ANIMISM- (given earlier)

CONTEMPORARY ANIMIST TRADITIONS

 African traditional religions, a group of beliefs in various spirits of nature,
 In the Canary Islands (Spain), aboriginal Guanches professed an animistic religion.
 Shinto, the traditional religion of Japan, is highly animistic. In Shinto, spirits of
nature, or kami, are believed to exist everywhere, from the major (such as the goddess
of the sun), which can be considered polytheistic, to the minor, which are more likely
to be seen as a form of animism.
 There are some Hindu groups which may be considered animist. The coastal
Karnataka has a tradition of praying to spirits.
 The New Age movement commonly purports animism in the form of the existence of
nature spirits and fairies.

MONISM

Monism is a religious-philosophical worldview in which all of reality can be reduced

to one “thing” or “substance.” This view is OPPOSED TO DUALISM (in which all
of reality is reducible to two substances, e.g., good and evil; light and darkness; form
and matter; body and soul) AND PLURALISM (all of reality is comprised of
multiple substances).

Many of the early, pre-Socratic philosophers tried to understand the underlying nature
of the reality that surrounded them. They wanted to determine what everything
could be reduced to. For Thales (624–546 BC), the first principle of everything—
that from which everything is derived—was water. For Anaximenes (585–528 BC) it
was air.
Broadly speaking, the concept of monism refers to faith in one God, one body of
ritual, one set of ideology and moral doctrines. During medieval period religion
offered a foundation to the formation of political state. It was believed that religious
differences all over the world can only glorify the variations in political identity of
the state. FOR EXAMPLE Roman Empire emerged as a Christian state. Middle East
gave way to the rise of Islamic states what was known as post Egyptian civilization.

However during 18th century slave trade, expansion of the territorial boundaries of
the state because of warfare gave rise to the emergence of culturally pluralistic
societies. However the major concern of the state was to transform multiculturalism
into cultural uniformity. Therefore the state patronized one religion, permitted
missionaries to lure ethnic minorities to go for religious conversions. As a result
multi ethnic groups because of coercion & persuasion became a part of artificially
constructed MONISTIC SOCIETIES.

18th century Europe explains how cultural minorities were pushed into ghettos
identified as slave race, forced to join warfare and heavy fines were imposed in them
on a refusal to commanders dictates. That subsequently gave way to the rise of
autocratic state striving for cultural unification.