Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What are India's beliefs?
Religion in India is characterised by a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. India is a secular state with no state religion. The Indian subcontinent is the birthplace of four of the world's major religions; namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Throughout India's history, religion has been an important part of the country's culture. Religious diversity and religious tolerance are both established in the country by the law and custom; the Constitution of India has declared the right to freedom of religion to be a fundamental right.
India is home to two major language families: Indo-Aryan (spoken by about 74% of the population) and Dravidian (spoken by 24% of the population). Other languages spoken in India come from the Austroasiatic and Sino-Tibetan language families. India has no national language. Hindi, with the largest number of speakers, is the official language of the government. English is used extensively in business and administration and has the status of a "subsidiary official language"; it is important in education, especially as a medium of higher education. Each state and union territory has one or more official languages, and the constitution recognises in particular 22 "scheduled languages".
India has an embassy in Jakarta and Indonesia operates an embassy in Delhi. India regards Indonesia as a key member of ASEAN. Today, both countries maintain cooperative and friendly relations. India and Indonesia is one of the few (and also one of the largest) democracies in Asian region which can be projected as a real democracy. Both nations had agreed to establish a strategic partnership. As fellow Asian democracies that share common values, it is natural for both countries to nurture and foster strategic alliance. Indonesia and India are member states of the G-20, the E7, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the United Nations.
Bengali Hindus () are an ethnic, linguistic, and religious population who make up the majority in the Indian state of West Bengal and Tripura. In Bangladesh they form the largest minority. They are Bengalis adherents of Hinduism, and are native to the Bengal region in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent. Bengali Hindus speak Bengali, which belongs to the Indo-Aryan language family and adhere to the Shakta and Vaishnava traditions of their native religion, Hinduism. There are significant numbers of Bengali-speaking Hindus in different Indian states.
Hinduism and Buddhism were the prominent religions of southeast Asia in the 1st millennium CE, prior to the Islamic conquest that started in the 14th century. The Hindus prevailed in Bali, Indonesia and they have two types of Hindu calendar. One is a 210-day based Pawukon calendar which likely is a pre-Hindu system, and another is similar to lunisolar calendar system found in South India and it is called the Balinese saka calendar which uses Hindu methodology. The names of month and festivals of Balinese Hindus for the most part are different, though the significance and legends have some overlap.
The Constitution of India designates the official language of the Government of India as Hindi written in the Devanagari script, as well as English. There is no national language as declared by the Constitution of India. Hindi is used for official purposes such as parliamentary proceedings, judiciary, communications between the Central Government and a State Government. States within India have the liberty and powers to specify their own official language(s) through legislation and therefore there are 22 officially recognized languages in India of which Hindi is the most used. The number of native Hindi speakers is about 25% of the total Indian population; however, including dialects of Hindi termed as Hindi languages, the total is around 44% of Indians, mostly accounted from the states falling under the Hindi belt. Other Indian languages are each spoken by around 10% or less of the population.
The Himalayas are inhabited by 52.7 million people, and are spread across five countries: Nepal, India, Bhutan, China and Pakistan. Some of the world's major rivers — the Indus, the Ganges and the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra — rise in the Himalayas, and their combined drainage basin is home to roughly 600 million people. The Himalayas have a profound effect on the climate of the region, helping to keep the monsoon rains on the Indian plain and limiting rainfall on the Tibetan plateau. The Himalayas have profoundly shaped the cultures of the Indian subcontinent; many Himalayan peaks are sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism.
The belief in ghosts is deeply ingrained in the minds of the people of India across generations. The various concepts of ghosts trace their roots in the vast bodies of Hindu mythology, its religious texts, literature and folktales. There are many allegedly haunted places in India, such as cremation grounds, dilapidated buildings, royal mansions, forts, forest bungalows, burning ghats, etc... Ghosts also occupy a significant place in the Bengali culture. Ghosts and various supernatural entities form an integral part of the socio-cultural beliefs of the both Hindu and Muslim communities of rural Bengal. Fairy tales often use the concept of ghost and references to paranormal activities are found amply in modern-day Bengali literature, cinema, radio and TV programmes.
Hinduism is the largest religion of Nepal. In the 2011 census, approximately 81.3 percent of the Nepalese people identified themselves as Hindus, although observers note that many of the people regarded as Hindus in the 1981 census could, with as much justification, be called Buddhists. According to 2011 census, the Hindu population in Nepal is estimated to be around 22.1 million which accounts 81.3% of country's population. " The national calendar of Nepal, Vikram Samvat, is a solar Hindu calendar essentially the same to that widespread in North India as a religious calendar, and is based on Hindu units of time.
India is a federal union comprising 29 states and 7 union territories. All states, as well in addition to the union territories of Puducherry and the National Capital Territory of Delhi, have elected legislatures and governments following on the Westminster system of governance. The remaining five union territories are directly ruled by the centre through appointed administrators. In 1956, under the States Reorganisation Act, states were reorganised on a linguistic basis. Since then, their structure has remained largely unchanged. Each state or union territory is further divided into administrative districts. The districts are further divided into tehsils and ultimately into villages.
In the second part, the Buddha explains the major beliefs of ascetics in India. He begins by saying, ""Monks, there are other things which are very deep (profound), very hard to understand, very difficult to perceive, so holy and sacred, unreached by means of mind, so subtle, that they are only to be understood and experienced by the wise. These things were perceived clearly, seen clearly and were discarded by the Tathagata, and by this act based on the truth that people praise and revered Tathagatha. What are those things?""
Hindus comprise approximately 1.85% of Pakistan's population. Hinduism is the second largest religion in Pakistan after Islam. As of 2010, Pakistan had the fifth largest Hindu population in the world and PEW predicts that by 2050 Pakistan will have the fourth largest Hindu population in the world. However, around 5,000 Hindus migrate from Pakistan to India every year.
