Q.Religious identities and differences have no significance for the young.

Personal attitudes among some young people may be changing, but religious identity still carries real weight in law, in reform movements, and in electoral politics. …

There is some truth in the claim. In many urban and increasingly connected settings, younger people often have more everyday contact across religious lines, and attitudes towards interfaith friendship or marriage may be relatively more relaxed among some young people than among earlier generations.

However, the logic developed through the rest of this chapter suggests the claim significantly overstates the case. The reasoning behind minority rights (the train/asthma example) shows that a community's fundamental interests still require real, constitutional protection — a need that does not simply disappear because attitudes among some young people have softened. Intra-religious domination — inequality between men and women within a religion, or caste-based exclusion — continues to require active reform, showing that religious identity still structures real inequalities that cannot be wished away. And vote-bank politics, which mobilises religious identity as a tool for electoral gain, remains a live feature of Indian po …