As we were preparing to set off on our India trip last month
(earlier posts here and here) , sitting in a local airport, I happened to be
reading a story in The Economist which referred to India as “the world’s most
religious country.” I let those words flow
through my brain and settle somewhere in a back recess, not sure of what to
make of them. Is that true? How can we know if a particular country is
the world’s “most religious”?  And how does India compare to China in this regard?

(Cross posted on CDT)

       The characterization returned to me
as we traveled through several states. We went to a couple of Jain temples, one frequented by successful
businessmen in busy Mumbai and the other the magnificent Ranakpur Temple:

     We also saw
innumerable Hindu temples and shrines, large and small, ornate and plain. I was most taken with the small, road-side
shrines, obviously frequented daily by many, many believers, dedicated to one
of the numerous Hindu gods: Hanuman,
expressed as a monkey, or Ganesha, the elephant-headed son of Shiva, others:

     Most mornings we were woken by the
Muslim call to prayer.

     In short,
it is true that religion, in many forms, is widely practiced in India and, I would venture, such practices are more deeply ingrained into the
daily life of more people there than is the case for the different religious
environment in China.  India, then, may well have a claim to being the world’s most religious country; China does not.    

   Right away, however,
we must accept qualifications to any comparison of contemporary religious
practice in China and India. While it is true that the twentieth century
was especially unkind to religion in China,
we should not believe that China is inescapably irreligious.   Anti-Confucian May 4^th modernizers
turned away from “superstition” and embraced “Mr. Science and Mr.
Democracy.   The Maoist regime brutally assaulted
practitioners of virtually all religions: Buddhism, Christianity, religious
Taoism, Islam. But, for all of the
repression, religion has come back into Chinese life since the economic and
social-cultural opening that began in 1979.  Or, to put it another way, religion never went away but is in a better
position to express itself now.  Religion, in other words, is a part of many
Chinese lives today.

     But the
general impression that India is “more religious” than China may still hold. This might best be seen
in the modern, urban elites.
    

     In India, Jains
and Parsis are very much in evidence in the business sector. Jains, whose fervent non-violence turns them
away from much conventional agriculture, have a significant presence in the world
diamond trade.   Parsis, though today faced with serious questions about how to maintain their distinct religion, have long been key players in Indian business.  And Hinduism is, I believe, sufficiently flexible and tolerant to adapt to the changing conditions of globalization.  What I learned of Hinduism in the last few months is that it encourages personal choice in deciding which god or gods to make primary in one’s ritual practice.  There is no singular liturgy or orthodoxy that absolutely must be practiced.  Indeed, some religious scholars suggest that Hinduism is better understood not as a single religion but as a universe of various religious ideas and possibilities.  If you want to make Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, your primary object of worship, (which might fit nicely with global capital) that is fine.  Thus, from a variety of perspectives, urban, technologically savvy, globally mobile and modernized Indians can, and do, comfortably reconcile their worldly behavior with their spiritual beliefs.

    My sense (and I could be wrong here) is that there is less tendency among contemporary Chinese capitalists and cosmopolitans to turn to religion or spirituality.  Stories about about moral collapse and anxiety are still quite common in China.  The Confucian revival, and the success of Yu Dan, reflect the search for something meaningful, something spiritual, something, it would seem, religious.  But a significant part of that search moves in a more secular and rationalist direction. As I have argued elsewhere, Confucianism – and perhaps philosophical Taoism – can be interpreted in non-religious ways.  That is not to say they can never be religious, but just that they don’t have to be religious.  Scientific rationalism can, and does, serve certain religious purposes as well (i.e. as a source of meaning for some)  In short, a significant portion of the answers to the moral crisis in China are not religious.  It is likely, then, that religion will not expand in China to an extent equal to the cultural space it now occupies in India. 

      Don’t get me wrong – religion is growing, and growing in a big way, in China right now.  But if I were to bet, I would put my money on the proposition that China, twenty five years from now, will still not be as religious as India.