Iran is currently experiencing one of the largest waves of protests in years, with thousands of citizens taking to the streets across major cities to challenge economic collapse, soaring prices and the entrenched authority of the clerical establishment. What began as demonstrations over inflation and currency devaluation has quickly evolved into nationwide dissent and has been met with a severe crackdown by security forces.This wave of protests has been described by the Associated Press as the largest nationwide anti-regime movement in Iran since the 2022-23 ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ uprising, with demonstrations spreading, according to Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) to all 31 provinces, and a brutal government crackdown recorded by Amnesty International, including internet blackouts and widespread deaths and arrests.Two narratives have dominated media coverage of these protests. The first is the pro-clerical perspective, supported and propagated by the Iranian state, which frames the unrest as being orchestrated or influenced by foreign powers. The second is the anti-clerical, pro-Shah narrative, promoted by opposition groups and many Western commentators, portraying the protests as a movement in support of the monarchy ousted in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.Exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi has appealed to Iranians to protest in numbers, by taking over city centres and through strikes. He has positioned himself as the legitimate future leader and voice of Iranian citizens seeking change. Meanwhile, the theocratic authorities have dismissed the demonstrations as the United States and Israel “fomenting trouble“, using this claim to justify their suppression.Yet amid these polar views lies a third, powerful narrative. The streets of Iran echo with “Na Shah, na Shaikh – bargordan khahim-e raqsid” (We want neither monarchy nor theocracy; we will dance on their graves). The protesters demand pluralism, democracy and respect for human rights, rejecting both monarchy and theocracy in Iran. This ignored voice aligns with sociologist Asef Bayat’s description of ‘post-Islamism’, a condition in which Islamist ideas and institutions persist but their appeal, legitimacy and capacity to mobilise decline, as societies seek to combine religiosity with pluralism and democratic rights.Why Iran and India?There is long-term context for the ongoing resistance in Iran, and it helps highlight how different India’s short-term trajectory has been. Thirty-year data from the World Values Survey, a project that tracks how values and social attitudes change across countries over generations (research is conducted in “waves” rather than spot surveys), shows declining institutional religiosity and rising democratic aspirations in Iran. This stands in sharp contrast to India’s regressive turn, seen also in the data.The data show that in both countries, social attitudes toward democracy, human rights, scientific temper and religiosity are shifting, but in opposite directions. India and Iran differ markedly – India is the world’s most populous country and an electoral democracy with a secular constitution, while Iran is an Islamic Republic governed by a strict theocracy. Yet, in both societies, people place religion at the centre of public life. That is why comparing and contrasting the two directly can be analytically meaningful.A comparison of India and Iran through World Values Survey data reveals, in recent years, an ironic inversion. India is witnessing a rise in illiberal social values. Iran, despite theocratic authoritarianism, is nurturing post-Islamist tendencies, and Iranians increasingly embracing democracy, welfare, women’s rights and science.Together, these trends resonate with Bayat’s notion of post-Islamism in Iran and reinforce political scientist Professor Christophe Jaffrelot’s analysis of majoritarianism and ethnic democracy in India.Democracy in IndiaJaffrelot applies the concept of ethnic democracy developed by Israeli sociologist Sammy Smooha to India under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Formally democratic institutions remain intact, yet political power and cultural legitimacy are concentrated in the hands of the Hindu majority, particularly the savarna elite. Muslims and Christians, the minorities, are systematically marginalised. It is done symbolically through their exclusion from narratives about national identity and materially through discriminatory policies.Also, the members of Avarna castes, within the Hindutva scheme, serve primarily as an electoral base, wielding little actual power or agency in the national decision-making. According to Jaffrelot, populist strategies invoke the will of “the people” to legitimise authoritarian impulses. Electoral victories are thus framed as moral mandates to exclude minorities.However, Jaffrelot’s work focuses more on institutions – the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the state – than on everyday social attitudes toward majoritarianism. A closer look, as below, would show that society itself is shifting toward ethnic democracy.