Economic Shocks and Religious Conflict in Medieval India

Rohit Ticku, Anand Shrivastava and Sriya Iyer

Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge

Abstract: Economic downturns often spur religious or ethnic conflict. Using centuries of georeferenced data, we provide arguably the first empirical evidence of this phenomenon in medieval India. During major weather fluctuations, a Muslim state is 0.5 percentage points more likely to destroy a Hindu temple under its rule compared to one outside its control, whereas there is no difference in normal periods. Analyses of looting, warfare, and governance channels suggest that rulers desecrated temples primarily to quell rebellions and protect regime stability after climate-driven economic stress.

Keywords: Religious Repression; Political Stability; Weather Shocks; Temple Desecration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D74 N35 N45 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-10-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
Note: si105
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/pub ... pe-pdfs/cwpe1862.pdf

Related works:
Working Paper: Economic Shocks and Religious Conflict in Medieval India (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cam:camdae:1862

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jake Dyer ().