Certain organizations, educational institutions, and political movements came to be centered around religion as well as caste and other identities. However, although this conflict formed a part of the interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims in South Asia, there was great complexity to the interaction among Muslim rulers and their mostly non-Muslim subjects, as well as between those who converted to Islam and those who did not. The First Amendment reads that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The first part of that requirement (the Establishment Clause) means that not only should there be no official state church, but also that government should be prohibited from entangling itself in religious matters without a religiously neutral reason. It is within this context that one must understand the formation of the nation-states that succeeded the British colonial state through the partition of the subcontinent: India, Pakistan, and after 1971, Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan. The cultural critique and racism associated with the colonial regime also meant that many Indians found themselves in defense of “tradition.” All the movements of the period tended to position themselves in relation to the British challenge, explicitly or not.

A community sought to gain the patronage and attention of the British administration, and those who could “speak for” a particular group were given the ability to influence government policy. Religions came to be defined in particular ways through the enactment of the census with its discrete categories for “Hindu,” “Muslim,” and for separate castes. In actuality, these categories may have been much more fluid than the census allowed for. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan founded Aligarh University to promote the position of Muslims, many of whom had not benefited from colonial patronage as much as Hindus. Her favorite people call her Mom, which is why much of her time is spent cheering them on at a softball game or dance class. The key to a monothetic approach is that it proposes necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in the given class. The ancestral cult was based on five key premises. In the past she stayed as a rude devil eating human meats, but according to advices from Lord Buddha & Pattini Goddess, now she became good inhuman who respects the five precepts. A Chinese family was connected not only to their fathers and mothers of the recent past but those from the distant past.

The two-soul theory confirmed the multilayered reality in which the Chinese lived. People who lived in the Middle and Southern colonies went to more familiar-looking churches. Fourth was the offering of sacrifices to their counterparts in heaven to show filial respect (xiao) and procure favors for the maintenance of the middle realm, earth. In considering South Asian society, we must remember not only to look to the eastern lands where Hinduism and Buddhism and the South Asian languages and cultures associated with them took hold, but also to the west, from where other models of religion, culture, and language were brought into the South Asian world. Besides psychology, scientifically oriented scholars look to evolutionary biology for explanations of religious phenomena. Accordingly, we work to defeat proposed legislation and eliminate existing laws that harm the Jeffersonian wall between church and state; we litigate and participate in other legal advocacy through the AHA’s legal organization, the Appignani Humanist Legal Center; and we mobilize members to speak out against governmental religious favoritism. Obviously the most fundamental is the view that we hold onto the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.

Building a community around the guru-student relationship was fundamental to the development of the Sikh tradition, one of the world’s newer faiths. In the late nineteenth century, Dayanand Saraswati, embracing the Vedic tradition, founded the Arya Samaj and attempted to purge Hinduism of such “impure” elements as image worship (based on an understanding of Vedic traditions as more authentic, as also articulated by Western scholars). Religious traditions are transformed by this increasingly small world, influenced by economic and political change, new media, and altering social expectations. South Asia’s dynamic religious present is manifested throughout the world, since the South Asian diaspora is a vital and growing community. Many rulers chose to provide patronage to all religious traditions present within their area of influence. Change and continuity still characterize the development of religious traditions in South Asia as they have in the past. Allowing for both aspects, religion may be seen as the interplay between the past and the future, between traditional faith and the hope for the future of individuals and their communities. These loyalties and communities were reconfigured and politicized in a way that fundamentally transformed both religious identity and how people engaged in political organization. A majority (57 percent) of baby boomers report having attended religious services with their families at least once a week during their childhoods.