India is a secular country that has traditionally absorbed and given birth to a variety of religions and religious sects. The majority of present-day Indians are Hindu, however, and this is reflected in many aspects of the shared culture across the country. Hinduism itself has, over centuries, absorbed and evolved a number of different philosophies and approaches, from the philosophical Advaita of Shankara to the devotion of the Bhakti movement.
The coexistence of significant minority faiths with the majority faith of Hinduism has by no means always been peaceable; Hindu-Muslim and Hindu-Sikh tensions (often fanned by motives other than religious ones) have, in the past, resulted in many deaths. The Ramajanmabhoomi movement, whose demands to build a Hindu temple on what they claim to be the birthplace of Rama in Ayodhya resulted in the destruction by a mob of the Babri Masjid (a mosque which they declared to have