What prevented India/China from being Christianized or Islamicized?

[Schiff for Senate]

This may sound disengenous and/or off topic, but the fact is that until the 1930s and 1940s when the British began using religion as a wedge issue to divide Indians and M.A. Jinnah and the Muslim League began to drift away from Congress (basically, greater religious polarization and division), religion wasn't a massive issue. It's true. I believe that Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and others lived in relative harmony without religion being a particularly divisive issue. As I said, this began to change in the 1930s and 1940s as religion became a bigger issue, and the polarization, unfortunately, culminated in the Great Partition and all the bloodshed that resulted from it. Having said that there were, as others have said, regional differences - what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh did have more Muslims, what is now Punjab was more Sikh, and the rest of the land was mostly Hindu.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

I think the more interesting question is why did Indonesia become so islamic?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This may sound disengenous and/or off topic, but the fact is that until the 1930s and 1940s when the British began using religion as a wedge issue to divide Indians and M.A. Jinnah and the Muslim League began to drift away from Congress (basically, greater religious polarization and division), religion wasn't a massive issue. It's true. I believe that Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and others lived in relative harmony without religion being a particularly divisive issue. As I said, this began to change in the 1930s and 1940s as religion became a bigger issue, and the polarization, unfortunately, culminated in the Great Partition and all the bloodshed that resulted from it. Having said that there were, as others have said, regional differences - what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh did have more Muslims, what is now Punjab was more Sikh, and the rest of the land was mostly Hindu.

While there's little doubt that the Raj engaged in a very dangerous game of playing with fire without realising that fire is hot, this isn't a fact, it is a comforting pseudo-history. The direct ancestor of the Pakistan Movement - the Aligarh Movement - emerged in the 1870s in opposition to the collapse of Muslim cultural prestige and political power. Specifically the big trigger was growing demands for the recognition of Hindi, which was seen as the thin end of the wedge. Meanwhile the RSS was founded in 1925 and Savarkar's Hindutva was published in 1922: Savarkar led his first anti-Muslim pogrom at the tender age of twelve (!) in the 1880s.

[Schiff for Senate]

This may sound disengenous and/or off topic, but the fact is that until the 1930s and 1940s when the British began using religion as a wedge issue to divide Indians and M.A. Jinnah and the Muslim League began to drift away from Congress (basically, greater religious polarization and division), religion wasn't a massive issue. It's true. I believe that Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and others lived in relative harmony without religion being a particularly divisive issue. As I said, this began to change in the 1930s and 1940s as religion became a bigger issue, and the polarization, unfortunately, culminated in the Great Partition and all the bloodshed that resulted from it. Having said that there were, as others have said, regional differences - what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh did have more Muslims, what is now Punjab was more Sikh, and the rest of the land was mostly Hindu.

While there's little doubt that the Raj engaged in a very dangerous game of playing with fire without realising that fire is hot, this isn't a fact, it is a comforting pseudo-history. The direct ancestor of the Pakistan Movement - the Aligarh Movement - emerged in the 1870s in opposition to the collapse of Muslim cultural prestige and political power. Specifically the big trigger was growing demands for the recognition of Hindi, which was seen as the thin end of the wedge. Meanwhile the RSS was founded in 1925 and Savarkar's Hindutva was published in 1922: Savarkar led his first anti-Muslim pogrom at the tender age of twelve (!) in the 1880s.

First of all, I don't want to pretend to know too much on this subject, when my knowledge is in fact fairly limited; please feel free to correct me on this if I am wrong (and I may be).

But I wasn't denying the fact that there wasn't any religious division at all until the 1930s/1940s. Obviously there was. My point is, India was a pretty secular area - though obviously some Muslims and some Sikhs were persecuted in some places - and religion wasn't nearly a big an issue as it is today / 1936 onwards. I obviously don't think there was no religious persecution at all before the 1930s, but my point is, it wasn't nearly as widespread as it has become, and it wasn't nearly as large a wedge issue (maybe it was a wedge issue sometimes and/or in some places, but on the whole, it wasn't a very divisive issue or anything).

