth to language diversity, religious diversity, and cultural diversity; and (c) the Granger causality from economic growth to language diversity and cultural diversity is stronger and widespread among the Indian states in comparison to Granger causality from economic growth to religious diversity. This shows that the Indian states are undergoing cultural churning process mainly from interstate migration (as there is an absence of any large-scale international immigration) from low per capita income states to high per capita income states. This is changing the cultural makeup of Indian states. The empirical results underscore that the relationship between cultural diversity and economic growth should be modelled in a bi-directional framework rather than only from cultural diversity to economic growth, which the empirical, as well as the theoretical literature, have largely used to date.

The finding of economic development–led cultural diversity of this paper shows that increasing capitalist development in India is leading to aspiration-led disruption in the usual residence of the people and they are moving to the state with higher economic growth and development, and also adopting the market languages. The consequent rising cultural diversity in economically growing regions or factor endowed states may further accelerate the economic development in these states, as we find in the case of cities, where diversity leads to economic development (Ottaviano and Peri, 2006 ; Stone 2021 ). Policy-wise, it is, therefore, important for India to allow the full play of the market forces to rearrange the diversity through the internal migration and adaptation process for higher regional economic growth in future.

The current leading parties in India today argue for economic liberalization and development of entrepreneurship (Government of India, 2021 ), but simultaneously promote the religio-cultural nationalism leading to open and coercive violence which inhibits the diversity, languages, occupations, choices of food, practices, and expression of other religious and culturally diverse groups.

The declining economic growth in India from 2017 onwards (for the decline in economic growth, see Mourdoukoutas, 2020 ; Kishore, 2017 ) may be linked to this cultural repression and anxiety among the economic agents. During the COVID-19 period (Kakvi, 2019 ; Dara, 2019 ; Babu, 2020 ; Surya 2020 , The Hindu 2020 ), many states brought legislations that restrict the employment opportunities only to the locals, limiting opportunities for the migrants. Local governments in some culturally diverse megacities of India are becoming little accommodative to minority languages and religions. In Bangalore, Municipal Corporation rejected a multi-lingual call centre while the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai provides autorickshaw permits only to Marathi knowing applicants (Halarnkar, 2016 ). This situation recalls the case of the Middle East studied by Jared Rubin ( 2014 ) who argues that it was not the religion itself responsible for the economic decline of Middle East but the legitimacy of religious politics.

The causality between cultural diversity and economic growth needs to be further studied in other countries and contexts as well. The findings may have their own policy and regional development relevance, besides contributing to the economic theory.

Data Availability

My manuscript has data included as electronic supplementary material .

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Abdul Shaban

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Computation of bootstrap panel granger causality and cross-sectional dependence.

Konya’s method of bootstrap panel granger causality test entails two sets of equations, as given below, $$\begin{array}{l}y_{1,t}=\gamma_{1,1}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{ly}_1}\theta_{1,1,i}y_{1,t-i}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{lx}_1}\delta_{1,1,i}x_{k,1,t-i}+\varepsilon_{1,1,t}\\\begin{array}{l}y_{2,t}=\gamma_{1,2}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{ly}_1}\theta_{1,2,i}y_{2,t-i}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{lx}_1}\delta_{1,2,i}x_{k,2,t-i}+\varepsilon_{1,2,t\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;\;}\\\vdots\end{array}\\y_{N,t}=\gamma_{1,N}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{ly}_1}\theta_{1,N,i}y_{N,t-i}+\sum_{i=1}^{{lx}_1}\delta_{1,N,i}x_{k,N,t-i}+\varepsilon_{1,N,t}\end{array}$$ (1) and $$\begin{array}{l}\begin{array}{l}x_{k,1,t}=\gamma_{2,1}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{ly}_2}\theta_{2,1,i}y_{1,t-i}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{lx}_2}\delta_{2,1,i}x_{k,1,t-i}+\varepsilon_{2,1,t}\\x_{k,2,t}=\gamma_{2,2}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{ly}_2}\theta_{2,2,i}y_{2,t-i}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{lx}_2}\delta_{2,2,i}x_{k,2,t-i}+\varepsilon_{2,2,t}\end{array}\\\vdots\\x_{k,N,t}=\gamma_{2,N}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{ly}_2}\theta_{2,N,i}y_{N,t-i}+\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^{{lx}_2}\delta_{2,N,i}x_{k,N,t-i}+\varepsilon_{2,N,t}\end{array}$$ (2) where y refers to log  of per capita income; x denotes the religious diversity score, language diversity score, or cultural diversity score. N is the number of the members of the panel ( j  = 1,…, N, that is 16 ), t is the time ( t  = 1,…, t, that is 28), and l is the lag length. In this paper, the procedures suggested by Konya (2006: 985–986) to generate bootstrap samples and state-specific critical values have been followed. The procedure is also explained by Kar et al. ( 2011 :690–691).

There would be one-way Granger causality from x to y if not all \({\delta }_{1,j,i}s\) are zero, but all \({\theta }_{2,j,i}s\) are zero. Alternatively, there will be one-way Granger causality from y to x if all \({\theta }_{2,j,i}s\) are not zero, but all \({\delta }_{1,j,i}s\) are zero. Both the x and y Granger cause each other in case neither all \({\delta }_{1,j,i}s\) nor \({\beta }_{2,j,i}s\) are zero. Finally, there would be no Granger causality between x and y if all \({\delta }_{1,j,i}s\) and \({\beta }_{2,j,i}s\) are zero (see Kar et al., 2011 ). Following Konya (2006), the maximal lags are allowed to differ across variables but to be the same across equations. This is done to minimize the computational burden which may result from a large lag structure (Konya, 2006; Kar, Nazlioglu, & Agir, 2011). Lags of 1–4 of x and y are used in the estimation and then choosing the combinations which minimize the Schwarz Bayesian criterion. We have used various measures to find out the cross-sectional dependence (CSD) in the data and the method used are those suggested by Breusch and Pagan ( 1980 ) (hereafter CD BP ); Lagrange multiplier statistics ( CD lm ) suggested by Pesaran (2004), and cross-sectional dependence test (hereafter, CD ) suggested by Kar, Nazlioglu, and Agir (2011).

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Shaban, A., Cadene, P. Causality Between Cultural Diversity and Economic Growth in India: Cross-State Study, 1990–1991 through 2017–2018. Soc 60 , 388–401 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-023-00833-0

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Essay on Indian Politics

Students are often asked to write an essay on Indian Politics in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Indian Politics

Introduction to indian politics.

Indian Politics is a broad subject which involves the activities related to governance of India. It includes a multitude of political parties, each with their unique ideologies and agendas.

Political Structure

India, known as the largest democracy in the world, has a federal structure. It is divided into central and state governments, each with their own jurisdictions and responsibilities.

Political Parties

Major political parties in India include the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian National Congress (INC), and various regional parties. They play a vital role in shaping the country’s policies.

Role of Politics

Politics in India is crucial for law-making, maintaining law and order, and ensuring the welfare of the citizens. It impacts every aspect of society.

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250 Words Essay on Indian Politics

Introduction.

Indian politics, a complex and multifaceted arena, is a vibrant blend of democratically elected representatives, political parties, and their ideologies. It is a reflection of the nation’s diverse socio-cultural fabric, with its roots deeply entrenched in the democratic ethos of the world’s largest democracy.

