Religion was constructed for the needs of a communal living, to connect beyond blood relations. It was another tool for people to connect just like tribal bonds. But with the rise of rationalism, empiricism and science as modern religions, a thought has got traction that (old) religion is a personal matter. In India it is clearly demonstrated in a capacity beyond a person in cultural forms. While even in west the old religion continues to hold sway through particular value systems seen in US as an emphasis on a presidential candidate being a family man, and if it irrelevant it's owing to the unanimous presence of only one religion. Religion no longer provides a cultural bond as distinct from any rival tribe. In India on the other hand things play out differently religion embeds itself into diverse regional forms: Murugan in south to Bhadrakali in east - Vaisakhi, Onam, Chhath being other ways in which the religiious-cultural thread continues to provide a social bond. Is it right to term religion a personal matter? What are teh repercussions of considering it a personal matter or the opposite of it a social concern?
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One another example is that of RTE. It's a sectarian law that only applies to Hindu educational institutes. See these links.
https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/how-sonias-upa-communalised-indias-education-system
https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/from-rte-to-scholarships-indian-education-is-hobbled-by-minorityism
https://realitycheck.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/how-congress-pursued-its-invidious-legislative-agenda-post-win-in-2004-history-of-the-93rd-const-amendment/
Now there are some government schemes which are run specially for converted Christians in states like TN etc. This is a direct inducement to religion as the govt is saying that you can convert to these minority religions to avail certain opportunities that are denied to you by you being born in a different religion.
So, unless and until these kind of discrimination between the religions continue, religion will not be a personal thing and India won't be a secular country no matter how much we like to utter that word.
Polytheism is not inefficient as uttered in that article. It didn't survive as it didn't implement the concept of total war. When a monotheistic religion fought against a polytheistic one, if the polytheistic religion lost its followers were either killed or converted. This was not reciprocated by the polytheistic religions which put them at a disadvantage.
Read the book 'God against the gods' by Jonathan Kirsch for more analysis of the wars between these two types of religions.