(UPDATED) Pew surveys 30,000 Indians across 6 faiths and 17 languages and finds support for tolerance yet also segregation.
Editor’s note: This article will continue to be updated with more reactions from India Christian leaders.
A third of Hindus in India would not be willing to accept a Christian as a neighbor. Neither would a quarter of Indian Muslims or Sikhs.
Only a third of Indian Christians are very concerned about stopping inter-religious marriage, vs. two-thirds or more of Hindus, Muslims, and the general Indian population.
A quarter of Christians say religious diversity harms India, while about half say it benefits the country.
A third of Indian Christians identify as Catholics and half identify with Protestant denominations. A third of Christians identify as members of Scheduled Castes, often called Dalits (and formerly the pejorative untouchables).
Almost all Indian Christians are very proud to be Indian, and three-quarters agree that Indian culture is superior to others.
These are among the findings of “Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation,” a significant new report released today by the Pew Research Center. Its conclusion, in a sentence: “Indians say it is important to respect all religions, but major religious groups see little in common and want to live separately.”
For its “most comprehensive, in-depth exploration” ever of India, Pew surveyed almost 30,000 Indian adults nationwide, face to face across 17 languages, between November 2019 and March 2020 just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the subcontinent. The resulting survey, weighted to India’s 2011 census, is “calculated to have covered 98 percent of Indians ages 18 and older and had an 86 percent national response rate.”
Pew surveyed 22,975 Indians who identify as Hindu, 3,336 who identify as Muslim, 1,782 who identify …