Elucidate the difference between secularism, religiosity, religious fundamentalism, and spiritualism from an anthropological perspective.

Secularism

Secularism is a political arrangement of religious plurality. In India it is not the French emptying of the public square. Nehruvian practice, Articles 25–28, and S. R. Bommai treat the state as even-handed among religions, sometimes intervening against social evil (temple entry, triple talaq litigation, personal-law debate). Anthropology (T. N. Madan, Ashis Nandy, Rajeev Bhargava in a neighbouring discipline) notes that Indian secularism is principled distance, not the absence of religion. A tribal council that hears a marriage dispute under PESA custom is not a theocracy; a state that funds all pilgrimages unequally is a failed secularism.

Religiosity

• Religiosity is lived practice: ritual frequency, shrine use, fasting, possession, and the everyday sacred. M. N. Srinivas’s Coorgs, Vidyarthi’s Gaya sacred complex, Marriott’s little tradition, and Turner’s pilgrimage are studies of religiosity. A Bhil or Santhal household can be highly religious without being fundamentalist. Religiosity can be inclusive (shared village shrines) or ranked (who may enter the inner room). It is a dimension of culture, not a party programme.

Religious fundamentalism

Fundamentalism is a modern political project that claims a purified, inerrant scripture or origin and seeks to discipline state and society by it. It is not “more religiosity”. Marty and Appleby treated it as a twentieth-century formation. In India it appears as organised communalism, anti-minority mobilisation, and sometimes as scriptural reform inside a community. G. S. Ghurye worried about national unity; Elwin worried about tribal absorption into a majoritarian sacred. Anthropology (Tambiah, Veena Das on violence) stresses that fundamentalism needs print, census majorities and youth organisations. A Toda or Apatani ritual revival is usually ethnic revitalisation, not fundamentalism, unless it seeks to punish other faiths through the state.

Spiritualism

Spiritualism in ordinary English can mean séances; in this paper it is better read as spirituality: a personal or philosophical quest for meaning, often de-institutionalised (bhakti interiority, some Buddhist modern, New Age, Sufi affect). Geertz’s mood and motivation, Marriott’s transaction with deities, and tribal singbonga or boonga experience can be spiritual without a church. The risk is elite language that calls Brahmanical philosophy spiritual and tribal ritual superstitious. Anthropology refuses that rank.

Differences in one view

Secularism regulates power among religions. Religiosity is practice. Fundamentalism is authoritarian political religion. Spiritualism/spirituality is interior or extra-institutional sacred experience. A secular state can house intense religiosity. Fundamentalism attacks both liberal secularism and plural religiosity. Spiritual talk can hide from politics or, in Gandhi’s case, feed a public ethic.

• Tribal India complicates all four: sacred groves are religiosity and resource management; conversion debates test secular law; Hindutva or missionary fundamentalisms compete for ST souls; Elwin’s philosophy valued tribal spiritual worlds without making them a national church.