The Political Structure

India follows a federal structure, with power distributed between the central government and individual states. The President is the head of state, while the Prime Minister is the head of government. The Parliament, consisting of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, is the legislative body, and the judiciary ensures the constitution’s supremacy.

Political Parties and Ideologies

Indian politics is characterized by a multitude of political parties, each with unique ideologies. The Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are two prominent national parties. The ideologies of these parties range from secularism and socialism to nationalism and Hindutva, providing a broad spectrum of political thought.

Role of Caste and Religion

Caste and religion significantly influence Indian politics. Political parties often use these factors to mobilize voters, leading to identity-based politics. This can sometimes result in social divisions, highlighting the need for political maturity and responsible leadership.

Indian politics, while dynamic and diverse, faces challenges such as corruption, criminalization of politics, and the misuse of power. However, the democratic structure provides mechanisms for checks and balances. The future of Indian politics lies in strengthening these mechanisms, promoting inclusive politics, and ensuring the welfare of all citizens.

500 Words Essay on Indian Politics

Indian politics, a complex and multifaceted subject, is a tapestry woven with threads of diversity, democracy, and development. It is a democratic process that has evolved over seven decades, reflecting the aspirations of the world’s second-most populous nation.

The Democratic Framework

India, the world’s largest democracy, operates under a federal structure of government, although the word is not used in the Constitution itself. The President of India is the ceremonial head of state, while the Prime Minister is the head of government and runs the country’s day-to-day operations. The Indian political structure also comprises the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and the Lok Sabha (House of the People), forming a bicameral parliament.

Political Parties and Coalition Politics

Indian politics is characterized by a multi-party system. The Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are two of the major national parties. However, regional parties also play a pivotal role in the political sphere. Coalition politics has become a norm in Indian politics, reflecting the diversity of the country. It ensures that various regional and community interests are adequately represented, enhancing the democratic spirit.

Politics of Socio-Economic Development

Indian politics has always been closely linked with socio-economic development. Policies and schemes aimed at poverty alleviation, rural development, and social upliftment have been key political agendas. However, these initiatives often face challenges due to corruption, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and disparities in implementation.

Identity Politics

Identity politics, based on religion, caste, language, or regional identity, is a significant aspect of Indian politics. While it has led to empowerment of marginalized communities, critics argue that it has also resulted in increased polarization and social divisions.

Politics and Corruption

Corruption remains a pervasive issue in Indian politics, undermining the democratic ethos. Despite numerous anti-corruption movements and legislation, the problem persists. It is a pressing challenge that needs to be addressed to ensure transparency and accountability in the political system.

Indian politics, with its rich history and diverse dynamics, is a fascinating study of democratic processes. Despite challenges like corruption and social divisions, the democratic spirit continues to thrive. The future of Indian politics lies in leveraging its democratic potential to foster inclusive growth and development, ensuring that it truly represents the ‘unity in diversity’ that India stands for.

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Indian Politics Essay

500 words essay on indian politics.

Politics, simply speaking, refers to the activities surrounding a country’s governance. In the context of a large democratic country like India, politics becomes really complicated. This Indian politics essay will throw light on the politics of India.

                                                                                                                     Indian Politics Essay

Background of Indian Politics

Politics in India, like any other democratic country, involves the ruling party and the opposition. In India, the formation of political parties has taken place on the basis of ideology. Moreover, the Indian political parties belong to the left and the right political spectrum.

Leftist politics rely on the values of secularism , liberalism, and rebelliousness. In contrast, rightist politics favour the values of being pro-government, orderly, conservative, and traditional.

There are no definitions of left-right politics anywhere in the Indian constitution. Furthermore, these terms were given by commentators, authors, and journalists. Also, it has been witnessed in India that some politicians can change their political party and ideology.

Indeed for a stable democracy , it is necessary that both political ideologies, the right and left, operate side by side. As such, some times, the country may be under rightist influence while leftist ideals may dominate at another time. The two major political parties in India, BJP and Congress, clearly demonstrate the two different political spectrums of right and left respectively.

Problem with Indian Politics

For a democracy to work properly there must be a proper demarcation between the political ideologies. However, in India, the demarcation between these ideologies tends to get blurry, thereby resulting in the superimposition of one ideology over the other. This is certainly not an indication of a mature democracy.

The political system of India suffers due to the clash of different political ideologies. Furthermore, such clashes can turn out to be quite ugly. Most noteworthy, such clashes are detrimental to the development of the country as a whole.

Various other problems affect Indian politics like hatred, injustice, corruption, greed, and bigotry. Due to all these problems, Indian politics is called a dirty game. Such problems can also force many intellectual and eminent individuals to stay away from Indian politics.

Sometimes the Indian politicians may choose a political party, not because of the ideological stance, but rather due to the winning probability in the elections. This is a really sad reality of Indian politics. Moreover, it shows that such politicians care more about their own personal interests rather than the interests of the common people.

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Conclusion of Indian Politics Essay

Indian politics is a colourful drama and, according to some, its the great circus of the country. Despite such negative connotations, no one can doubt the enormously important role that politics has played in India. Most noteworthy, it is a crucial aspect of Indian democracy.

FAQs For Indian Politics Essay

Question 1: How many political parties are there in India?

Answer 1: According to the latest publication from the Election Commission of India, the total number of registered political parties in India is 2698. Furthermore, out of the registered political parties, 8 are national parties, 52 are state parties, and 2638 remain unrecognised. Also, registered parties that contest elections must have a symbol of their own that is approved by the EC.

Question 2: What are the two most powerful political parties in India?

Answer 2: The two most powerful political parties in India are the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indian National Congress or Congress or INC. Furthermore, BJP is the leading right-wing party while Congress is the leading centrist/leftist party in India.

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Essay on Political System in India 1000, 500, 300, 200 words

Essay on political system in india.

Essay on political system :- A political system is a set of institutions, laws and procedures that govern a society and determine the distribution of power and resources among its members. It provides the framework within which individuals and groups interact, make decisions and resolve conflicts. Politics can take many forms, ranging from democratic to authoritarian and centralized to decentralized.

Democratic political system

Totalitarian (one party) political systems, centralized political system, 1. democratic foundation:, 2. federal structure:, 3. political parties:, 4. challenges:, essay on political system in india 300 words: a complex tapestry of democracy, essay on political system in india 200 words, essay on political system in india 100 words.

Democracy is one of the most common forms of politics, in which power is vested in the people through free and fair elections. In a democracy, citizens have the right to participate in the decision-making process and hold their leaders accountable. The principles of democracy include the rule of law, protection of individual rights and equality before the law.

Totalitarian (one party) political systems, on the other hand, concentrate power in the hands of a single leader or a small group of elites. This type of political systems does not allow for free and fair elections, nor does it respect the rights of its citizens. Examples of totalitarian politics include absolute monarchies, military dictatorships and one-party states.

Another important dimension of political systems is their degree of centralisation. In a centralized political systems, power is concentrated in a single location, such as the national capital. This type of system allows for uniformity and consistency in policy-making, but can also lead to a lack of responsiveness to local needs and priorities. In a decentralized political system, power is distributed among several centers of power, such as states or provinces. This type of system allows greater responsiveness to local needs and priorities but can also lead to fragmentation and conflict.