‘Post-Islamism’ in IranPost-Islamism represents both a condition and a project. It describes declining appeal for Islamic political ideologies and the emergence of pluralist, liberal and socialist orientations. Bayat’s concept, thus, explains a paradox of Iranian society: despite a theocratic regime, popular values are shifting toward democracy, human rights and scientific rationality.For instance, the Iranian regime remains tightly controlled by the Supreme Leader and religious authorities, but reformist voices often find representation in parliament. World Values Survey data confirm Bayat’s observation; over time, Iranians increasingly value democracy, gender equality and science, while their attachment to rigid societal values is weakening alongside.Demonstrative religiosity intensifies in India, recedes in IranWhen it comes to everyday religious practice, particularly attendance at shrines or mosques, often seen by social scientists of religion as one of the earliest indicators of secularisation, India and Iran are moving in sharply different directions. Data from the latest (seventh) wave of the World Values Survey make this divergence strikingly clear. Only about 26% of Iranians report attending religious services regularly, compared to nearly 47% in India.Trust in religious institutions follows a similar pattern: while 72% of Indians express a great deal of trust in such organisations, the figure in Iran stands at just 35%.At first glance, this might suggest that India is becoming more religious while Iran is becoming less so. Yet the picture becomes more complex when we turn to indicators of private belief. When asked about the importance of religion in their personal lives, Iranians actually score higher: 71% say religion is very or rather important, compared to 64% in India. Belief in God, moreover, remains near universal in both societies, well above 90%.In other words, personal faith remains remarkably resilient in both contexts. Therefore, what is changing is not belief itself but how it is expressed in public and by institutions.In India, religion is increasingly moving out of the private sphere and becoming highly visible and a force of social mobilisation. Visits to shrines and temples are no longer merely acts of personal devotion; they function as collective performances of identity, reinforced by large-scale pilgrimages, monumental temple construction and the pervasive use of religious symbols in public and political life. In other words, the trust placed in religious institutions appears less about quiet spirituality and more about asserting belonging to an imagined national majority.This whole picture tells us that when religious institutions function as mouthpieces of the state, when clerical authority operates in alignment with ruling elites, or when the meaning and boundaries of religion are defined according to the political will of those in power, ordinary believers often begin to disengage from organised religious life.Iran is actually a revealing illustration of this dynamic: decades of state-directed religious authority have gradually eroded public participation in religious institutions, even as personal faith has remained largely intact.This experience raises an important question for India, where religious institutions are increasingly visible in the political sphere. It is whether the growing entanglement of religion with state power risks reshaping everyday religiosity in ways that undermine institutional credibility and public trust.A December 2025 protest over the medical admission list at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Institute of Medical Excellence. The institute, in Jammu, India, lost accreditation after more Muslim students cleared a competitive exam than Hindu students. Photo: PTIDemocracy and women’s rightsTable 1 (below) regarding democracy and women’s rights shows that in Iran, prolonged theocratic rule has provoked a broad societal shift toward emancipative ideals: a growing insistence that democracy is an absolute imperative, a stronger demand for civil liberties as safeguards against arbitrary power, markedly greater confidence in women’s movements as well as liberalising attitudes towards divorce and gender roles.By contrast, India has experienced a movement in the opposite direction. Support for democracy as a fundamental value has waned, civil liberties are regarded with increasing scepticism, patriarchal attitudes toward political leadership and women’s role in society have strengthened and trust in women’s activism remains comparatively low.Majoritarian politics has been reframing electoral majorities as cultural mandates, further legitimising exclusionary hierarchies and eroding the pluralist ethos that secular institutions were intended to protect.Table 1: Public Attitudes on Democracy, Gender, Authority, and Morality (per cent)Variable1989–19931994–19981999–20042005–20092010–20142017–2023Importance