Since Dalits are excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism and are seen as “Avarna”, they are examined separately. Dalit (meaning broken, shattered in Sanskrit) is a name for people who used to belong to the lowest jatis (occupational castes) in India. They are called “untouchables” because they are considered impure in the religious…
The term “caste” is of western origin based on the Latin “castus” meaning pure. It was obviously created and introduced during the time when western (Portuguese, Dutch, French, British) seafarers and conquerors came to India and tried to make out and understand the society they found in India. The caste is legitimized by Hinduism social…
Hinduism which is also called Sanatana Dharma (eternal law), refers to the idea that its origins go back beyond time and space, has about one billion followers; they represent about 15% of the world population. After Christianity (31%) and Islam (23%), Hinduism is the third largest religion globally. Other than Islam and Christianity it is…
Globalization that includes the interaction, cohabitation and mixing of people from different ethnicities, cultures, religious backgrounds, values and world views has changed the world consisting of nation states considerably. The growing presence of the “other” in one’s neighbourhood has opened up tensions, questioned identities and resulted in a struggle to hold on to one’s inherited…
Sikhism is a religion originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent around the end of the 15th century AD. It is one of the youngest of the major South Asian religions and the world’s fifth-largest organized religion, with about 25–30 million Sikhs as of the early 21st century. Sikhism developed from the spiritual…
Surrounded on three sides by the sea and closed in the north by high mountain ranges, the relatively segregated geographical position of the subcontinent and the strong and persistent influence of the Indian caste system have resulted in certain specifics with regard to Indian Islam. One is that the spread of Islam has been extremely…
With the largest population of Muslims in the world, Islam is the second largest religion in South Asia with about 600 million Muslims, forming about one-third of all Muslims of South Asia’s population. The dominant religion in half of the South Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Maldives and Pakistan), in India Islam is the second-largest religion while…
Parsis (meaning ‘Persian’) are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent whose religion is Zoroastrianism. They live chiefly in Mumbai and in a few towns and villages mostly to the south of Mumbai, but there are also a few families nearby in Karachi (Pakistan) and Chennai. There is a sizeable Parsi population in Pune as…
Christianity is an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world’s largest religion, with about 2.5 billion followers. Its adherents, known as Christians, make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories, and believe that Jesus is the Christ, whose coming as the…
Buddhism like Jainism is a religion that arose out of critique of Vedic Hinduism. Like Jainism it does not propagate a God. It is a religion or rather a philosophy based on the original teachings attributed to Gautama Buddha. Gautama Buddha was born in Lumbini, present-day Nepal. He renounced material life because he thought that…