Regardless of their form or degree of centralization, all politics face common challenges, such as corruption, social inequality and the need to balance individual rights with the collective welfare. A well-functioning politics must have the capacity to address these challenges through a combination of legal and institutional frameworks, public participation and the rule of law.

political systems are complex and multidimensional structures that shape the lives of individuals and societies. Whether they are democratic or authoritarian, centralized or decentralized, they must be designed to promote the public good, protect individual rights and ensure a fair distribution of power and resources. As citizens, it is our responsibility to engage in the political process, hold our leaders accountable and work towards a more just and equitable society.

Political systems can also be classified based on their economic ideology, such as capitalism or socialism. In a capitalist system, the means of production are owned by private individuals or corporations, and the market determines the distribution of goods and services. In a socialist system, the means of production are owned by the state or community and the government determines the distribution of goods and services.

The type of political system a society adopts can have a significant impact on its economic development, social welfare and international relations. For example, democratic and decentralized political systems promote economic growth and innovation, while authoritarian and centralized systems may suppress these factors due to a lack of public participation and accountability.

Furthermore, political systems may differ in their approach to foreign policy, including alliances, trade relations and military intervention. It can affect a country’s position in the international community and its ability to defend its national interests.

Despite the many differences between political systems, there are some universal values and principles that guide their operation. These include the protection of human rights, the rule of law and the promotion of social justice. A politics that fails to uphold these values runs the risk of becoming oppressive and unjust, undermining its legitimacy and stability.

In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the need to reform the political system to address issues such as inequality, corruption and the democratic deficit. It has led to a proliferation of movements and initiatives aimed at promoting transparency, accountability and citizen participation in the political process.

Finally, politics play an important role in shaping societies and the world in which we live. They can promote or hinder economic development, social welfare and international cooperation depending on their design and operation. As citizens, it is our responsibility to engage in the political process, hold our leaders accountable and work towards a more just and equitable society. By doing so, we can help ensure that politics serve the common good and uphold the values and principles that are essential to a free and democratic society.

Essay on Political System in India 500 words: A Tapestry of Diversity

Introduction:

India, the world’s largest democracy, boasts a political system that is both intricate and diverse. This essay explores the multifaceted nature of the Indian political system, highlighting its democratic foundation, federal structure, political parties and challenges.

At its core, India’s political system is rooted in democratic principles. The Constitution of India, adopted in 1950, established a sovereign, socialist, secular and democratic republic. It grants universal adult suffrage, ensuring that every citizen above the age of 18 has the right to vote. Elections, held at regular intervals, are the cornerstone of Indian democracy. The Lok Sabha (House of the People) and the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) constitute the Parliament, where elected representatives formulate laws and policies.

India’s political system is federal in nature, with a division of powers between the central and state governments. The Constitution delineates the powers and responsibilities of each level of government to prevent concentration of power. India has 28 states and 8 union territories, each with its own legislature and government. This federal structure allows for flexibility and regional representation.

The political landscape in India is characterized by the presence of a multitude of political parties. The two major national parties are the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). However, there are numerous regional parties with significant influence, reflecting the diverse linguistic, cultural and regional identities of the country. Coalition governments are common at both the central and state levels, making political alliances crucial for governance.

While India’s political system is lauded for its democratic values and diversity, it faces several challenges:

a. Electoral Complexity: With over 900 million eligible voters and diverse regional parties, conducting elections in India is a colossal undertaking. Ensuring free and fair elections is a constant challenge.

b. Corruption: Corruption remains a pervasive issue in Indian politics, affecting both elected representatives and bureaucrats. Efforts to combat corruption continue but progress is gradual.

c. Communalism and Regionalism: Communal tensions and regional disparities occasionally lead to political polarization and unrest. Balancing the interests of various communities and regions is a continuous struggle.

d. Dynastic Politics: The prominence of political dynasties in India has been a point of contention, with critics arguing that it impedes the emergence of fresh talent and ideas in politics.

Conclusion:

India’s political system is a testament to its rich cultural and democratic heritage. It thrives on diversity and complexity, providing space for multiple voices and perspectives. While it faces challenges like corruption and communalism, India continues to evolve and adapt its political processes to ensure democratic values are upheld. The dynamic nature of the Indian political system exemplifies the resilience of democracy in a diverse and complex society, making it a remarkable case study for political enthusiasts worldwide.

Introduction: India, the world’s largest democracy, boasts a political system as diverse and intricate as the country itself. Its political landscape is characterized by a multi-tiered federal structure, a vibrant democratic process and a rich tapestry of political parties. This essay delves into the unique features and challenges of the political system in India.

Federal Structure: India’s political system is federal in nature, comprising a union government and 28 states and 8 union territories, each with its own legislature. This division of power, enshrined in the Constitution, allows for localized governance and representation of diverse cultural, linguistic and regional identities.

Parliamentary Democracy: At the heart of India’s political system is its parliamentary democracy. The President of India serves as the ceremonial head of state, while the Prime Minister, chosen from the majority party in the Lok Sabha (House of the People), is the head of government. The Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) constitute the bicameral Parliament, responsible for making laws and overseeing the executive branch.

Political Parties: India is home to a multitude of political parties representing a wide spectrum of ideologies. The Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are among the prominent parties. Coalition governments are common at both the central and state levels, necessitating political maneuvering and consensus-building.

Challenges: Despite its democratic vibrancy, India’s political system faces several challenges. Corruption, inefficient bureaucracy, and electoral malpractices remain persistent issues. Additionally, the country grapples with the influence of money in politics and the need for electoral reforms to ensure fair and transparent elections.

Conclusion: India’s political system is a complex mosaic that reflects the nation’s diversity and democratic spirit. While it has successfully navigated numerous challenges, there is a continued need for reform and improvement to strengthen democracy, enhance transparency, and ensure effective governance. The dynamism of India’s political system is a testament to its enduring commitment to democratic principles.

India, the world’s largest democracy, boasts a complex and vibrant political system that has evolved over the course of its history. This system is characterized by its federal structure, multi-party democracy and a commitment to upholding the principles of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity as enshrined in its Constitution.

At its core, India follows a parliamentary system of government. The President, who serves as the ceremonial head of state, is elected by an Electoral College, while the Prime Minister, the head of government, is appointed from the majority party in the Lok Sabha (House of the People). This system ensures accountability and stability in government.

India’s political landscape is marked by a diverse range of political parties representing various ideologies, languages, and regions. This diversity reflects the nation’s pluralistic society and allows for the representation of different interests and voices. The Indian Parliament, consisting of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha (Council of States), plays a pivotal role in enacting legislation and holding the government accountable.

In addition to the federal structure, India also empowers its states with significant autonomy through a three-tier system of government, ensuring a decentralized approach to governance. This enables states to address local issues and adapt policies to their specific needs.

Despite its challenges and complexities, India’s political system remains a testament to the nation’s commitment to democracy and diversity. It continues to evolve, adapt, and grow as it strives to fulfill the aspirations of its citizens while upholding the principles of justice and equality.

The political system in India is a parliamentary democracy. It operates under a federal structure, with power shared between the central government and individual states. India’s political landscape is characterized by a multi-party system, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC) being the two major national parties.

The President of India is the ceremonial head of state, while the Prime Minister is the head of government. The Lok Sabha (House of the People) and the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) constitute the Parliament, with the former being directly elected by the people.

