Historical Dynamics of Religion and Politics in India

India is one of the few countries in the world where religion has never been a purely private affair. From the earliest urban settlements of the Indus Valley to today’s electoral battlegrounds, religious belief and political power have moved together – sometimes in harmony, sometimes in open conflict. Understanding this relationship is not just an academic exercise; it is essential to understanding why modern India is the country it is. As B.R. Ambedkar once observed, “to ignore religion is to ignore a live wire.” That wire has run through every phase of India’s political history.

A four-phase framework 🔗

Scholars of Indian history have long noted that the relationship between religion and politics in India can be understood through four broad phases: the first stretching from the Indus Valley Civilization to the advent of Islam, the second from the advent of Islam to the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the third from 1857 to independence in 1947, and the fourth from independence onwards. Each phase had its own character, intensity, and dynamics – but throughout all of them, religion and governance remained deeply entangled.

Phase 1: Ancient foundations – from the Indus Valley to the Vedic age 🔗

The story begins with one of the world’s earliest urban civilizations. The Indus Valley Civilization (c. 3300-1300 BCE) left behind archaeological evidence suggesting that religious ritual and social organization were closely linked. Artifacts depicting figures resembling the proto-Pashupati form of Shiva and fertility symbols point to a sacred order that may have underpinned political authority. The remarkably uniform town planning across Indus cities – with standardized weights, drainage systems, and granaries – suggests a centralized authority, possibly one whose legitimacy was tied to religious ideology.

The Vedic period (c. 1500-600 BCE) made this link more explicit. The concept of dharma – a moral and cosmic order – emerged as the framework for both individual conduct and governance. Kings were increasingly presented as divine representatives, and the ritual role of Brahmin priests in legitimizing royal authority became institutionalized. State power, as noted in academic scholarship on this period, was generally concentrated in the hands of the Kshatriya (warrior) class, with religion providing the ideological scaffolding of rule. Challenges to the dominant religious order – such as the rise of Buddhism and Jainism – came from within the civilization itself, not from external sources.

The Mauryan experiment: Ashoka’s dhamma 🔗

The most dramatic example of religion reshaping political governance in ancient India came under Emperor Ashoka (c. 268-232 BCE). After his brutal conquest of Kalinga, which caused massive loss of life, Ashoka underwent a profound transformation. He was deeply moved by the suffering the war had caused, embraced Buddhist principles, and resolved to govern through ethical persuasion rather than force alone.

His policy of dhamma was not simply the imposition of Buddhism as state doctrine. Ashoka adopted Buddhism in his personal life but never imposed it on his subjects. Instead, dhamma was a universal moral code – emphasizing non-violence, truthfulness, compassion, and respect for all religious traditions. It was not confined to Buddhism alone but included values acceptable to Hindus, Jains, Ajivikas, and other communities, making it an early experiment in state-sponsored ethical pluralism. Ashoka communicated this vision through edicts inscribed on rocks and pillars across his vast empire, and appointed officers called dhamma-mahamattas to spread these principles and monitor public welfare.

The long-term significance of this experiment is visible even today. The Ashoka Chakra from his lion capital appears on the flag of modern India, and his model of ethical, inclusive governance continues to be cited in discussions about leadership and secularism.

Phase 2: The advent of Islam and Mughal pluralism 🔗

The arrival of Islam in the Indian subcontinent, beginning in earnest from the 11th century, introduced a new dimension to the religion-politics relationship. From the 11th to the 14th century, Muslim rulers used religious identity to consolidate political power, and some battles were framed as jihads against non-believers. However, the picture is far more nuanced than a simple narrative of religious conflict.

The Mughal Empire (1526-1857) represents the most sophisticated engagement between Muslim political rule and India’s religiously diverse population. The contrast between different emperors’ approaches is stark and instructive. Under Akbar, the Mughal Empire instituted a policy known as sulh-i-kull – usually translated as “peace with all” – calling for tolerance toward all religions. This was not merely political expediency. Historian Rajeev Kinra argues that it was a genuine principle of statecraft and a means of rational inquiry into philosophical matters.

Akbar’s court was a remarkable experiment in pluralism. He sought to protect freedom of religion for all those under his rule, abolishing the jizya (tax on non-Muslims), appointing Hindu Rajput nobles to high office, and establishing the Ibadat Khana (House of Faith) – a forum where scholars of Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism could debate religious questions. He also initiated “Din-e-Ilahi,” a syncretic spiritual movement intended to integrate the ethical merits of multiple faiths.

This spirit did not outlast Akbar unchanged. Jahangir moved towards greater orthodox Islamic practice, and Aurangzeb’s reign (1658-1707) saw a significant reversal: the reimposition of the jizya, demolition of temples, and a more explicitly Islamic approach to governance. These shifts destabilized the empire and contributed to its eventual decline. The Mughal era thus demonstrated both the political power of religious inclusivity and the consequences of abandoning it.

