Tl;Dr it is not religion in itself that says anything or asks anyone to do something. People have various motivations to use it to seize key political power, a.k.a, power to influence others and to be seen as someone worth of respect.
Let's keep in mind that the mass of people crave attention and derive a lot of meaning by aligning to a group that their immediate peers identify with. Off late, that is religious for many demographic slices, owing to the significant grassroots messaging by the most powerful political party today.
After this point, whether you believe in specifics propaganda, rituals, or not depends on who you are influenced by.
I know highly educated and highly scientifically minded people distributing religious items in their community . These are given to them by BJP for every election/festival or Ram Mandir thing, and their reasons are to foster the community they feel belonged to. One of their friends is a high profile lawyer who speaks for the community. But on this trajectory, they inadvertently yet enthusiastically take up superstitious activities, and refuse to believe that democracy or scientific organisations might be deteriorating. Still I don't see any sign of active hate mongering, which is a relief, but am worried for how long, given the easy propaganda to wrap anything in unquestionable claims.
Those with even slight religious beliefs go deeper and not with the popular rhetoric, while those with ulterior motives make an effective unquestionable shield using all vague stuff in it.
It takes a lot of social capital and skills to oppose something like that and still live in that community. So most people either silently resign and agree or actively join the ranks of supporters. Finally, as I said in the start, it doesn't matter what, but people do stuff that is somehow motivated by organized and centralized religious thought.