India’s political system is renowned for its vibrant and diverse political culture, with a rich history of democratic governance since gaining independence in 1947. However, it also faces challenges such as corruption, caste-based politics, and regional disparities. Despite these challenges, India’s political system plays a crucial role in maintaining the country’s democratic principles and fostering political participation among its vast and diverse population.

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Essay: The New Idea of India

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Narendra Modi’s reign is producing a less liberal but more assured nation.

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This article appears in the Spring 2024 print issue of FP. Read more from the issue.

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From the middle of April until early June, staggered over the course of several weeks, the world’s biggest election will take place. More than 960 million Indians—out of a population of 1.4 billion—are eligible to vote in parliamentary elections that polls strongly suggest will return Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power for a third consecutive term.

Modi is probably the world’s most popular leader. According to a recent Morning Consult poll , 78 percent of Indians approve of his leadership. (The next three highest-ranked leaders, from Mexico, Argentina, and Switzerland, generate approval ratings of 63, 62, and 56 percent, respectively.) It is not hard to see why Modi is admired. He is a charismatic leader, a masterful orator in Hindi, and widely perceived as hard-working and committed to the country’s success. He is regarded as unlikely to turn to nepotism or corruption, often attributed to the fact that he is a 73-year-old man without a partner or children. Modi has few genuine competitors. His power within his party is absolute, and his opponents are fractured, weak, and dynastic—a quality usually equated with graft. Whether it is through maximizing his opportunity to host the G-20 or through his high-profile visits abroad, Modi has expanded India’s presence on the world stage and, with it, his own popularity. New Delhi is also becoming more assertive in its foreign policy, prioritizing self-interest over ideology and morality—another choice that is not without considerable domestic appeal.

Modi’s success can confuse his detractors. After all, he has increasingly authoritarian tendencies: Modi only rarely attends press conferences, has stopped sitting down for interviews with the few remaining journalists who would ask him difficult questions, and has largely sidestepped parliamentary debate. He has centralized power and built a cult of personality while weakening India’s system of federalism. Under his leadership, the country’s Hindu majority has become dominant. This salience of one religion can have ugly impacts, harming minority groups and calling into question the country’s commitment to secularism. Key pillars of democracy, such as a free press and an independent judiciary, have been eroded.

Yet Modi wins—democratically. The political scientist Sunil Khilnani argued in his 1997 book, The Idea of India , that it was democracy, rather than culture or religion, that shaped what was then a 50-year-old country. The primary embodiment of this idea, according to Khilnani, was India’s first prime minister, the anglicized, University of Cambridge-educated Jawaharlal Nehru, who went by the nickname “Joe” into his 20s. Nehru believed in a vision of a liberal, secular country that would serve as a contrast to Pakistan, which was formed explicitly as a Muslim homeland. Modi is, in many ways, Nehru’s opposite. Born into a lower-caste, lower-middle-class family, the current prime minister’s formative education came from years of traveling around the country as a Hindu community organizer, sleeping in ordinary people’s homes and building an understanding of their collective frustrations and aspirations. Modi’s idea of India, while premised on electoral democracy and welfarism, is substantially different from Nehru’s. It centers culture and religion in the state’s affairs; it defines nationhood through Hinduism; and it believes a powerful chief executive is preferable to a liberal one, even if that means the curtailment of individual rights and civil liberties. This alternative vision—a form of illiberal democracy—is an increasingly winning proposition for Modi and his BJP.

Hindus represent 80 percent of India’s population. The BJP courts this mega-majority by making them feel proud of their religion and culture. Sometimes, it aids this project by stirring up resentment of the country’s 200 million Muslims, who form 14 percent of the population. The BJP also attempts to further a version of history that interprets Hindus as victimized by successive hordes of invaders. Hindus hardly comprise a monolith, divided as they are by caste and language, but the BJP requires only half their support to win national elections. In 2014, it secured 31 percent of the national vote to gain a majority of seats in Parliament—the first time in three decades a single party had done so. It did even better in 2019, with 37 percent of the vote.

An illiberal, Hindi-dominated, and Hindu-first nation is emerging, and it is challenging—even eclipsing—other ideas of India, including Jawaharlal Nehru’s.

At least some part of the BJP’s success can be attributed to Modi’s name recognition and tireless performances on the campaign trail. But focusing too much on one man can be a distraction from understanding India’s trajectory. Even though Modi has acquired a greater concentration of power than any Indian leader in a generation, his core religious agenda has long been telegraphed by his party, as well as by its ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu social society and paramilitary group that counts more than 5 million members. While Modi has been the primary face of the BJP since 2014, the party itself has existed in its current form since 1980. (The RSS, to which Modi traces his true ideological roots, is even older. It will mark its 100th anniversary next year.) The BJP’s vision—its idea of India—is hardly new or hidden. It is clearly described in its election manifestos and, combined with Modi’s salesmanship, is increasingly successful at the ballot box.

Put another way, while India’s current political moment has much to do with supply—in the form of a once-in-a-generation leader and few convincing alternatives—it may also have something to do with shifting demand. The success of the BJP’s political project reveals a clearer picture of what India is becoming. Nearly half the country’s population is under the age of 25. Many of these young Indians are looking to assert a new cultural and social vision of nationhood. An illiberal, Hindi-dominated, and Hindu-first nation is emerging, and it is challenging—even eclipsing—other ideas of India, including Nehru’s. This has profound impacts for both domestic and foreign policy. The sooner India’s would-be partners and rivals realize this, the better they will be able to manage New Delhi’s growing global clout. “The Nehruvian idea of India is dead,” said Vinay Sitapati, the author of India Before Modi . “Something is definitely lost. But the question is whether that idea was alien to India in the first place.”

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Indians bristle at reports of how their country has fallen in recent years on key markers of the health of its civil society. It is nonetheless worth contending with those assessments. According to Reporters Without Borders, India ranked 161st out of 180 countries for press freedom in 2023, down from 80th out of 139 countries in 2002. Freedom House, which measures democracy around the world, marked India as only “partly free” in its 2024 report, with Indian-administered Kashmir receiving a “not free” designation. Only a handful of countries and territories, such as Russia and Hong Kong, experienced a greater decline in freedom over the last decade than India. The World Economic Forum’s 2023 Global Gender Gap Index ranks India 127th out of 146 countries. The World Justice Project ranks India 79th out of 142 countries for adherence to the rule of law, down from 59th in 2015. As one legal scholar wrote in Scroll.in , the judiciary has “placed its enormous arsenal at the government’s disposal in pursuit of its radical majoritarian agenda.” Consider, as well, access to the web: India has administered more internet shutdowns than any country in the last decade, even more than Iran and Myanmar.

The social indicator that worries observers of India the most is religious freedom. Troubles between Hindus and Muslims are not new. But in its decade in power, Modi’s BJP has been remarkably successful in furthering its Hindu-first agenda through legislation. It has done so by revoking the semi-autonomous status of majority-Muslim Kashmir in 2019 and later that year—an election year—passing an immigration law that fast-tracked citizenship for non-Muslims from three neighboring countries, each of which has a large Muslim majority. (The law, which makes it more difficult for Indian Muslims to prove their citizenship, was implemented in March. The timing of this announcement seemed to highlight its electoral benefits.)