Phase 3: British colonialism and the weaponization of religious identity 🔗

The British East India Company’s consolidation of power in India, completed by 1856, brought a new and calculated dimension to the religion-politics relationship. The British evolved a strategy to exploit the religious identities of Indians to secure political control – interfering in temple and mosque lands, enacting laws that affected inheritance rights upon religious conversion, and deploying Christian missionaries in ways that provoked Hindu and Muslim communities alike. These interventions contributed directly to the 1857 Mutiny, during which Hindus and Muslims united against British rule.

After 1857, the British intensified their divide and rule policy along religious lines. In 1909, the British introduced communal electorates – separate voting rolls for Hindus and Muslims – a system further extended in 1919. This institutionalized the idea that religious community, rather than shared citizenship, was the primary political identity. The founding of the Muslim League in 1906 and Hindu communal organizations in the same era was a direct product of this political environment.

Indian nationalist leaders were not immune to using religion themselves. Leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak and later Mahatma Gandhi found it effective to mobilize mass support against British rule using religious symbols and language. While Gandhi’s use of religion was broadly humanistic, the blending of religious and national identity deepened communal tensions that would prove catastrophic at Partition.

Phase 4: Independence, partition, and the secular republic 🔗

The transfer of power in August 1947 was accompanied by a catastrophe rooted in the very religious divisions the British had cultivated. Independence was accompanied by a deeply painful division into two states – India and Pakistan – which triggered the largest-scale mass migration of religious groups in the history of the Indian subcontinent, with Muslim refugees heading for Pakistan and Hindu and Sikh refugees for India. The violence of Partition claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and left a trauma that continues to shape India-Pakistan relations.

India’s founding leaders made a deliberate choice in response to this history. On the eve of independence, India decided to establish a secular state with its own characteristics of religious tolerance, liberty, and equality – a commitment enshrined in the Constitution. Crucially, Indian secularism did not mean the absence of religion from public life, but rather the state’s impartiality toward all faiths. In a country with at least 12 religions, over 300 castes, and more than 100 major languages, the only viable path to managing internal tensions was tolerance and coexistence.

The Nehruvian consensus and its erosion 🔗

In the first decades after independence, religion-based parties had a marginal presence in Indian politics, and social divisions on communal lines were relatively contained. The national leadership kept Hindu communal forces in check, and the trauma of Partition had temporarily exhausted the appetite for communal mobilization. However, this consensus began to erode from the 1960s and 1980s onward.

From the early 1980s, Hindu communal organizations increased the scale and aggressiveness of their operations, culminating in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. That event – preceded by nationwide religious processions designed to mobilize voters – led to widespread communal riots and over 900 deaths in Bombay alone. It also marked a turning point in electoral politics: the Hindu nationalist party captured the highest number of parliamentary seats they had ever won in the elections that followed.

Religion in contemporary Indian politics 🔗

The post-liberalization era has seen religion become more, not less, central to Indian electoral politics. Politicians tend to take advantage of religious affiliations, influencing people to vote for them by claiming to protect their religious philosophies. Identity politics built around religious community membership has reshaped party strategies, voter mobilization, and policy debates. The rise of Hindutva – the ideology of Hindu cultural nationalism – as a mainstream political force has challenged the Nehruvian model of secular governance.

At the same time, the Representation of the People Act, 1951, prohibits the use of religion, race, caste, or community in electoral appeals, and judicial institutions have periodically acted as a check on religious mobilization in politics. Interfaith movements, civil society organizations, and progressive religious voices continue to advocate for a pluralistic public sphere. The tension between these forces – constitutional secularism on one side, and religion-based political mobilization on the other – defines the contemporary landscape.

Why this history matters 🔗

The four-phase history of religion and politics in India reveals something important: the relationship between the two has never been simply oppositional or simply collaborative. Ashoka used Buddhist ethics to build a more humane empire. Akbar used pluralism to hold a diverse empire together. British colonialism weaponized religious difference to divide a population. Post-independence India tried to transcend that history through constitutional secularism – with only partial success. Each phase has left its mark on the present. The vocabulary of contemporary Indian political debate – secularism, communalism, Hindutva, minority rights – cannot be understood without this historical depth.

What do you think? Given India’s long history of both religious pluralism and religiously motivated conflict, what does genuine secularism look like in a society where religion shapes every dimension of public and private life? And how should democratic institutions respond when religious identity becomes the primary driver of electoral politics – at the cost of issues like poverty, education, and economic development?

References

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2. https://thelexpedia.com/?articles=religion-and-politics-in-india
3. https://testbook.com/ias-preparation/role-of-religion-in-indian-politics
4. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ashoka
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka%27s_policy_of_Dhamma
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9. https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/india-akbar-great-mughal-emperor-template-religious-tolerance-today
10. https://testbook.com/ias-preparation/religious-policies-of-mughals
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_policy_of_the_Mughals_after_Akbar
12. https://www.satp.org/satporgtp/publication/faultlines/volume11/Article4.htm
13. https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/perspective/news/the-use-religion-indian-politics-1766164
14. https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2000/02/19/religion-and-politics-india/
15. https://ijcrt.org/papers/IJCRT2010060.pdf