Mumbai girl arrested for Facebook post

Freedom of speech was ubiquitous feature of Hinduism.

When China invaded India, the communist party in India was calling nationwide protests "in support of china" and was running "fund raising drives". That was the first time Bal Thakare turned from a cartoonist to a mass leader.

The political party was truly formed when Islamists forced the central government to change Indian constitution to apply horrible Islamic Sharia law to ensure that a 60 year old lady divorced after 40 years of marriage will not get any alimony from her rich husband. Muslims across the mumbai would then celebrate their victory by blocking the traffic and holding Namaz on streets.

Bal Thakare seemed to be the only voice weaker sections of society had that time. Yes, like all other organizations even Shiv Sena was not perfect and many times local goons and mafias joined this party for their own gains but more or less this party remains much more faithful to common people than the other parties.

1. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shah_Bano_case] 2. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_India#Commun...]

Calling a debate "worthless" is not the same as disallowing such debates.

Just like one has the right to engage in debates (worthless or not), one also has the right to call out such debates when they are deemed worthless.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy_in_India

There are clearly different laws that apply to different religious groups when it comes to polygamy and other, as you say, family or civil laws.

I wasn't trying to say that the entire legal system in India is bifurcated (multifurcated? =P) along religious lines. I was just pointing out that while the American legal system attempts to exclude religion from the law (to varying degrees of success), Indian tradition includes laws which take into account various religious traditions and customs.

It's just a different way of treating the issue of freedom of religion in the legal system.

Observation: Various measures of societal health are correlated with lack of religion.

Explanation #1: Religion is bad for society.

Explanation #2: Bad society is good for religion.

Both explanations are at least somewhat plausible (religion is bad for society because believing falsehoods is morally corrosive, or because religions are full of ideas founded in old moral systems that we no longer endorse, or whatever; societal ill-health is good for religion because people in difficult situations will turn to anything that seems to offer comfort, or because when things are really hard the gods really do help, or whatever). In particular, the plausibility of explanation #2 means you can't just leap from the observation to explanation #1.

For the avoidance of doubt, I am not claiming any particular benefits for religion. I'm an uncompromising atheist myself. I just don't like plausible but unsound arguments, and "The Scandinavian countries are great places and also very irreligious, therefore religion isn't good for you" is, I think, a plausible but unsound argument: it could equally be that their irreligiousness is an effect, not a cause, of their education, good health, low crime, etc.

(On the other hand, "The Scandinavian countries are great places and also very irreligious, therefore religion isn't vital for a healthy society as some religious people claim it is" is a perfectly good argument, and one I've used myself.)

[EDITED to add, on the subject of that putative consensus: see e.g. http://edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html, a single article but one written by two of the biggest names in the field, Gregory Paul and Phil Zuckerman. "To put it starkly, the level of popular religion is not a spiritual matter, it is actually the result of social, political and especially economic conditions [...] Mass rejection of the gods invariably blossoms in the context of the equally distributed prosperity and education found in almost all 1st world democracies. [...] Mass faith prospers solely in the context of the comparatively primitive social, economic and educational disparities and poverty still characteristic of the 2nd and 3rd worlds and the US." I should perhaps emphasize that GP and PZ here are talking about the origins of large-scale popular religiosity; individuals' decisions are, well, more individual and it certainly isn't true that all religious people are that way because their messed-up societies make them look for supernatural aid.]