Perhaps more damaging than these legislative maneuvers has been the Modi administration’s silence, and often its dog whistles of encouragement, amid an increasingly menacing climate for Indian Muslims. While Nehru’s emphasis on secularism once imposed implicit rules in the public sphere, Hindus can now question Muslims’ loyalty to India with relative impunity. Hindu supremacy has become the norm; critics are branded “anti-national.” This dominance culminated on Jan. 22, when Modi consecrated a giant temple to the Hindu god Ram in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya. The temple, which cost $250 million to build, was constructed on the site of a mosque that was demolished by a Hindu mob in 1992. When that happened three decades ago, top BJP leaders recoiled from the violence they had unleashed. Today, that embarrassment has morphed into an expression of national pride. “It is the beginning of a new era,” said Modi, adorned in a Hindu priest’s garb at the temple’s opening, in front of an audience of top Bollywood stars and the country’s business elite.

“The BJP’s dominance is primarily demand-driven,” Sitapati said. “Progressives are in denial about this.”

Modi’s vision of what it means to be Indian is at least partly borne out in public opinion. When the Pew Research Center conducted a major survey of religion in India between late 2019 and early 2020, it found that 64 percent of Hindus believed being Hindu was very important to being “truly Indian,” while 59 percent said speaking Hindi was similarly foundational in defining Indianness; 84 percent considered religion to be “very important” in their lives; and 59 percent prayed daily. “The BJP’s dominance is primarily demand-driven,” said Sitapati, who also teaches law and politics at Shiv Nadar University Chennai. “Progressives are in denial about this.”

Sitapati has critics on the left who claim his scholarship underplays the militant roots of the BJP and RSS, helping to rehabilitate their image. But on the question of demand and supply: The BJP’s dominance is limited to the country’s north, where most people speak Hindi. In the wealthier south, where tech firms are flourishing, literacy rates are higher, and most people speak languages such as Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam, the BJP is decidedly less popular. Southern leaders harbor a growing resentment that their taxes are subsidizing the Hindi Belt in the north. This geographic cleavage could come to a head in 2026, when a national process of redistricting is expected to take place. Opposition leaders fear the BJP could redraw parliamentary constituencies to its advantage. If the BJP succeeds, it could continue winning at the polls long beyond Modi’s time.

Despite all this, Sitapati contends that the country remains democratic: “Political participation is higher than ever. Elections are free and fair. The BJP regularly loses state elections. If your definition of democracy is focused on the sanctity of elections and the substance of policies, then democracy is thriving.” In Indian society, he said, culture is not centered on liberalism and individual rights; Modi’s rise must be viewed within that context.

Liberal Indians who might disagree are vanishing from the public eye. One clear exception is the Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy. Speaking in Lausanne, Switzerland, last September, she described an India descending into fascism . The ruling BJP’s “message of Hindu supremacism has relentlessly been disseminated to a population of 1.4 billion people,” Roy said. “Consequently, elections are a season of murder, lynching, and dog-whistling. … It is no longer just our leaders we must fear but a whole section of the population.”

Is the mobilization of more than a billion Hindus a form of tyranny of the majority? Not quite, says Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an Indian political scientist who teaches at Princeton University. “Hindu nationalists will say that theirs is a classic nation-building project,” he said, underscoring how independent India is still a young country. Populism, too, is an unsatisfying term for describing Modi’s politics. Even though he plays up his modest background, he is hardly anti-elitist and in fact frequently courts top Indian and global business leaders to invest in the country. Sometimes, they directly finance Modi’s success: A 2017 provision for electoral bonds brought in more than $600 million in anonymous donations to the BJP. The Supreme Court scrapped the scheme in March, calling it “unconstitutional,” but the ruling is likely too late to have prevented the influence of big donors in this year’s election.

Mukul Kesavan, a historian based in New Delhi, argues that it would be more accurate to describe the BJP’s agenda as majoritarianism. “Majoritarianism just needs a minority to mobilize against—a hatred of the internal other,” he said. “India is at the vanguard of this. There is no one else doing what we are doing. I am continually astonished that the West doesn’t see this.”

What the West also doesn’t always see is that Modi is substantially different from strongmen such as Donald Trump in the United States. While Trump propagated an ideology that eclipsed that of the Republican Party, Modi is fulfilling the RSS’s century-old movement to equate Indianness more closely with Hinduism. Surveys and elections both reveal this movement’s time has come.

“People aren’t blinkered. They’re willing to accept trade-offs,” said Mehta, explaining how growing numbers of Indians have accepted the BJP’s premise of a Hindu state, even if there are elements of that project that make them uncomfortable. “They don’t think the majoritarian agenda presents a deal-breaker.” For now, at least. A key question is what happens when majoritarianism provokes something that challenges public acceptance of this trade-off. The greatest risk here lies in a potential surge of communal violence, the likes of which have pockmarked Indian history. In 2002, for example, 58 Hindu pilgrims were killed in Godhra, in the western state of Gujarat, after a train that was returning from Ayodhya caught fire. Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, declared the incident an act of terrorism. After rumors circulated that Muslims were responsible for the fire, a mob embarked on three days of violence in the state, killing more than a thousand people. An overwhelming majority of the dead were Muslim. Modi has never been convicted of any involvement, but the tragedy has followed him in ways both damaging and to his advantage. Liberal Indians were horrified that he didn’t do more to stop the violence, but the message for a substantial number of Hindus was that he would stop at nothing to protect them.

Twenty-two years later, Modi is a mainstream leader catering to a national constituency that is much more diverse than that of Gujarat. While the riots once loomed large in his biography, Indians now see them as just one part of a complicated career in the public eye. What is unknown is how they might react to another mass outbreak of communal violence and whether civil society retains the muscle to rein in the worst excesses of its people. Optimists will point out that India has been through tough moments and emerged stronger. When Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in 1975, giving her the license to rule by decree, voters kicked her out of power the first chance they got. Modi, however, has a stronger grip on the country—and he continues to expand his powers while winning at the ballot box.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets a crowd in Varanasi, India, on March 4, 2022. Ritesh Shukla/Getty Images

Just as citizens can’t subsist purely on the ideals of secularism and liberalism, it’s the same with nationalism and majoritarianism. In the end, the state must deliver. Here, Modi’s record is mixed. “Modi sees Japan as a model—modern in an industrial sense without being Western in a cultural sense,” Sitapati said. “He has delivered on an ideological project that is Hindu revivalism mixed with industrialization.”

India is undertaking a vast national project of state-building under Modi. Since 2014, spending on transport has more than tripled as a share of GDP. India is currently building more than 6,000 miles of highways a year and has doubled the length of its rural road network since 2014. In 2022, capitalizing on a red-hot aviation market, New Delhi privatized its creaky national carrier, Air India. India has twice as many airports today than it did a decade ago, with domestic passengers more than doubling in quantity to top 200 million. Its middle classes are spending more money: Average monthly per capita consumption expenditure in urban areas rose by 146 percent in the last decade. Meanwhile, India is whittling down its infamous bureaucratic hurdles to become an easier place for industry. According to the World Bank’s annual Doing Business report, India rose from a rank of 134th in 2014 to 63rd in 2020. Investors seem bullish. The country’s main stock index, the BSE Sensex, has increased in value by 250 percent in the last decade.

