CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Ghimire, Sneha |
|---|---|
| Title | Between Devotion and Democracy: Religiosity, Religious Fundamentalism, and Support for Democracy in Contemporary India |
| Summary | This study assesses the relationship between religiosity, religious fundamentalism, and mass attitudes towards support for democracy in contemporary India by using World Values Survey data for wave 6 and 7. It builds on previous scholarship on the relationship between religion and democracy by distinguishing between religiosity and religious fundamentalism, and by conceptualizing democratic support along four distinct dimensions: principled support for democracy, rejection of authoritarian alternatives, attitudes towards gender equality, and tolerance of out-groups. Through multivariate OLS regression models, the findings demonstrate that religious fundamentalism is consistently negatively related to democratic support, whereas religiosity presents mixed associations for the various dimensions. National pride, a proxy for the nationalist nature of Hindu fundamentalist mobilization, also reacts in a mixed manner. This study highlights how Hindu fundamentalism, embedded within a Hindu nationalist ideology, is associated with decreased democratic support in the contemporary period. It also underscores the need to differentiate religious belief and behavior from exclusionary and absolutist religious fundamentalism when investigating democratic support. This research contributes to the broader literature on religion and democracy by situating the Indian case within global debates about actor-driven polarization, socio-economic modernization, and democratic backsliding. |
| Supervisor | Bogaards, Matthijs |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/ghimire_sneha.pdf |
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