Search

We study the potential for pleasant and cooperative contact to reduce prejudice between religious groups in India. We randomly assign Hindu and Muslim participants into groups, in which they interact over the course of a week-long vocational training program. A novel feature of our study is that all of the participants were women. We find that intergroup contact reduces the prejudice of both Hindu and Muslim participants toward members of the other religion one week after the training program concluded. While we find that most of the positive effect of intergroup contact on reducing prejudice dissipates after six months, effects on Hindu attitudes toward Muslims are persistent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does candidate religion influence vote choice? And if so, under what conditions does religion matter? In this contribution we provide the first systematic analysis of the impact of candidate religion on voting behaviour in an ethnically divided democracy: Uttar Pradesh, North India. The results from a series of conditional logit models shows that Muslims are more likely to vote for Muslim candidates, but only when those candidates have a realistic chance of winning – there is thus a strong strategic element to their vote calculus. Moreover, there is no evidence that Hindus discriminate against Muslim candidates, or that parties face an electoral penalty for fielding a Muslim candidate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates whether the religious identity of state legislators in India influences development outcomes, both for citizens of their religious group and for the population as a whole. Using an instrumental variables approach derived from a regression discontinuity, we find that increasing the political representation of Muslims improves health and education outcomes in the district from which the legislator is elected. We find no evidence of religious favoritism: Muslim children do not benefit more from Muslim political representation than children from other religious groups. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• Dams fully mitigate the effect of rainfall shocks on agricultural production and religious conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India. • We find that the link between rainfall and religious conflict works through the agricultural income channel. • We do not find supportive evidence for other channels linking rainfall shocks to religious conflict. • Dams may be a useful tool for mitigating the effects of climate change. Sarsons (2015) finds that, while agricultural income in India is less sensitive to rainfall in dam-fed districts, rainfall shocks have a larger (or equally large) effect on religious riots between Muslims and Hindus in dam-fed districts than in rain-fed districts. This is inconsistent with agricultural income being the sole channel through which rainfall affects religious conflict in India. In this comment, we show that this result originates from the use of state-specific time trends and interaction models. Once we replace state-specific time trends with state-year fixed effects (in slit sample regressions) and allow state-year fixed effects to be different between rain-fed and dam-fed districts (in interaction models), we find that while (fractional) rainfall shocks affect agricultural production and religious violence in rain-fed districts, they have no effect on agricultural production and religious violence in dam-fed districts. In other words, dams fully mitigate the effect of rainfall shocks on agricultural output and religious violence in the Indian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To estimate the prevalence of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) in a high-risk rural area of central India. Study design: Retrospective analysis of primary data. Methods: In total, 10,963 sputum smears were screened from Hindu tribes (n 4032), Hindu non-tribal (n = 5445) and Muslim communities (n = 1486) between 2004 and 2009. Smears were recorded as positive or negative for tubercle bacilli following staining with acid-fast bacilli, in accordance with the guidelines of the World Health Organization. Age- and gender-specific prevalence rates and relative risks (RR) were calculated using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences Version 13.0. Results: The prevalence of TB was found to be significantly higher in Hindu tribes compared with Hindu castes and Muslims (P < 0.005). The overall RR of developing smear-positive disease was 1.4-fold higher (95% confidence interval 1.1-1.7; P < 0.005) in males than females in all the study groups. The highest prevalence of TB was observed in subjects aged 15-34 years. Conclusions: Hindu tribes and males of working age are still at high risk of smear-positive TB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Vitamin D receptor (VDR) plays an important role in activating immune response against various infectious agents. This study was aimed to investigate the association between VDR gene polymorphisms and different clinical forms of pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) in different population groups. Four common polymorphisms (TaqI, ApaI, BsmI and FokI) of VDR gene were studied in clinically diagnosed TB patients and healthy controls from Sahariya tribe (n =377), Bhil tribe (n =95), Chhattisgarh tribe (n =33), general population from North-Central (NC) (n =1021) and South-Eastern (SE) region (n =646) and Muslims (n =217). Genotyping was carried out using PCR-RFLP method and re-confirmed by direct sequencing. The haplotype analysis was performed on Haploview 4.1 and statistical analysis was done using SPSS 13.0 software. We found that bb genotype of BsmI polymorphism conferred significant risk to smear positive and multiple drug resistant (MDR) TB in tribes [OR (CI)=3.7 (1.5–9.2), p =0.002], SE population [OR (CI)=2.1 (1.4–3.3), p =0.0004] and Muslims [OR (CI)=6.7 (1.1–39), p =0.01]. The subjects with FF genotype of FokI polymorphism appeared less likely (p =0.004) to develop MDR TB in NC population, whereas, those with Ff [OR (CI)=2.5 (1.3–5.0), p =0.004] and ff [OR (CI)=3.4 (1.2–9.3), p =0.01] genotypes were at high risk of MDR and smear positive disease, respectively. Similarly, tt genotype of TaqI polymorphism was found associated with high risk of smear positive TB in NC [OR (CI)=3.6 (0.9–14.2), p =0.05] as well as in SE [OR (CI)=4.7 (1.8–12.3), p =0.00003] population. Interestingly, tt genotype appeared strongly associated [OR (CI)=8.9 (2.7–29), p =0.00001] with high bacillary load outcome. In conclusion, genetic polymorphisms in VDR gene, alone or in combination (haplotypes) are associated with different clinical outcomes in pulmonary TB. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper uses a close reading of villagers’ responses to the death in childbirth of a Muslim woman to raise questions about India’s current policy emphasis on institutional delivery as a means of reducing maternal mortality. After introducing the context and methods of our research, we describe recent policy interventions related to maternal health, including the National Rural Health Mission established in 2005. We then outline villagers’ commentaries on the specific maternal death, focusing on the costs to women’s health (and sometimes life) of high fertility; the lack of care available from rural government facilities and staff and the preference for delivering at home with the aid of local practitioners; the financial constraints that make people hesitate to seek medical treatment; and the high costs of private treatment and the poor treatment experienced in government facilities. Our core argument is that government health care provision in rural Uttar Pradesh is embedded in a moral universe characterised by widespread and long-term mistrust of state services and that encouraging institutional deliveries without addressing the perceptions of potential service users is a seriously flawed approach to reducing maternal mortality. The paper draws primarily on ethnographic research funded by the Wellcome Trust during 2002–2005, in a Muslim village in rural Bijnor district (in north-western Uttar Pradesh). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Discussions of everyday Islamic religiosity commonly distinguish two distinct forms of Muslim religiosity, one 'normative' and 'formal,' the other 'accommodative' and 'informal.' It is invariably the latter form that is identified as the site of engagement with other religious traditions. This paper sets out to question the common association of 'popular' Islamic religiosity with 'syncretism' by analysing the methods by which Muslims defend contentious practices in everyday life. Drawing on fieldwork among Tamil-speaking Muslims in India and Southeast Asia, various strategies for defending contentious practices will be analysed, most important among which are references to Islamic scripture and scholarly tradition. Concomitantly, the discourse surrounding the defence of contentious practices and beliefs shows a heightened concern with authenticity, resulting in an often stridently anti-syncretic rhetoric. Finally, the paper will deal with an alternative way of defending contentious practices particularly salient in Southeast Asia, which tries to remove contentious practices from the sphere of 'religion' to that of 'culture.' In all cases, the respective defensive strategies clearly inhabit the same discursive space as the criticism levelled at contentious practice, revealing the problematic nature of the assumed binaries of Muslim religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• This paper finds that Christian children 0–59 months of age are less likely to be stunted as compared to non-Christian children. • The advantage is especially evident for girls, less so for boys. • Mechanisms include access to historical schools and hospitals/pharmacies that raised the human capital of women over a century ago. • Son preference in Hinduism, by reducing the relative value of women, is also a factor that explains Christian advantage. • Results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls and specification tests. This paper studies child health focusing on differences in anthropometric outcomes between Christians and non-Christians in India. The non-Christian group includes Hindus and Muslims. Estimates indicate that young Christian children (ages 0–59 months) are less likely to be stunted as compared to similar aged children of Hindu and Muslim identities. The Christian relative advantage is particularly pronounced for girls. Using representative data on child health outcomes and information on the location of Protestant and Catholic missions, differences in the relative timing of establishment of missions in the same area, political crises that mission-establishing countries were engaged in during India's colonial history, and historical information from the 1901 Census, we find that Christian girls are significantly less likely to be stunted as compared to similarly aged non-Christian girls. We find no relative stunting advantage for Christian boys, which we attribute to son preference and patriarchy among Hindus in particular. An analysis of explanatory mechanisms indicates that elementary and higher education schools, as well as hospitals, pharmacies and print shops associated with the advent of Christianity improved the relative human capital of women with subsequent long-term implications for young Christian girls in India today. Our results survive a series of robustness and specification checks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we critically approach the idea of "saving Muslim women" by examining two prominent judgments by the Supreme Court of India and their attendant debates: Mohammad Ahmed Khan vs. Shah Bano Begum and Others 1985 AIR 945, popularly known as the Shah Bano judgment and Shayara Bano vs. Union of India And Others WP(C) No.118 of 2016, popularly known as the Triple Talaq (divorce) judgment. Using the frameworks of feminist geopolitics, femonationalism, and feminist geolegality, we analyze the debates around the Shah Bano and Triple Talaq judgments, looking at how the state employs and often usurps the narrative of gender equality and women's rights for its own purposes. We highlight how laws ostensibly for the protection of Muslim women (and the discourses that surround them) have the effect of strengthening the Hindu nationalist state, and furthering masculinist state building and territory making. By focusing debates on the categories of Muslim men and women, the law becomes a means to resolve the "problem" of Muslims in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]