Strongmen are usually more popular among men than women. It is a strange paradox, then, that the BJP won a record number of votes by women in the 2019 national election and is projected to do so again in 2024, as voter participation , and voting by women, continues to climb. Modi has targeted female voters through the canny deployment of services that make domestic life easier. Rural access to piped water, for example, has climbed to more than 75 percent from just 16.8 percent in 2019. Modi declared India free of open defecation in 2019 after a campaign to build more than 110 million toilets. And according to the International Energy Agency, 45 percent of India’s electricity transmission lines have been installed in the last decade.

The most transformative force in the country is the ongoing proliferation of the internet, as I wrote in my 2018 book, India Connected . Just as the invention of the car more than a century ago shaped modern America, with the corresponding building out of the interstate system and suburbia, cheap smartphones have enabled Indians to partake in a burgeoning digital ecosystem. Though it didn’t have much to do with the smartphone and internet boom, the government has capitalized on it. India’s Unified Payments Interface, a government-run instant payment system, now accounts for three-fourths of all non-cash retail transactions in the country. With the help of digital banking and a new national biometric identification system, New Delhi has been able to sidestep corruption by directly transferring subsidies to citizens, saving billions of dollars in wastage.

Modi is projecting an image of a more powerful, muscular, prideful nation—and Indians are in thrall to the self-portrait.

The private sector has been a willing participant in India’s new digital and physical economy. But it has also been strangely leery of investing more, as two leading economists describe in this issue. Businesses remain concerned that Modi has a cabal of preferred partners in his plans for industrialization—for example, he is seen as too cozy with the country’s two richest men, Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, both of whom hail from his native state of Gujarat. Fears abound that New Delhi’s history of retroactive taxation and protectionism could blow up the best laid corporate plans.

Because he has corralled great power, when Modi missteps, the consequences tend to be enormous. In 2016, he suddenly announced a process of demonetization, recalling high-value notes of currency as legal tender. While the move attempted to reduce corruption by outing people with large amounts of untaxed income, it was in fact a stunt that reduced India’s growth by nearly 2 percentage points. Similarly, panicked by the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, Modi announced a sudden national lockdown, leading to millions of migrant workers racing home—and likely spreading the virus. A year later, New Delhi largely stood by when the delta variant of COVID-19 surged through the country, killing untold thousands of Indians. No amount of nationalism or pride could cover up for the fact that, on that occasion, the state had let its people down.

Now, with a population hungry for good news, India is looking to take advantage of the best foreign-policy deals. There are plenty to be struck in a shifting global order. The United States’ power is in relative decline, China’s has risen, and a range of so-called middle powers are looking to benchmark their status. Modi is projecting an image of a more powerful, muscular, prideful nation—and Indians are in thrall to the self-portrait.

Modi is seen through a video camera as he speaks at the final session of the G-20 summit in New Delhi on Sept. 10, 2023. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

One window into India’s newfound status on the world stage came last September, after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made the stunning announcement that Ottawa was investigating “credible allegations” that Indian government agents had orchestrated the murder of a Sikh community leader in British Columbia. New Delhi flatly denied his accusations, calling them “absurd.” The person who was killed, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, had sought to establish a nation called Khalistan, carved out of territory in his native Punjab, a state in northwestern India. In 2020, New Delhi declared Nijjar a terrorist.

A Canadian leader publicly accusing India of a murder on Canadian soil could have been a major embarrassment for Modi. Instead, the incident galvanized his supporters. The national mood seemed to agree with the government line that New Delhi didn’t do it but with an important subtext: If it did, it did the right thing.

“It’s this idea that ‘We have arrived. Now we can talk on equal terms to the white man,’” Sitapati said. It’s not just revisionism to examine how colonial powers masterminded the plunder of India’s land and resources; even the word “loot” is stolen from Hindi, as the writer and parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor has pointed out. The BJP’s project of nation-building attempts to reinstill a sense of self-pride, often by painting Hindus as the victims of centuries of wrongs but who have now awoken to claim their true status. This is why the Jan. 22 opening of the Ram temple took on epic significance, reviving among Hindus a sense that they were rightfully claiming the primacy they once enjoyed.

The flashier the stage, the better. For much of 2023, India flaunted its hosting of the G-20, a rotating presidency that most other countries see as perfunctory. For Modi, it became a marketing machine, with giant billboards advertising New Delhi’s pride in playing host (always alongside a portrait of the prime minister). When the summit began in September, TV channels dutifully carried key parts live, showing Modi welcoming a series of top world leaders.

Weeks earlier, Indians united around another celebratory moment. The country landed two robots on the moon, making it only the fourth country to do so and the first to reach the moon’s southern polar region. As TV channels ran a live broadcast of the landing, Modi beamed into mission control at the key moment of touchdown, his face on a split screen with the landing. The self-promotion can seem garish, but it feeds into a sense of collective accomplishment and national identity.

Also popular is New Delhi’s stance on Moscow, thumbing its nose at Western countries seeking to sanction Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. While Russia exported less than 1 percent of its crude to India before 2022, it now sends more than half of its supplies there. China and India are together purchasing 80 percent of Russia’s seaborne oil exports—and they do so at below-market rates because of a price cap imposed by the West. There is little consideration for morality, in part because Indians, like many in the global south, now widely perceive the West as applying double standards to world affairs. As a result, there’s no moral benchmark. For India, an advantageous oil deal is just that: good economics and smart politics. (India and Russia also share a historic friendship, which both sides are keen to continue.)

New Delhi’s growing foreign-policy assertiveness stems from a knowledge that it is increasingly needed by other countries. Allies seem aware of this new dynamic. For the United States, even if India doesn’t come to its aid in a potential tussle with China in the Taiwan Strait, merely preventing New Delhi from growing closer to Beijing represents a geopolitical win that papers over other disagreements. For other countries, access to India’s growing market is paramount. Despite the BJP’s hostility to Muslims, Modi receives a red-carpet welcome when he visits countries in the Persian Gulf.

India’s embrace of its strategic interests—and its confidence in articulating that choice—is of a piece with broader changes in how the country views itself. Modi and his BJP have succeeded in furthering an idea of India that makes a virtue of sacrificing Western liberalism for a homegrown sense of self-interest. By appealing to young people’s economic aspirations and their desire for identity in an increasingly interconnected world, the BJP has found room to advance a religious and cultural agenda that would have been unimaginable a generation ago. This vision cannot be purely top-down; the will of a nation evolves over time. In the future, there will likely be further contests among other ideas of India. But if Modi’s BJP continues to win at the ballot box, history may show that the country’s liberal experiment wasn’t just interrupted—it may have been an aberration.

Ravi Agrawal is the editor in chief of Foreign Policy . Twitter:  @RaviReports

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NPR is defending its journalism and integrity after a senior editor wrote an essay accusing it of losing the public's trust.

NPR's top news executive defended its journalism and its commitment to reflecting a diverse array of views on Tuesday after a senior NPR editor wrote a broad critique of how the network has covered some of the most important stories of the age.

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Praised by NPR's critics

Berliner is a senior editor on NPR's Business Desk. (Disclosure: I, too, am part of the Business Desk, and Berliner has edited many of my past stories. He did not see any version of this article or participate in its preparation before it was posted publicly.)

