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Religious Beliefs. In the 1991 census, 82 percent of the
population was enumerated as Hindu. However, 12 percent of
Indians are Muslim, a fact that makes this one of the
largest Islamic nations in the world. The next largest
religious category is Christians, who make up only over 2
percent of the population and are closely followed in number
by Sikhs. The only other groups of numerical significance
are the Buddhists (less than 1 percent) and the Jains (less
than half a percent).
Rituals and Holy Places. The thousands of rituals and
millions of shrines, temples, and other holy places of many
faiths defy categorization here. For Hindus, large
pilgrimage temples are the holiest centers, whereas for
Muslims the tombs of saints (pir) are the most important.
For Buddhists, many of them overseas visitors, the sites
associated with the Buddha are crucial.
Death and the Afterlife. While Muslims, Jews, and Christians
pray that their individual souls will go to a paradise after
death, Hindu ideas about the afterlife are very different.
Muslims, Jews, and Christians bury their dead in cemeteries,
as do most Zoroastrians today. However, Zoroastrians are
noted for their Towers of Silence in Bombay and a few other
cities: stone structures where corpses are exposed to the
air and particularly to the vultures that congregate there.
Most Hindu communities have a fundamental belief in
reincarnation. The basic idea is that one's soul can be
reincarnated for an unknown number of rebirths and that what
the soul is to be reincarnated into depends on the balance
of one's sins and good deeds in past lies. |
This belief
provides the justification for the inequities of the caste
system: One is born into a particular caste, whether high or
low, as a result of the accumulated virtues or sins of one's
soul in a previous life. One can never hope to move out of
one's caste in this life but may do so in the next
reincarnation. Particularly veil individuals may be
reincarnated as animals.
Hindus normally cremate the dead on a pile of logs, but the
very poor may resort to burial. Extremely saintly figures
may be buried in a sitting position, as are members of the
Lingayat sect.
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