Religion and identity in India

Abstract

In colonial India the British administration sought to fashion a Western‐style state structure at the same time as it assumed that primordial groupings based on caste and, especially, religion were the appropriate bases of the political community. Hence, colonial counting processes endowed religious identities with greater substance and clearer outlines than they had had in the past. The combination of homogenizing state practices and reinforcement of traditional identity, to which Indian nationalism had no coherent answer, ultimately legitimized India's partition. For two decades after independence, political conflict in India was primarily on modernist lines. However, in contrast to the urban elite who mostly operated in political life according to the norms of modern Western politics, other groups saw politics in terms of caste, religious and linguistic allegiances. The rise of communal elements in Indian politics thus followed the mobilization of non‐urban elites and poorer sections of the population.

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