I've recently met some Indian scientists who believe in astrology, bad omens, curses, evil spirits and other rubbish. At first I thought this was just a small subset of people who believed such shit but as I met more Indians, this seems to be quite normal for them.

I'm aware that learning science doesn't make you immune to superstition but lately I've started to wonder if there are a disproportional number of people in India who believe in crackpot ideas compared to the rest of the world. If you question some of these people about these things, they get all defensive and act like I'm attacking their culture.

What's going on here?