Religious Persecution is a term used to describe when people are persecuted for their religious beliefs or structures or practices.
In popular imagination, India is portrayed as a place
of ideal religious tolerance, where all schools of thought are free to flourish.
This image is significantly simplified, even though it is
accurate in its fundamental form.
Competition between religious groups and schools of thought
has a long history, often driven by harsh polemics intended to convince
audiences that one was true and the other was wrong.
Acts of violence, on the other hand, have been uncommon in
these debates, as has the concept that individuals should be afraid for their
lives because of their beliefs.
Language against the Jains has a really hostile tone in the
literature of the Nayanar and Lingayat communities—both followers (bhakta) of
the deity Shiva—and the Nayanar leader Sambandar has been continuously linked
with the impalement of 8,000 Jains in the southern Indian city of Madurai.
Similarly, the northern Indian ruler Sashanka, who was also
a Shiva devotee, had a pathological loathing towards Buddhists.
Sashanka is said to have not only persecuted Buddhists, but
also attempted to kill the tree at Bodh Gaya where the Buddha is said to have
attained enlightenment.
Apart from sectarian rivalry, persons whose religious
beliefs has led them to disregard commonly accepted social conventions have
faced a lot of criticism.
The stories of the devotional (bhakti) poet-saints are rife with
accounts of the difficulties they experienced from traditional morality guards,
who are commonly described as brahmins.
There was a long and frequently murderous war between two
groups of militant ascetics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—the Naga
class of the Dashanami Sanyasis and the Bairagi Nagas—although the objectives
might just as well have been economic, notably control of commerce in the
Ganges valley.
The development of Hindutva in the 1980s provides a last
example of religious persecution.
Persecution has all too frequently resulted in actual
bloodshed, fueled by rhetorical assaults on Muslims and Christians.
You may also want to read more about Hinduism here.
Be sure to check out my writings on religion here.
