Exploring the Varied Dimensions of Religion: Insights from India

Religion is rarely just about belief in a higher power. It is simultaneously a social institution, a political tool, a cultural identity, and a personal worldview. In India – home to some of the world’s oldest religious traditions – these dimensions are especially visible. Understanding how religion operates across these varied dimensions helps explain not only why some traditions tend toward tolerance while others lean toward exclusivity, but also why violence so often has roots that go far deeper than theology.

Religion as a multi-dimensional phenomenon 🔗

The Scottish scholar Ninian Smart famously argued that religion cannot be reduced to doctrine or ritual alone. His seven-dimensional framework – covering ritual, experience, narrative, doctrine, ethics, social institutions, and material culture – treated religion as an interactive, living process rather than a fixed object. In India, every one of these dimensions is highly visible and deeply woven into daily life. A Hindu festival is not just a ritual; it is also a social gathering, an economic event, a political occasion, and an affirmation of cultural identity all at once. This layered character of religion is precisely what makes it such a powerful force – for both unity and conflict.

Pantheism, pluralism, and the roots of tolerance 🔗

One of the most significant ways in which religious traditions differ from each other – and one that has real consequences for how they relate to other faiths – is in their conception of the divine. Pantheism, the view that the divine is not separate from the universe but inherent in all things, tends to produce a more open and accommodating orientation toward other beliefs. Religions drawing on pantheistic or pluralistic frameworks tend not to insist on a single exclusive path to spiritual truth.

Hinduism’s theological pluralism 🔗

Hinduism, with roughly one billion followers, is the third-largest religion in the world. It centres on the idea that a divine power can manifest as different entities – with Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva representing different functions of a single ultimate reality known as Brahman. Hindus also follow the concept of dharma (right duty) and karma (the spiritual consequences of one’s actions across lifetimes). Importantly, the philosophical schools of Hinduism range over a wide area, offering contrasting viewpoints on the nature of the soul, its relationship to God, and whether God is one or many, personal or impersonal. This internal doctrinal diversity – while a source of occasional friction – also means Hinduism has historically accommodated a vast range of beliefs, regional practices, and even contradictory theological positions without labelling any of them heretical. A Hindu in Kerala may worship entirely different deities from a Hindu in Punjab, and both expressions are equally valid within the tradition.

Buddhism and the ethic of acceptance 🔗

Buddhism, which originated in the Indian subcontinent around 500 BCE, takes a different but equally pluralistic path. Buddhism promotes peace and tolerance, and its central framework – the Four Noble Truths and the concept of the “middle way” – encourages followers to live in the present and to practice acceptance of others. Crucially, Buddhism tends to deemphasise the role of a supreme creator god, stressing instead personal responsibility and ethical conduct. This non-theistic orientation means there is no single divine authority whose commands must be obeyed over all others, and no concept of non-believers who must be corrected or converted. The tradition’s very architecture – doctrinal, ethical, and experiential – inclines it toward tolerance.

Monotheism, exclusivity, and social consequences 🔗

The contrast with strictly monotheistic religions is instructive. Monotheism – the belief in one God – is a central tenet of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. When a religion holds that there is only one true God and one correct path to salvation, it logically follows that other religious paths are incomplete or mistaken. This is not a blanket condemnation of monotheistic traditions, many of which have rich histories of coexistence and interfaith dialogue. But the exclusive truth-claim built into strict monotheism creates a structural tension with religious pluralism that pantheistic or non-theistic traditions do not face in the same way. Historically, this tension has been heightened whenever religious identity has been fused with political power or state authority – as post-Reformation Europe illustrates, where religious differences were repeatedly exploited to justify wars and political violence.

It is important to note, however, that the relationship between theology and tolerance is never straightforward. Many religions may be practiced or understood in various categories – Hinduism itself is sometimes described as henotheistic rather than purely polytheistic, and internal disputes within both monotheistic and pantheistic traditions have regularly produced violence. The theological character of a religion is one factor among many; social, political, and historical contexts shape its actual practice far more than doctrine alone.

When conflict is not really about religion 🔗

This brings us to one of the most important insights in the sociological study of religion: much of what gets labelled “religious violence” is actually driven by non-religious factors. Economic competition, political mobilisation, historical grievances, and state policies regularly produce conflict that wears religious clothing.

The 1961 Jabalpur riots: economic rivalry in religious costume 🔗

A revealing example is the 1961 Jabalpur riots – the first major communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in post-independence India. The riots were directly linked to the emergence of a small class of successful Muslim entrepreneurs who created a new economic rivalry between Hindu and Muslim communities. There was no significant theological dispute at the root of this violence. Religion served as the boundary marker around which pre-existing economic frustrations were organised and expressed.

