Conservatism-Radicalism as Related to Religious Ethnicity and Socio-Economic Status: A Cross-National Study

The study examines the impact of religious­ ethnic group membership and socio-economic status on subjects' conservatism-radicalism tendencies in Bangladesh and India. The measure of SES and religious-ethnic group membership were used for the classification of the subjects and the measure of Conservatism-Radicalism (C-R) Scale was used as dependent variable. Two samples, one from Bangladesh and the other from India were employed. Each sample was composed of 180 male Ss. A 2 x 3 factorial ANOVA involving 2 levels of religious-ethnic group composition (BMIBH) and 3 levels of socio-economic status (high/ middle/ low) were computed for Bangladesh and India separately. The results indicate that in India Bengali Muslims were significantly more conservative as compared to Bengali Hindus. In Bangladesh, social class emerged as a cructal factor as Bengali Muslims of low socio-economic background showed significantly more conservatism as compared to the Muslims of high and middle social class. Again, Bengali Hindus of middle socio-economic background expressed significantly more conservatism than the Hindus of high and low social background.