[Sol]

Muslim states dominated the subcontinent from what, ~1200 to ~1750? Over the same length of time of about 600 years from conquest Egypt had only very recently lost its Christian majority and there were still large religious minorities in the Levant and Iran.

This is a very relevant point! The Islamization of much of the Eastern Mediterranean was an extremely gradual process, and much of the region only became overwhelmingly Muslim in the very recent (aka 20th Century) past.

And of course there are still very large non-Muslim minorities in that part of the Middle East--even excluding the recent immigration of Jews to Israel, there are still lots of Coptic Christians in Egypt, Arab Christians in the Levant, Druze, arguably Alawites, etc. And you don't have to go far to find many minorities in Kurdistan, though many were targeted by ISIS.

Really you also have comparable religious diversity in most of the Muslim world outside of Arabia and the Maghreb*, and in places where you don't it's usually a function of very recent persecution or mass migration (Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, etc.)

*As an aside, why did Christianity hang on for much less long in the Maghreb?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Muslim states dominated the subcontinent from what, ~1200 to ~1750? Over the same length of time of about 600 years from conquest Egypt had only very recently lost its Christian majority and there were still large religious minorities in the Levant and Iran.

This is a very relevant point! The Islamization of much of the Eastern Mediterranean was an extremely gradual process, and much of the region only became overwhelmingly Muslim in the very recent (aka 20th Century) past.

And of course there are still very large non-Muslim minorities in that part of the Middle East--even excluding the recent immigration of Jews to Israel, there are still lots of Coptic Christians in Egypt, Arab Christians in the Levant, Druze, arguably Alawites, etc. And you don't have to go far to find many minorities in Kurdistan, though many were targeted by ISIS.

Really you also have comparable religious diversity in most of the Muslim world outside of Arabia and the Maghreb*, and in places where you don't it's usually a function of very recent persecution or mass migration (Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, etc.)

*As an aside, why did Christianity hang on for much less long in the Maghreb?

I remember reading that the Holy Land that the Crusaders came to was majority Christian. I'd have to research the topic to say for sure, but it sounds quite possible that the Crusades helped pave the way for Christianity to become in the minority in the broader region, simply by their death toll.

In regards to Turkey, it's important to note that it provides among the best examples of the mass migration and persecution that you speak of. Many Circassians (and other groups impacted by Russia's move south) were resettled in Anatolia by the Ottoman Empire, and the Armenian Genocide and the population exchanges between Turkey and Greece must have had an impact on the religious demographics of the region more broadly, though precisely how much I'm not sure.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

*As an aside, why did Christianity hang on for much less long in the Maghreb?

I think Christianity had less of a hold on the Berber population of North Africa, who were always kept at arms length by Roman rule.

[Badger]

What prevented India/China from being Christianized or Islamicized, unlike most of the world?

 Isn't the premise somewhat flawed in that India is over 1/8 Muslim, With multiple States having a significant Muslim majority? 

[RINO Tom]

What prevented India/China from being Christianized or Islamicized, unlike most of the world?

 Isn't the premise somewhat flawed in that India is over 1/8 Muslim, With multiple States having a significant Muslim majority? 

Fair point, but it’s worth remembering that Hinduism is effectively descended from Indo European paganism, so the inability to completely replace it is pretty shocking, IMO.  When comparing it to Iberians’ near total Christianization of indigenous South Americans or the Arabs’ near complete Islamification of Persia and the wider MENA region, Hinduism’s ability to live on is quite unique.  I believe it’s the only pre-Axial Age religion to still exist in any significant numbers.

[TDAS04]

Fun fact: India has three Christian-majority states (tiny states in the Northeast).

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

What prevented India/China from being Christianized or Islamicized, unlike most of the world?

 Isn't the premise somewhat flawed in that India is over 1/8 Muslim, With multiple States having a significant Muslim majority?  

You're not wrong- there are 2 >50% Muslim states (Jammu & Kashmir, Lakshadweep)- although they make up like 1% of India's population combined. Assam (34%) and Kerala (27%) also have large Muslim minorities.
2021 source- chart data is from 2011 census



And yeah, as TDAS04 said the Christian majority/plurality states are all on the border with Myanmar.