Religious ideas and social structure

Sociologists would say that religious ideas are closely connected with material conditions and social structure. Even without subscribing to Marxist idea that religion is a part of super structure, and is shaped by class structure, it is easy to see a connection between battle of ideas in society and battle of ideas in religion. In India from the beginning of the known history of religions to recent times there has been a serious attempt to develop a synthesis of all religions and acceptance of all religious practices. The reason is that Indian society has always been a plural society. Mahavir would not require to preach tolerance and lack of insistence on one’s own view or Ramakrishna would not need to project a similarity between Christian thought and other world religions if Mahavir was not born in a religiously plural society, without any chance of ever becoming a monolithic or rigid society, and if Ramkrishana Paramhansa did not live at a time when the British people ruled India. Mahavir and Buddha had a religious project as well as a social project. Ramkrishana Paramhansa had a purely religious project but it had implications for social transformation, accepting the equality of mankind and altruism for the poor. India was dominated by the British and most of the Indians lived a life of poverty. Brahmo Sabha and all other contemporary religious movements aimed at development and creating human equality, by and large on the pattern of European countries. If one looks closely at the attributes of God in any country in any period one gets the glimpse of dominant social values of that time. It can be hypothesized that monolithic societies have monotheism and plural societies have polytheism. Differences in cultures, material conditions, history, and socio-economic conditions have retained polytheistic tendencies in Indian religion: even those who believe in one God accept polytheism of some or other variety. For example, Vivekananda while maintaining the oneness of Brahma or God accepted polytheism by saying that different gods and goddesses refer to different properties of God.