of democracy (absolutely important) —— — 37 (35) 28 48 (63)Civil rights protect liberty against oppression —— — 48 (30) 32 28 (53)Women have the same rights as men —— — 57 (35) 47 47 (41)State should make incomes more equal —— — — 32 18 (43)Religious authorities interpret laws (not essential for democracy) —— — 34 (14) 32 17 (17)Men make better political leaders (strongly agree) —13 20 (28) 17.8 (24) 24.1 23.4 (20)Women’s duty is to have children (strongly agree) —— — — — 38 (20)Confidence in women’s movements (a great deal) —10 14 (24) 20 (34) 33 30 (69)Government should take more responsibility —35 34 34 (55) 45 22 (81)Immigrants affect country’s development —— — — — 33 (52)Divorce never justifiable 51— 45 46 (52) 39 (45) 46 (41)Abortion never justifiable 38— 52 69 (74) 49 (61) 50 (59)Country completely democratic ND ND ND 31 (4) 10 15 (23)Greater respect for authority is a good thing 54 33 43 (62) 38 (66) 36 47 (44)Author’s Calculation from WVS (1989-2023). Note: Values in plain text = India, values in parentheses = Iran.For the sake of clarity, the analysis presented above focuses only on responses at the extreme end of the distribution (strong rather than weak agreement/disagreement), as that is where opinions substantively concentrate.Science versus religionIn Table 2 (below), the questions measure people’s perceptions about science and some relate to the intersection of science and religion, ascertaining where people would place their trust when the two fields overlap. The extreme responses reveal a telling shift in both Iran and India.Table 2: People’s Perception about Science and Technology and Choosing between Science and Technology and Faith (per cent)Variable1989–19931994–19981999–20042005–20092010–20142017–2023Future changes: More emphasis on technology (good thing)845557 (72)50 (78)5962 (86)Depend too much on science and not enough on faith (completely disagree)———231013 (16)Science breaks down people’s ideas of right and wrong (completely agree)————914 (5)Not important for me to know science in my life (completely agree)————911 (11)Science and Technology (S&T) are making our lives healthier, easier and comfortable (completely agree)———35 (38)2231 (35)Because of S&T, there will be more opportunities for the next generations (completely agree)——32 (42)2326 (36)—The world is better off because of S&T (completely agree)———551521 (28)Whenever science and religion conflict, religion is always right (completely agree)————2726 (19)Author’s Calculation from WVS (1989-2023). Note: Values in plain text = India, values in parentheses = Iran.The Indian constitution demands that scientific temper be fostered, yet three decades of World Values Survey data reveal the opposite trend: Support for science’s deeper ethos has eroded. More Indians now fully agree that “whenever science and religion conflict, religion is always right” (stable around 26-27%), that science undermines moral values (up from 9% to 14%) and that scientific knowledge is unimportant in daily life (11%).Technology’s material benefits, however, retain strong appeal – 62% Indians in 2017-23 viewed greater emphasis on technology as a good thing, though down from a peak of 84% in 1989-93, with growing if modest optimism about opportunities for future generations and improved lives.The result: Indians avidly consume science’s fruits while increasingly resisting its spirit of critical, evidence-based inquiry.Iran inverts the picture. Under theocratic rule, public trust in science and technology has strengthened markedly – 86% now see more emphasis on technology as positive, with rising belief in better opportunities (36-42%) and global well-being. Fewer fully prioritise religion over science in conflicts (down to 19%).The contrast is stark and instructive: in nominally secular India, politicised faith crowds out scientific scepticism. In religiously enforced Iran, clerical overreach quietly nurtures science as a domain of hope and resistance.Scientific temper, it turns out, is not guaranteed by constitutional text nor doomed by religious dominance. It emerges or recedes through the dialectics of power, identity and lived authority. India trails Iran not despite its secular frame but partly because of how faith has been mobilised within it.Since independence in 1947, India has maintained a democratic framework with a secular constitution and universal suffrage. However, from the 1980s onwards, the rise of religious politics – intensifying after the Babri masjid demolition – things have changed. Scholars such as Ashutosh Varshney, Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Fareed Zakaria describe India as an “illiberal democracy,” one where elections continue but constitutional liberalism and civic values decline. That observation has at its core the weakened liberal norms, narrowed political space for minorities and eroded scientific temper that regularly attract concern and criticism.Mohd Arshid is a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, working on the political economy of religion in India.