Indians fairly religious by nature: Survey

Indians are fairly religious by nature with as many as 76 per cent calling themselves "religious" and very few identifying themselves as atheists, a new worldwide survey said today.

In an analysis of 65 countries, India recorded 76 per cent respondents as "religious" and just 21 per cent as "not religious".

A mere 2 per cent identified themselves as "convinced atheists".

These fall somewhere in the middle ground in Win/Gallup International's worldwide analysis, which was topped by 94 per cent religious people in Thailand on the one end and just 7 per cent of believers in China at the bottom end.

In neighbouring Pakistan, 'religious persons' percentage stood at 88 while 'not religious' was recorded as 10. Only 1 per cent respondents were convinced atheists.

Jean-Marc Leger, president of Win/Gallup International, said globally, an average of two-thirds of people still consider themselves religious.

"Religion continues to dominate our everyday lives and we see that the total number of people who consider themselves to be religious is actually relatively high.

"Furthermore, with the trend of an increasingly religious youth globally, we can assume that the number of people who consider themselves religious will only continue to increase," he said.

Overall, those under 34 tend to be more religious than other age groups, as do those without a formal education, but in general, religious people are a majority in all educational levels.

Other countries with a high number of religious people include Armenia, Bangladesh, Georgia and Morocco – all at 93 per cent.

Japan (13 per cent), Sweden (19 per cent) and the Czech Republic (23 per cent) are among the other least religious countries.
The UK also stood out as less religious, with just 30 per cent of the population calling themselves religious in comparison with 53 per cent saying they were not.

The Win/Gallup poll questioned 63,898 people – about 1,000 in each country – at the end of last year.