A major new Pew Research Centre survey of religion across India, based on nearly 30,000 face-to-face interviews of adults conducted in 17 languages between late 2019 and early 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic), finds that Indians of all these religious backgrounds overwhelmingly say they are very free to practice their faiths.

“Religion in India: Tolerance and Segregation” is Pew Research Center’s most comprehensive, in-depth exploration of Indian public opinion to date.

Despite sharing certain values and religious beliefs – as well as living in the same country, under the same constitution – members of India’s major religious communities often don’t feel they have much in common with one another.

Indians see religious tolerance as a central part of who they are as a nation. Across the major religious groups, most people say it is very important to respect all religions to be “truly Indian.” And tolerance is a religious as well as civic value: Indians are united in the view that respecting other religions is a very important part of what it means to be a member of their own religious community.

However, in what seems to be a contradiction, the majority in almost every religious group shows a preference for keeping religious communities segregated and "wants to live separately".

The report suggested that roughly two-thirds of Hindus in India want to prevent interreligious marriages of Hindu women (67%) or Hindu men (65%). Even larger shares of Muslims feel similarly, 80% say it is very important to stop Muslim women from marrying outside their religion, and 76% say it is very important to stop Muslim men from doing so.

In other words, Indians’ concept of religious tolerance does not necessarily involve the mixing of religious communities

Many Indians seem to prefer a country more like a patchwork fabric, with clear lines between groups.

Its conclusion, in a sentence, “Indians say it is important to respect all religions, but major religious groups see little in common and want to live separately.”

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