“Write short note: Religion and Society.” (1985)
The sociology of religion studies religion not as revealed truth but as a social institution. It asks how society shapes religion and how religion, in turn, shapes society. The relationship is reciprocal: religion reflects social structure, legitimates or challenges it, and changes as society changes.
How society shapes religion
- Émile Durkheim (The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1912): the sacred is society worshipping itself. The Arunta totem is the clan symbolised, so religious forms mirror social organisation.
- Karl Marx: religion belongs to the superstructure. It is “the sigh of the oppressed creature” and “the opium of the people”, shaped by class relations.
- Max Weber: classes and status groups have elective affinities with particular beliefs. Peasants lean towards nature worship, and urban artisans and merchants towards ethical, rational religion.
How religion shapes society
- Integration and meaning: for Talcott Parsons, religion supplies ultimate values that guide norms. Peter L. Berger (The Sacred Canopy, 1967) described it as a “canopy” of meaning over social order.
- Legitimation of inequality: Louis Dumont (Homo Hierarchicus, 1966) read caste as a religious hierarchy of purity and pollution. B. R. Ambedkar (Annihilation of Caste, 1936) argued that scriptural sanction made caste resistant to reform.
- Change and protest: Weber’s Protestant Ethic (1905) showed religious ideas shaping capitalism. Liberation theology in Latin America and the Bhakti, Sikh and Satyashodhak challenges to Brahmanical order show religion driving reform.
- Dysfunction: Robert K. Merton noted that in plural societies religion can divide as well as unite, as communal violence shows.
Religion in modern society
- Secularisation: Bryan Wilson (Religion in Secular Society, 1966) saw religion losing social significance. Grace Davie found “believing without belonging” in Britain. Berger himself later wrote of desecularisation as religion revived worldwide.
- Revivalism and fundamentalism: religion re-enters politics, identity and the market.
- Indian debate: T. N. Madan (“Secularism in Its Place”, 1987) argued that Western-style secularism fits poorly in a society where religion pervades life. Indian secularism therefore means principled engagement with all faiths, not strict separation.
Contemporary India
- The Pew Research Center’s survey (2019–20, about 30,000 adults) found 97% of Indians believe in God, and 84% say respecting all religions is very important to being truly Indian. Yet most report close friends mainly from their own religion. Religion unites communities internally and draws boundaries between them.
- Religion, state and law remain entangled. The Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025 changed how Muslim endowments are governed. In September 2025 the Supreme Court stayed some provisions, including the condition of five years’ practice of Islam to create a waqf (until rules are framed) and the Collector’s power to decide disputes. The Sabarimala reference before a nine-judge bench, reserved in May 2026, concerns how far courts may test “essential religious practices”.
Conclusion
Religion and society are mutually constitutive. Society supplies religion’s forms, and religion supplies society’s meanings, hierarchies and, at times, its grounds for revolt. In India, the questions today are less whether religion survives modernity than how it is reorganised through the state, law, media and identity politics.