Being religious is not superstition. The serenity prayer nicely puts things in perspective - there are many things beyond human control that can cause failure - if going to Tirupathi gets him in the zone all the power to him.
"Being outside the realm of human control and understanding" is not what superstition means.
For some, Religion encompasses superstition, but it goes beyond that.
For others, Religion is "Dharma" [1]. It's a way of life / discipline.
If you doubt this, ask a series of "why?" questions about Dharma and drill down into it until you stop hitting rational thought and start hitting belief about the nature of the universe and belief about the importance of righteous action.
Trying to parse it from other superstitions doesn't change the meaning or existence of the word, nor the fact that it's still classified under that category.
Point being, the meaning of these terms are too broad to tag & generalize them with a few words.
> Superstition is the belief in supernatural causality
But then the influenced people become the causality of their actions. These root "superstitious" influences would then exist in concept and have a real effect. Note that conceptual existence is enough to influence intelligent beings who can recognize these concepts.
There's also effects that aren't explained by science, yet. That is a playground for all sorts of possibilities.
The rational one is discerning between the things that are in our power and those that aren't, and concern ourselves only with the former. This idea can be found in Stoicism [1] and other ancient philosophies, 2000 years earlier than the serenity prayer. Not just the ideas, mind you, but practical techniques of how to achieve this as a mere mortal.
The religious one is resignation: Instead of being confident that it is possible to do the things mentioned in the prayer using your ability to learn and think, the praying person begs a divine being for those things.
So you are seriously saying that going to pray for a successful rocket launch is an empowering strategy?
I'm all for a "live and let live" approach for any religious belief or superstition that doesn't hurt people. I don't think this behavior by Dr. Radhakrishnan is worth any criticism (and plenty of other countries have ingrained rituals). But I don't like these distinctions we try to draw to legitimize religion over stuff that religion doesn't like but which outwardly appears to be the same.