- Feb 5, 2002
- 166,654
- 56,276
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Catholic
- Marital Status
- Married
- Politics
- US-Others
Draw up a list of the world’s most religious nations and India (population 1.4 billion) will almost always be somewhere near the top — especially if you focus on the world’s largest nations, in terms of population.
What makes India unique, however, is its incredible religious complexity. While Hindu believers make up about 80% of the population, 15% of the population is Muslim. In terms of sheer numbers, India has the world’s second largest Muslim population (after Indonesia). India has small, but historically important, Christian communities, mostly Catholic and Anglican.
The tensions between India’s various traditions are quite stunning and complex. But so are they way that the major faith groups overlap and blend into a larger whole. The bottom line: There are very few issues in this amazing land that are not, to some degree, touched by religious traditions — even if people struggle to describe the details.
This brings me to a stunning Associated Press photo feature that ran with this headline: “Mass funeral pyres reflect India’s COVID crisis.”
Pause for a minute and ponder this question: How many story angles — some of them quite controversial — can you imagine that are linked to funeral pyres and Hindu traditions? Now, imagine the complex issues that waves of COVID-19 deaths would create in India’s faith communities, with their unique traditions linked to death and dying.
Now imagine dedicating a mere one sentence to only one of those angles. Here is the overture, describing the larger crisis:
Continued below.
Stunning AP photos of mass cremations in India: But what about religious traditions? — GetReligion
What makes India unique, however, is its incredible religious complexity. While Hindu believers make up about 80% of the population, 15% of the population is Muslim. In terms of sheer numbers, India has the world’s second largest Muslim population (after Indonesia). India has small, but historically important, Christian communities, mostly Catholic and Anglican.
The tensions between India’s various traditions are quite stunning and complex. But so are they way that the major faith groups overlap and blend into a larger whole. The bottom line: There are very few issues in this amazing land that are not, to some degree, touched by religious traditions — even if people struggle to describe the details.
This brings me to a stunning Associated Press photo feature that ran with this headline: “Mass funeral pyres reflect India’s COVID crisis.”
Pause for a minute and ponder this question: How many story angles — some of them quite controversial — can you imagine that are linked to funeral pyres and Hindu traditions? Now, imagine the complex issues that waves of COVID-19 deaths would create in India’s faith communities, with their unique traditions linked to death and dying.
Now imagine dedicating a mere one sentence to only one of those angles. Here is the overture, describing the larger crisis:
Continued below.
Stunning AP photos of mass cremations in India: But what about religious traditions? — GetReligion