Political mobilisation and communal violence 🔗

Political actors have repeatedly instrumentalised religious identity to consolidate power. According to sociologist Paul Brass, there is an institutionalised riot system in India that can orchestrate violence depending on political exigencies, mostly before elections for political mobilisation. Research by scholars Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph similarly argues that economic disparity – not theological disagreement – is a core reason for communal aggression. As India’s economy developed through globalisation, unmet expectations among certain sections of the population were redirected by political actors toward minority communities. Here, religion functions not as the cause of conflict but as a convenient label for dividing people along lines that serve electoral interests.

Violence during religious processions 🔗

A closer look at how communal violence actually unfolds reinforces this point. Research on Hindu-Muslim riots in India shows that violence during processions is rarely random or spontaneous – it is fostered and encouraged by many factors, the most prominent being the state and the agenda with which the procession is being carried out. Studies of violence that broke out during Hindu festivals in 2022, for instance, found that the prime factor was not theological difference but the deliberate routing of processions through areas likely to provoke confrontation – a decision made by political organisers, not religious texts.

Historical factors and the long shadow of partition 🔗

No account of religion in India can ignore the enormous weight of history. The 1947 Partition of British India resulted in one of the largest mass migrations in history, with millions of Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs displaced in an eruption of communal violence that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The trauma of Partition did not end with independence; it shaped how communities perceived each other for generations. What is striking is that this catastrophic violence was as much a product of political decisions – the hasty manner of British withdrawal, the drawing of borders, the failure of state apparatus – as of any religious antagonism. The violence was organised along religious lines, but its scale and intensity were products of political failure.

This is a pattern scholars observe globally: secular violence – violence driven by political, economic, or nationalist motivations – frequently surpasses religious conflict in its scale and death toll. The 20th century’s largest episodes of mass killing, from the Holocaust to Stalinist purges to the Rwandan genocide, were driven primarily by political ideology, ethnic nationalism, or economic competition, even when framed in quasi-religious or moral language. Ninian Smart himself observed that secular worldviews – including nationalism and state Marxism – can function with the same fervour and exclusivity as religious ones, competing in the same league as religious systems in shaping how people conceive of themselves and act in the world.

Social and structural dimensions of religion in India 🔗

Religion in India also operates through what scholars call structural violence – discrimination embedded not in individual acts but in policies and institutional arrangements. Structural violence manifests in discriminatory policies and state actions, and has gained prominence in the past few years as a driver of communal tension. This includes laws that affect the freedom of religious minorities, demolitions targeting minority properties, and the systemic under-representation of communities in public institutions. These structural factors create conditions in which physical violence can erupt – yet they have little to do with theology or the actual content of religious belief.

At the same time, religion’s social dimension also binds communities together in powerful ways. Festivals, shared rituals, pilgrimages, and religious institutions provide social cohesion, economic activity, and a sense of collective identity. India’s constitutional commitment to secularism – which guarantees freedom of religion and prohibits discrimination on religious grounds – reflects a recognition that the social functions of religion must be protected even as its potential for division is managed. The challenge has always been in the execution: despite India’s secular constitution and broad religious representation in various aspects of society, sporadic and sometimes serious acts of religious violence tend to occur because the root causes often run deep in history, religious activity, and politics.

What shapes religious tolerance: theology or context? 🔗

Putting this all together, the sociological picture is clear. Theology matters – pantheistic and pluralistic traditions like Hinduism and Buddhism create doctrinal conditions that are more compatible with tolerance because they do not require all paths to the divine to converge on one. But theology alone does not determine outcomes. The same Hindu tradition that produced a philosophy of radical pluralism has also produced exclusivist political movements. The same Islamic tradition that created spaces of remarkable coexistence in medieval India has also been cited in justifications for violence. What makes the decisive difference is context: the historical grievances a community carries, the economic conditions it faces, the political actors who stand to gain from division, and the state’s willingness or unwillingness to intervene.

For students of sociology, this is perhaps the most important lesson from India’s experience with religion. Religion provides the language and the symbols, but it is social, political, and economic forces that usually determine whether those symbols are used to build bridges or burn them.

What do you think? If most communal violence in India is ultimately driven by political and economic factors rather than theological differences, does that mean we should focus less on interfaith dialogue and more on addressing inequality and political accountability? And given that pantheistic traditions have generally been more tolerant, does the internal diversity of a religion make it structurally better equipped to coexist with other faiths – or is that too simple a conclusion?

References

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11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Muslims_in_India
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