Bhoot (ghost)
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.
Islam and other religions
In the introduction to his "Indica", Biruni himself writes that his intent behind the work was to engage dialogue between Islam and the Indian religions, particularly Hinduism as well as Buddhism. Biruni was aware that statements about a religion would be open to criticism by its adherents, and insisted that a scholar should follow the requirements of a strictly scientific method. According to William Montgomery Watt, Biruni "is admirably objective and unprejudiced in his presentation of facts" but "selects facts in such a way that he makes a strong case for holding that there is a certain unity in the religious experience of the peoples he considers, even though he does not appear to formulate this view explicitly." Biruni argued that Hinduism was a monotheistic faith like Islam, and in order to justify this assertion, he quotes Hindu texts and argues that the worship of idols is "exclusively a characteristic of the common people, with which the educated have nothing to do."