Folk religion-political undercurrents : with reference to India

To establish some relation between folk religion and politics, one could see that the present scenario in the technologically developed world is somewhat different. Thanks to the advent of knowledge in all spheres of human life and scientific and technological development the social as well as political bearing that religion could exercise on modern folk life, peoples’ attitudes are becoming different. In fact, man has unravelled many secrets of nature and has successfully combated a host of impediments he was hitherto facing. This has to a large extent influenced our folks’ attitude towards religion. Very often religion and castes are confused with each other and we find that the latter is playing a major role in our present day politics. God, religion and such faiths are very much essential for our folks for their community living and they help people to lead an active and dynamic life. Politics these days is most often banking upon the religious faith of the people which obviously emerges in the form of caste differentiation and they try to find their way through such faiths and convictions. Politics manages to be one with our folks exploiting their faith for its own success and survival. Thus, it pretends to respect and safeguard the interests of religions, of course, eventually to meet its own ends. It would be interesting to study the various religious customs, beliefs and convictions of our folk life and community observations of fairs and festivals and how political interference, though at times helps, but, most often unwanted and unwarranted, causes undue anxiety and disturbs the peace of the community life. The present paper intends to take up some aspects of this issue for a briefstudy