Berliner's essay , titled "I've Been at NPR for 25 years. Here's How We Lost America's Trust," was published by The Free Press, a website that has welcomed journalists who have concluded that mainstream news outlets have become reflexively liberal.

Berliner writes that as a Subaru-driving, Sarah Lawrence College graduate who "was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother ," he fits the mold of a loyal NPR fan.

Yet Berliner says NPR's news coverage has fallen short on some of the most controversial stories of recent years, from the question of whether former President Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, to the origins of the virus that causes COVID-19, to the significance and provenance of emails leaked from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden weeks before the 2020 election. In addition, he blasted NPR's coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

On each of these stories, Berliner asserts, NPR has suffered from groupthink due to too little diversity of viewpoints in the newsroom.

The essay ricocheted Tuesday around conservative media , with some labeling Berliner a whistleblower . Others picked it up on social media, including Elon Musk, who has lambasted NPR for leaving his social media site, X. (Musk emailed another NPR reporter a link to Berliner's article with a gibe that the reporter was a "quisling" — a World War II reference to someone who collaborates with the enemy.)

When asked for further comment late Tuesday, Berliner declined, saying the essay spoke for itself.

The arguments he raises — and counters — have percolated across U.S. newsrooms in recent years. The #MeToo sexual harassment scandals of 2016 and 2017 forced newsrooms to listen to and heed more junior colleagues. The social justice movement prompted by the killing of George Floyd in 2020 inspired a reckoning in many places. Newsroom leaders often appeared to stand on shaky ground.

Leaders at many newsrooms, including top editors at The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times , lost their jobs. Legendary Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron wrote in his memoir that he feared his bonds with the staff were "frayed beyond repair," especially over the degree of self-expression his journalists expected to exert on social media, before he decided to step down in early 2021.

Since then, Baron and others — including leaders of some of these newsrooms — have suggested that the pendulum has swung too far.

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New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger warned last year against journalists embracing a stance of what he calls "one-side-ism": "where journalists are demonstrating that they're on the side of the righteous."

"I really think that that can create blind spots and echo chambers," he said.

Internal arguments at The Times over the strength of its reporting on accusations that Hamas engaged in sexual assaults as part of a strategy for its Oct. 7 attack on Israel erupted publicly . The paper conducted an investigation to determine the source of a leak over a planned episode of the paper's podcast The Daily on the subject, which months later has not been released. The newsroom guild accused the paper of "targeted interrogation" of journalists of Middle Eastern descent.

Heated pushback in NPR's newsroom

Given Berliner's account of private conversations, several NPR journalists question whether they can now trust him with unguarded assessments about stories in real time. Others express frustration that he had not sought out comment in advance of publication. Berliner acknowledged to me that for this story, he did not seek NPR's approval to publish the piece, nor did he give the network advance notice.

Some of Berliner's NPR colleagues are responding heatedly. Fernando Alfonso, a senior supervising editor for digital news, wrote that he wholeheartedly rejected Berliner's critique of the coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict, for which NPR's journalists, like their peers, periodically put themselves at risk.

Alfonso also took issue with Berliner's concern over the focus on diversity at NPR.

"As a person of color who has often worked in newsrooms with little to no people who look like me, the efforts NPR has made to diversify its workforce and its sources are unique and appropriate given the news industry's long-standing lack of diversity," Alfonso says. "These efforts should be celebrated and not denigrated as Uri has done."

After this story was first published, Berliner contested Alfonso's characterization, saying his criticism of NPR is about the lack of diversity of viewpoints, not its diversity itself.

"I never criticized NPR's priority of achieving a more diverse workforce in terms of race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. I have not 'denigrated' NPR's newsroom diversity goals," Berliner said. "That's wrong."

Questions of diversity

Under former CEO John Lansing, NPR made increasing diversity, both of its staff and its audience, its "North Star" mission. Berliner says in the essay that NPR failed to consider broader diversity of viewpoint, noting, "In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans."

Berliner cited audience estimates that suggested a concurrent falloff in listening by Republicans. (The number of people listening to NPR broadcasts and terrestrial radio broadly has declined since the start of the pandemic.)

Former NPR vice president for news and ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin tweeted , "I know Uri. He's not wrong."

Others questioned Berliner's logic. "This probably gets causality somewhat backward," tweeted Semafor Washington editor Jordan Weissmann . "I'd guess that a lot of NPR listeners who voted for [Mitt] Romney have changed how they identify politically."

Similarly, Nieman Lab founder Joshua Benton suggested the rise of Trump alienated many NPR-appreciating Republicans from the GOP.

In recent years, NPR has greatly enhanced the percentage of people of color in its workforce and its executive ranks. Four out of 10 staffers are people of color; nearly half of NPR's leadership team identifies as Black, Asian or Latino.

"The philosophy is: Do you want to serve all of America and make sure it sounds like all of America, or not?" Lansing, who stepped down last month, says in response to Berliner's piece. "I'd welcome the argument against that."

"On radio, we were really lagging in our representation of an audience that makes us look like what America looks like today," Lansing says. The U.S. looks and sounds a lot different than it did in 1971, when NPR's first show was broadcast, Lansing says.

A network spokesperson says new NPR CEO Katherine Maher supports Chapin and her response to Berliner's critique.

The spokesperson says that Maher "believes that it's a healthy thing for a public service newsroom to engage in rigorous consideration of the needs of our audiences, including where we serve our mission well and where we can serve it better."

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editor Gerry Holmes. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

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NPR in Turmoil After It Is Accused of Liberal Bias

An essay from an editor at the broadcaster has generated a firestorm of criticism about the network on social media, especially among conservatives.

By Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson

NPR is facing both internal tumult and a fusillade of attacks by prominent conservatives this week after a senior editor publicly claimed the broadcaster had allowed liberal bias to affect its coverage, risking its trust with audiences.

Uri Berliner, a senior business editor who has worked at NPR for 25 years, wrote in an essay published Tuesday by The Free Press, a popular Substack publication, that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview.”

Mr. Berliner, a Peabody Award-winning journalist, castigated NPR for what he said was a litany of journalistic missteps around coverage of several major news events, including the origins of Covid-19 and the war in Gaza. He also said the internal culture at NPR had placed race and identity as “paramount in nearly every aspect of the workplace.”

Mr. Berliner’s essay has ignited a firestorm of criticism of NPR on social media, especially among conservatives who have long accused the network of political bias in its reporting. Former President Donald J. Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to argue that NPR’s government funding should be rescinded, an argument he has made in the past.

NPR has forcefully pushed back on Mr. Berliner’s accusations and the criticism.

“We’re proud to stand behind the exceptional work that our desks and shows do to cover a wide range of challenging stories,” Edith Chapin, the organization’s editor in chief, said in an email to staff on Tuesday. “We believe that inclusion — among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage — is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world.” Some other NPR journalists also criticized the essay publicly, including Eric Deggans, its TV critic, who faulted Mr. Berliner for not giving NPR an opportunity to comment on the piece.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Berliner expressed no regrets about publishing the essay, saying he loved NPR and hoped to make it better by airing criticisms that have gone unheeded by leaders for years. He called NPR a “national trust” that people rely on for fair reporting and superb storytelling.

“I decided to go out and publish it in hopes that something would change, and that we get a broader conversation going about how the news is covered,” Mr. Berliner said.

