Religious Practice and Democracy in India

This book demonstrates the close relationship between religion and democracy in India.

Pradeep K. Chhibber (Author)

9781107041509, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 July 2014

218 pages, 41 b/w illus. 6 tables
21.6 x 14 x 1.4 cm, 0.4 kg

'This book offers a helpful corrective to the long-standing beliefs that all aspects of religion contribute to authoritarianism and that only modern (Western) associations nourish democracy.' J. G. Everett, Choice Connect

This book demonstrates the close relationship between religion and democracy in India. Religious practice creates ties among citizens that can generate positive and democratic political outcomes. In pursuing this line of inquiry the book questions a dominant strand in some contemporary social sciences - that a religious denomination (Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and so on) is sufficient to explain the relationship between religion and politics or that religion and democracy are antithetical to each other. The book makes a strong case for studying religious practice and placing that practice in the panoply of other social practices and showing that religious practice is positively associated with democracy.

1. Religious practices, identities, and political representation
2. The influence of religious practice
3. Social domination: caste and political representation
4. Avenues for the connected: civic associations
5. Political institutions and the reproduction of inequalities
6. Party competition, social divisions, and representation
7. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Sociology [JHB], Religion: general [HRA]