Religion in India
Religion in India is characterised by a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. India is a secular state with no state religion. The Indian subcontinent is the birthplace of four of the world's major religions; namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Throughout India's history, religion has been an important part of the country's culture. Religious diversity and religious tolerance are both established in the country by the law and custom; the Constitution of India has declared the right to freedom of religion to be a fundamental right.
Level of support for evolution
In a recent survey conducted across 12 states in India, public acceptence of evolution stood at 65.5% across Indian population. Highest acceptence was found in Delhi, Maharashtra and Kerala (all above 78%) while the least was found to be in Haryana (41.3%). Males were marginally more likely to accept the evolution compared with females (72% vs. 69%), and non-religious people compared with religious people (74% vs. 67%). Surprisingly people who identified as ‘rightists’ accepted the evolution more than those who identified themselves as ‘leftists’ (66% vs. 61%) in political spectra. The study also identified teachers and students (over 73%) as most likely to accept evolution while employed adults (59%) least. While at the international level, the trend is quite clear that religiosity is inversely proportional to public acceptance of evolution, situation in India was strikingly opposite. Lead author, Dr. Felix Bast from Central University of Punjab conjectured possible reason for high public acceptance of evolution in India despite the fact of high religiosity is that Hinduism does not conflict Darwin’s theory of evolution to a large extent. According to 2011 census, Hindus encompass 80.3% of Indian population. Many concepts of Vedas and Hinduism support the scientific consensus of geology, climate science and evolution to a large extent. For example, according to Rigveda, the age of earth is 1.97 billion years, which is very old compared with that of creation myth propounded by Abrahamic religions (according to creationism-also called Intelligent Design, the age of earth is around 6000 years). Current scientific consensus of the age of earth is 4.543 billion years. A number of evolutionary biologists in the past as well were baffled about the surprising similarity between evolutionary theory and Hinduism. British evolutionary biologist JBS Haldane, for instance, suggested that Hindu concept of "dashavatara"- the ten incarnations of lord Vishnu- is a rough idea of vertebrate evolution (fish-the vertebrate to tortoise-reptile to boar-mammal to man). Vedic concepts of "pralaya" and "mahapralaya" too surprisingly capture the cyclic nature of global climate (glacial-interglacial cycles).