He said he had not been disciplined by managers, though he said he had received a note from his supervisor reminding him that NPR requires employees to clear speaking appearances and media requests with standards and media relations. He said he didn’t run his remarks to The New York Times by network spokespeople.

When the hosts of NPR’s biggest shows, including “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” convened on Wednesday afternoon for a long-scheduled meet-and-greet with the network’s new chief executive, Katherine Maher , conversation soon turned to Mr. Berliner’s essay, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. During the lunch, Ms. Chapin told the hosts that she didn’t want Mr. Berliner to become a “martyr,” the people said.

Mr. Berliner’s essay also sent critical Slack messages whizzing through some of the same employee affinity groups focused on racial and sexual identity that he cited in his essay. In one group, several staff members disputed Mr. Berliner’s points about a lack of ideological diversity and said efforts to recruit more people of color would make NPR’s journalism better.

On Wednesday, staff members from “Morning Edition” convened to discuss the fallout from Mr. Berliner’s essay. During the meeting, an NPR producer took issue with Mr. Berliner’s argument for why NPR’s listenership has fallen off, describing a variety of factors that have contributed to the change.

Mr. Berliner’s remarks prompted vehement pushback from several news executives. Tony Cavin, NPR’s managing editor of standards and practices, said in an interview that he rejected all of Mr. Berliner’s claims of unfairness, adding that his remarks would probably make it harder for NPR journalists to do their jobs.

“The next time one of our people calls up a Republican congressman or something and tries to get an answer from them, they may well say, ‘Oh, I read these stories, you guys aren’t fair, so I’m not going to talk to you,’” Mr. Cavin said.

Some journalists have defended Mr. Berliner’s essay. Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, NPR’s former ombudsman, said Mr. Berliner was “not wrong” on social media. Chuck Holmes, a former managing editor at NPR, called Mr. Berliner’s essay “brave” on Facebook.

Mr. Berliner’s criticism was the latest salvo within NPR, which is no stranger to internal division. In October, Mr. Berliner took part in a lengthy debate over whether NPR should defer to language proposed by the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association while covering the conflict in Gaza.

“We don’t need to rely on an advocacy group’s guidance,” Mr. Berliner wrote, according to a copy of the email exchange viewed by The Times. “Our job is to seek out the facts and report them.” The debate didn’t change NPR’s language guidance, which is made by editors who weren’t part of the discussion. And in a statement on Thursday, the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association said it is a professional association for journalists, not a political advocacy group.

Mr. Berliner’s public criticism has highlighted broader concerns within NPR about the public broadcaster’s mission amid continued financial struggles. Last year, NPR cut 10 percent of its staff and canceled four podcasts, including the popular “Invisibilia,” as it tried to make up for a $30 million budget shortfall. Listeners have drifted away from traditional radio to podcasts, and the advertising market has been unsteady.

In his essay, Mr. Berliner laid some of the blame at the feet of NPR’s former chief executive, John Lansing, who said he was retiring at the end of last year after four years in the role. He was replaced by Ms. Maher, who started on March 25.

During a meeting with employees in her first week, Ms. Maher was asked what she thought about decisions to give a platform to political figures like Ronna McDaniel, the former Republican Party chair whose position as a political analyst at NBC News became untenable after an on-air revolt from hosts who criticized her efforts to undermine the 2020 election.

“I think that this conversation has been one that does not have an easy answer,” Ms. Maher responded.

Benjamin Mullin reports on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact Ben securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or email at [email protected] . More about Benjamin Mullin

Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email:  [email protected]   More about Katie Robertson

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Senior NPR editor claims public broadcaster lacks ‘viewpoint diversity’

Uri Berliner said in a letter that Americans no longer trusted broadcaster because of its ‘distilled worldview’ and liberal bent

A debate about media bias has broken out at National Public Radio after a longtime employee published a scathing letter accusing the broadcaster of a “distilled worldview of a very small segment of the US population” and “telling people how to think”, prompting an impassioned defense of the station from its editor-in-chief.

In the letter published on Free Press , NPR’s senior business editor Uri Berliner claimed Americans no longer trust NPR – which is partly publicly funded – because of its lack of “viewpoint diversity” and its embrace of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Berliner wrote that “an open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR , and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America”. He acknowledged that NPR’s audience had always tilted left, but was now no longer able to make any claim to ideological neutrality.

In the piece on Free Press, a site run by Bari Weiss, a former opinion editor at the New York Times, Berliner noted that in 2011 the public broadcaster’s audience identified as 26% conservative, 23% as middle of the road and 37% liberal. Last year it identified as 11% very or somewhat conservative, 21% as middle of the road, and 67% very or somewhat liberal.

“We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals,” Berliner wrote, and described a new listener stereotype: “EV-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag–carrying coastal elite.”

This would not be a problem, he said, if the radio broadcaster was an “openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience”, but for a public broadcaster, “which purports to consider all things, it’s devastating both for its journalism and its business model”.

“I’ve become a visible wrong-thinker at a place I love,” he wrote.

The letter, which mirrors a recent critique of the New York Times by former editor James Bennet in the Economist and aspects of a recent lecture by the paper’s publisher, AG Sulzberger , has provoked a fierce backlash from NPR editorial staff.

NPR’s editor-in-chief, Edith Chapin, wrote in a memo to staff that she “strongly disagreed” with Berliner’s assessment, stood behind the outlet’s “exceptional work” and said she believed that “inclusion – among our staff, with our sourcing, and in our overall coverage – is critical to telling the nuanced stories of this country and our world”.

Chapin added that the radio broadcasters’ work was not above scrutiny or critique. “We must have vigorous discussions in the newsroom about how we serve the public as a whole, fostering a culture of conversation that breaks down the silos that we sometimes end up retreating to,” she said.

Chapin was appointed editor last year after a period of turbulence at NPR over what it acknowledged were clashes between its news and programming divisions over “priorities, resources and need to innovate”.

“We all aim every day to serve our audience with information and moments of joy that are useful and relevant,” Chapin said at the time.

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Berliner identified the station’s coverage of the Covid-19 lab leak theory, Hunter Biden’s laptop and allegations that Donald Trump colluded with Russia in the 2016 election as all examples of how “politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work”.

He also identified DEI and use of language advanced by affiliated groups as evidence that “people at every level of NPR have comfortably coalesced around the progressive worldview”. Berliner said that when he brought up his survey of newsroom political voter registration at a 2021 all-staff meeting, showing there were no Republicans, he claimed he was met with “profound indifference”.

“The messages were of the ‘Oh wow, that’s weird’ variety, as if the lopsided tally was a random anomaly rather than a critical failure of our diversity North Star,” he wrote.

Berliner later told the NewsNation host Chris Cuomo that he was not surprised by the negative response he had received from NPR editorial management, saying, “they’re certainly entitled to their perspective.”

But, he added, “I’ve had a lot of support from colleagues, and many of them unexpected, who say they agree with me. Some of them say this confidentially, but I think there’s been a lot of response saying, look, these are things that need to be addressed.”

In her letter to staff, Chapin wrote that NPR’s efforts to expand the diversity of perspectives and subjects now included tracking sources. “We have these internal debates, enforce strong editorial standards, and engage in processes that measure our work precisely because we recognize that nobody has the ‘view from nowhere.’”

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