CSRF verification failed, 'CSRF token missing or incorrect' - django

Question

This has been asked many times before and I have read all of those answers, but none of them worked for me so I'd like to try again.
When I try to submit a Django form with username and password, I get this error message:
'CSRF token missing or incorrect'.
The CSRF token is not missing.
Here is where I included it in my form in my .html template:
In index.html:
<form name="loginform" action="/notes/index/" method="post">{% csrf_token %}
{{ form.as_p }}
<input type="submit"/>
{% for field, errors in form.errors.items %}
{{ errors }}
{% endfor %}
</form>
In views.py:
class LoginForm(forms.Form):
username = forms.EmailField()
password = forms.CharField(widget=forms.PasswordInput())
def index(request):
if request.method == 'POST':
print("Received POST")
form = LoginForm(request.POST)
if form.is_valid():
print("FORM is Valid")
else:
print("FORM is NOT VALID")
template = loader.get_template('index.html')
context = {
'username': 'Benny',
'form': LoginForm(),
}
return HttpResponse(template.render(context))
I also have csrf middleware in settings. I am trying to avoid using #csrf_exempt as this app will go into production down the line.

Answer 1

I got it to work but not sure why this fixes it. Can anyone clarify?
I changed:
return HttpResponse(template.render(context))
to:
return HttpResponse(template.render(context, request=request))
I thought the request was automatically carried out by render()? So I'm not sure why I had to add request=request.