Here is your essay on the concept of civil religion in India.
Civil Religion has been defined as “the religious or quasi-religious regard for certain civic values and traditions found recurrently in the history of the political states”. This regard for the civic values and traditions of the political state is expressed through special festivals, rituals, creeds and dogmas which honor great personages and events of the past.
These persons, such as freedom fighters and social and political reformers and eminent Presidents like Abraham Lincoln are some of these who have played a major role in the socio-political history of their society. The same is true about the events of great significance to the state and society.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Example of the celebration of our Independence Day, 15th August Civil Religion when our Prime Minister unfurls the National Flag every year on the historical Red Fort in Delhi. Another example is the Republic Day Parade celebrated on the 26th January every year. This celebration too is marked by a semi-religious fervor.
It serves to heighten the sense of national and political identify of the Indian citizens. It reminds them of the sacrifice made by our leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad and several others who fought for our Independence.
This kind of semi-religious fervor in celebrating political events and birth days of great persons is found in all societies at all times. It is religious in the sense in which the eminent French sociologist, Emile Durkheim has defined religion.
According to Durkheim, a religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things that is to say things that are set apart and forbidden beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. He says that cities and nations are just as susceptible to the nomenclature, i.e., naming of the sacred as are the social bodies called church. He gives the example of France during the French Revolution at the end of the 18th Century.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Carlton J.H. Hayes’ in his Book Essays on Nationalism (1926) writes that the examine human history, the mainspring of frequency and the force of human movements have been of religious emotion. It is very clear that nationalism. He wrote that human history reveals that human beings have always been distinguished by what is called a “religious sense”.
In other words, they are moved by a mysterious faith in some power outside of themselves, a faith always accompanied by feelings of reverence and usually expressed by external acts and ceremonials.
It is in this context of the sense of religion, the feeling of patriotism or nationalism, of belonging to a distinct socio-political group that we have to understand the concept of civil religion. Civil religion is the religion of an advanced modern society with higher technology. As Nisbet mentions, civil religion has been a highly visible aspect of the modern national state in the West.
In the contemporary period, the most distinct form of civil religion can be found in the American society.