The last decade has seen a steady rise in religious conservatives to the helm of political power. Democracies around the world are electing right-wing governments to support propaganda that counters multi-ethnic and plural traditions in society. MARK JUERGENSMEYER examines the role of globalization in the rise of conservative movements across the world in his chapter 'The Clash of Religious Politics in India', published in the book Nation, Nationalism and the Public Sphere: Religious Politics in India (2020) edited by Avishek Ray and Ishita Banerjee-Dube and published by SAGE Publications India.
Avishek Ray teaches at the National Institute of Technology Silchar, India. He is interested in intellectual histories and works on issues concerning travel and mobility.
Ishita Banerjee-Dube is Professor of History at the Center for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de México (The College of Mexico). She has held the DD Kosambi (Visiting) Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies in Goa University, and has been Fellow at the Max Weber Kolleg, Erfurt University, Germany.
The following is an excerpt from their book.
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THE reason why it is valuable to look at religious politics in India within the wider context of strident new religious-political movements elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia and around the world is to acknowledge that the Indian developments are part of a global phenomenon.
They are not alone.
These movements of religious politics persist, somewhat paradoxically, in the global era of the 21st century. It is a period in world history in which transnational forces challenge national institutions and communities, and in which the very notion of the nation-state as the prime unit of world political order is being reassessed.
“Everywhere the question is debated about what a distinctive national community in an era of globalization can be.
A critical aspect of contemporary globalization is the de-nationalization of demographic communities. Today everyone can live everywhere, and they often do. It is a phenomenon that affects the established societies of Europe as well as emerging nations of South Asia. For instance, in a time when a large percentage of the French population consists of non-Christians born in the Middle East and elsewhere, and an equally large number of French live abroad, the notion of a French national community has become a subject of grave concern.
Everywhere the question is debated about what a distinctive national community in an era of globalization can be.
Religion is often part of these political discussions. And it can also be a factor in the immigrant communities' responses to their situations. Often their defensiveness is expressed in a heightened sense of their own cultural awareness. In some cases, the sense of alienation that immigrants experience is overcome by identifying with a struggle for a religious or ethnic nationalism back home.
Paradoxically, the support for such movements can be even stronger in the diaspora than in the homeland.
This was often the case with the Sikh Khalistan movement, which was monetarily supported by the Sikh communities in the United States and the United Kingdom, where the symbols of the movement were created. The first currency printed in the name of Khalistan, for instance, was minted in England. The BJP also received widespread support from the Hindus living abroad, and I was told by Lal Krishna Advani, one of the BJP leaders, that he relied on sources of funding from expatriate Indian Hindus living in such places as Houston, Los Angeles and Washington DC. Both sides of the struggle in Sri Lanka were supported by Sri Lankans living abroad, especially in the United Kingdom, where Sinhalese Buddhists supported one side and Sri Lankan Tamils supported the other.
“The European and American religious nationalists blame their own secular governments for their indifference to matters of religion, and also for their active toleration of an ideology of multiculturalism that welcomes and supports the ethnic and religious diversity of a society impacted by new immigrant communities.
The global diaspora of ethnic and religious communities has also created something of a global backlash. New right-wing movements of angry Christians in the United States and Europe have targeted the Middle East Muslim community in the United States and asserted the importance of a homogeneous ethnicity and religious culture in affirming their European and American national communities.
In Hungary, Sweden and the Netherlands, new political movements have attempted to marginalize immigrant communities and assert the primacy of traditional notions of ethnic nationalism. In some cases, this hostility has been aimed not only at the immigrant communities, but also at secular governments that protect them. The European and American religious nationalists blame their own secular governments for their indifference to matters of religion, and also for their active toleration of an ideology of multiculturalism that welcomes and supports the ethnic and religious diversity of a society impacted by new immigrant communities.
Often the voices of support for such right-wing protests are strident; occasionally, their political strength is substantial; and on some tragic occasions, the rhetoric moves some desperate extremists to violent actions, even terrorism. In a sad incident in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, Brenton Tarrant, an angry young Australian, attacked two mosques during Friday prayers, killing 51 and wounding a similar number. His manifesto indicated his admiration for Anders Breivik, the Norwegian who attacked the summer camp of a political party pledged to multiculturalism. Like Breivik, Tarrant thought that his efforts would keep European ethnic culture from going into Muslim control.
“Globalization raises three fundamental questions, the question of identity, who are we as a people in the public order; the question of accountability, who is in charge and who can we trust; and the question of security, how can we be safe?
A similar attack in the United States in 2012 was aimed at a Sikh gurdwara in the suburbs of Milwaukee, where a member of a racist anti-Christian subculture killed seven, including himself. The killer, Wade Michael Page, thought he was preserving a pure American culture in the face of multicultural globalism. Ironically it was Sikhs—who in the 1980s were attacking the secular state of India to create their own religiously pure homeland—who were the targets of this Christian terrorist in America who saw them as a problem in his own notion of national purity.
It is understandable that religion plays a role in responding to the challenges of the global era, not only because it provides a form of symbolic empowerment to people who feel marginalized by the great impersonal transnational forces of social change, but also because it responds in very basic ways to the insecurities of the era.
Globalization raises three fundamental questions, the question of identity, who are we as a people in the public order; the question of accountability, who is in charge and who can we trust; and the question of security, how can we be safe?
“It is understandable that religion plays a role in responding to the challenges of the global era, not only because it provides a form of symbolic empowerment to people who feel marginalized by the great impersonal transnational forces of social change, but also because it responds in very basic ways to the insecurities of the era.
Traditional religion provides answers to all three of those questions.
It provides a sense of religious identity that is often combined with national identity to shore up the notion of a national culture. It gives a sense of accountability and authority through traditional religious law and leadership that project an aura of unassailable certainty.
It provides a sense of religious identity that is often combined with national identity to shore up the notion of a national culture. It gives a sense of accountability and authority through traditional religious law and leadership that project an aura of unassailable certainty. And it offers a secure haven of religious community and divine protection that comfort in times of social and political peril. All of these factors are elements in the rise of religious politics in India, as they are elsewhere in the world.
“Secularism as an ideology has not been seen as a neutral actor; it seems, neither in South Asia nor in other parts of the world where religious politics have often emerged as a response to what is perceived to be attempts to remove traditional aspects of religious culture from the public sphere.
Thus, the Indian experience with religious politics—interesting in its own right—also is instructive about the rise of religious politics globally in recent decades.
Secularism as an ideology has not been seen as a neutral actor; it seems, neither in South Asia nor in other parts of the world where religious politics have often emerged as a response to what is perceived to be attempts to remove traditional aspects of religious culture from the public sphere. Hence, the rise of religious politics in India tells us much about this particular moment of late modernity, where it may well be not so much a passing fancy as a bellwether of new postmodern and postsecular identities and new forms of imagined transnational publics in a shifting global order.
(Mark Juergensmeyer is Professor of Global Studies, Professor of Sociology, and Affiliate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Views are personal.)