Group D
Siddiqui coined the term "cocktail ideology" to characterise the cultural profile of the Bangladeshi people in the 21st century. A "cocktail ideology", combining the retrogressive interpretation of religion and tradition with vulgar elements of the so-called modernity, has emerged in many developing countries since the 1960s and the population of Bangladesh, among other developing courtiers, reflects uneasy and tense co-existence of these two components. Women and middle-aged men are, in general, the bearers of tradition and religious orthodoxy, while the younger generation tends to carry the flag for "decadent modernity". It has been found that the poor tend to be more affected by this "cocktail ideology" than any other class of society.
The following table lists the names of India in its official languages. The sole official language of India is Hindi in Devanagari script as per Article 343 of the Indian constitution and there is no national language for the country. English has the status of a "subsidiary official language". The Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution lists 22 languages, which have been referred to as "scheduled" languages and given recognition, status, and official encouragement.
India is a federal union comprising 29 states and 7 union territories, for a total of 36 entities. The states and union territories are further subdivided into districts and smaller administrative divisions.
Indian Moors were a grouping of people who existed in Sri Lanka predominantly during its colonial period. They were distinguished by their Muslim faith whose origins traced back to the British Raj. Therefore, Indian Moors refer to a number of ethnic groups such as Memons, Bohra and Khoja. These groups tended to retain their own ancestral practices and language. However the largest specific group were Tamils from South India. Indian Moors shared a similar history to Indian Tamils of Sri Lanka, however due to their decline and smaller numbers the Indian Moors have either returned to India or have declared themselves as being classified as Sri Lankan Moors.
The Chakmas are the largest tribe of Bangladesh. Buddhism is the most common religion within the tribe. They refer to their tribal chief as Chakma Raja. Chakmas are more advanced than most other indigenous Bangladeshi tribes. They have their own language, culture, tradition, and history. Women wear pinon and khadi[Handmade] and men wear dhuti. They grow crops via a special eco-friendly method called "Jhum cultivation". They migrated to Bangladesh in the 15th century.
In 1947, India gained independence from the British Empire. The empire was in decline but adapted to these circumstances by creating the British Commonwealth—since 1949 the Commonwealth of Nations—which is a free association of equal states. As India obtained its independence, multiple ethnic conflicts emerged in relation to the formation of a statehood during the Partition of India which resulted in Islamic Pakistan and Secular India. Before the advent of the British, no empire based in mainland India had controlled any part of what now makes up the country's Northeast, part of the reason for the ongoing insurgency in Northeast India. In 1971 Bangladesh obtained independence from Pakistan.
"Hindustan" () is a Middle Persian name for India. It was introduced into India by the Mughals and widely used since then. Its meaning varied, referring to a region that encompassed northern India and Pakistan or India in its entirety. Currently, the name may refer to either the northern part of India or the entire country.
After Israel's creation in 1948, the Indian National Congress government opposed Zionism. Some writers have claimed that this was done in order to get more Muslim votes in India (where Muslims numbered over 30 million at the time). However, conservative Hindu nationalists, led by the Sangh Parivar, openly supported Zionism, as did Hindu Nationalist intellectuals like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Sita Ram Goel. Zionism, seen as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of the Jewish people to their homeland then under British colonial rule, appealed to many Hindu Nationalists, who viewed their struggle for independence from British rule and the Partition of India as national liberation for long-oppressed Hindus.
Other minor sects in India carry no specific name, but they are uniquely identified by the last names of each family. This convention is used more frequently in South India than North India. For example, a relatively prominent sect in southern India prohibits making important decisions, commencing new tasks, and doing other intellectually or spiritually engaged actions after sunset. Historians believe that this tradition was derived from the concept of Rahukaalam, in which Hindus believe that a specific time period of the day is inauspicious. Stringent family beliefs are thought to have led to the development of a more constrained religious hierarchy. Over time, this belief was extended to discourage taking major actions and even staying awake for long periods of time after sunset. Examples of families which follow this tradition include "Gudivada", "Padalapalli", "Pantham", and "Kashyap".
Weber ended his research of society and religion in India by bringing in insights from to discuss similarities of the Asian belief systems. He notes that the beliefs saw the meaning of life as otherworldy mystical experience. The social world is fundamentally divided between the educated elite, following the guidance of a prophet or wise man, and the uneducated masses whose beliefs are centered on magic. In Asia, there was no Messianic prophecy to "plan and meaning to the everyday life of educated and uneducated alike". Weber juxtaposed such Messianic prophecies, notably from the Near East region to those found on the Asiatic mainland, focusing more on exemplary ways to live one's life. It was those differences that prevented the countries of the Occident from following the paths of the earlier Chinese and Indian civilizations. His next work, Ancient Judaism was an attempt to prove this theory.
Superstition in India is considered a widespread social problem. Superstition refers to any belief or practice which is explained by supernatural causality, and is in contradiction to modern science. Some beliefs and practices, which are considered superstitious by some, may not be considered so by others. The gap, between what is superstitious and what is not, widens even more when considering the opinions of the general public and scientists. This article notes beliefs or practices in India, which have been deemed of being superstitions or pseudoscience, though opinions may vary on some issues.
Superstitions are usually attributed to a lack of education. But, in India educated people have also been observed following beliefs that may be considered superstitious. The literacy rate of India, according to the 2011 census is at 74%. The beliefs and practices vary from region to region, with many regions having their own specific beliefs. The practices may range from harmless lemon-and-chilli totems for warding off evil eye to serious concerns like witch-burning. Some of these beliefs and practices are centuries old and are considered part of the tradition and religion, as a result introduction of new prohibitory laws often face opposition.