Revision summary
Revivalism politicises faith and crowd. It challenges secular law, public space, education, and the monopoly of force. Bellah’s civil religion can turn exclusive. Indian principled distance is strained by majoritarian and street politics. The live defence is equal citizenship, not forced unbelief.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
A secular nation-state claims citizenship above a single church. Religious revivalism re-sacralises public life and often a people. The challenge is to law, monopoly of force, and equal membership.
Body
What revivalism does
- It intensifies practice, organisation, and political claim, not only private piety.
- Max Weber’s prophets and Max Weber’s later charisma help; so does Durkheim’s sacred crowd, now on television.
Challenges to the secular state
- Personal law and uniform codes: which community’s family is the nation.
- Public space: procession, conversion politics, and blasphemy as tests of equal protection.
- Education and history: textbooks as sacred memory.
- Violence and vigilantism rival the state’s monopoly of force.
- Majoritarian revival can turn the nation itself into a church, which Robert Bellah’s civil religion warned can be inclusive or exclusive.
Indian present
- Constitutional secularism as principled distance, after Rajeev Bhargava, is strained by street veto and party- mobilised faith.
- Minority security and majority hurt become competing languages.
What the state can still do
- Equal civil rights, prosecution of violence, and refusal to baptise one faith as the nation.
- It cannot pretend Weberian disenchantment is complete.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD REV[Religious revivalism] --> LAW[Personal law street school] REV --> NAT[Nation as church] SEC[Secular state] --> EQ[Equal citizenship] NAT --> CHAL[Challenge] LAW[LAW] --> CHAL[CHAL]
Conclusion
Religious revivalism challenges the secular nation-state by recoding law, street, school, and belonging. The state is tested on equal citizenship, not on emptying belief. Civil religion can support the republic or swallow it.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Are social movements primordial in means and progressive in agenda? Explain
Next question on this syllabus topic (2018 · Q5(b)). View answer →
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Is all public religion revivalism?
No. Everyday practice can coexist with secular law. Revivalism is organised intensification with a political claim.
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Does secularism require banning faith?
It requires that the state not become one community’s church.
Same topic · past papers
UPSC has asked this before
These previous-year questions sit on the same topic. Open one to practise the earlier ask.
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2021 · Q6(c) · Sociology GS 1 · 10 marks
Give your comments on the growth of religious revivalism in the present day context -
2020 · Q3(b) · Sociology GS 1 · 15 marks
Critically Analyse Durkheim's views on elementary forms of religious life and role of religion Also discuss the consequences of religious revivalism in contemporary society. -
2015 · Q8(a) · Sociology GS 1 · 20 marks
"Globalization involves deterritorialization ." Examine with reference to the nation-state."
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