Secularism, Decolonisation, and the Cold War in South and Southeast Asia

Clemens Six

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367888886
• eBook ISBN: 9781351684798
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The intensifying conflicts between religious communities in contemporary South and Southeast Asia signify the importance of gaining a clearer understanding of how societies have historically organised and mastered their religious diversity.

Based on extensive archival research in Asia, Europe, and the United States, this book suggests a new approach to interpreting and explaining secularism not as a Western concept but as a distinct form of practice in 20th-century global history. In six case studies on the contemporary history of India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, it analyses secularism as a project to create a high degree of distance between the state and religion during the era of decolonisation and the emerging Cold War between 1945 and 1970. To demonstrate the interplay between local and transnational dynamics, the case studies look at patterns of urban planning, the struggle against religious nationalism, conflicts around religious education, and (anti-)communism as a dispute over secularism and social reform. The book emphasises in particular the role of non-state actors as key supporters of secular statehood – a role that has thus far not received sufficient attention.

A novel approach to studying secularism in Asia, the book discusses the different ways that global transformations such as decolonisation and the Cold War interacted with local relations to reshape and relocate religion in society. It will be of interest to scholars of Religious Studies, International Relations and Politics, Studies of Empire, Cold War Studies, Subaltern Studies, Modern Asian History, and South and Southeast Asian Studies.

1 Traces of a transnational mindset

Thinking secularism for the postcolonial era

Introduction

In order to analyse secularism as a variety of historical projects that took shape under specific historical conditions, the primary concern indeed ought to be the complex, often contradictory empirical processes during which different meanings were assigned to the secular and the religious. Ideas and practices thereby entered into a mutually defining relationship.¹

On the one hand, ideas about religion and secularism guided historical practice in the sense that political decision-makers, bureaucrats, school principals, teachers of religion, missionaries, and city planners acted within what they perceived as their social realities according to central ideas about the past, the present, and particularly the future. The transition period from the colonial to the postcolonial era was not only a period of profound social, political, and economic change, but also an era of conflicting ideas that competed over power to interpret, represent, and thus shape the present and the ‘modernised’ future. In other words, ideas and categories have also historically been “modes of creating and controlling”,² through which social and political hegemonies were negotiated and fought for.

On the other hand, historical practice also shaped ideas. The definition of secularism was frequently not a predetermined concept, but rather a label for a historical practice that arose out of concrete historical circumstances and was thus more the result of ad-hoc interventions than the application of abstract formulas.

This chapter takes account of this twofold relevance of ideas by looking at select thoughts on secularism in late colonial and postcolonial South and Southeast Asia. The analysis of historical ideas is always complex and their precise impact on historical change difficult to judge.³ For this reason, I will concentrate on ideas and categories propagated by personalities relevant to the following empirical case studies, in other words politicians, bureaucrats, social activists, and intellectuals who shaped the political, social, and intellectual history of late colonial and early postcolonial India, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. I intend to show how these personalities located in specific imperial and national spaces were selectively connected with each other and thus integrated into a global network that facilitated the exchange of ideas and information on secularism and religious pluralism. Beyond direct patterns of exchange, they shared other forms of common ground. This common ground was not exclusively the result of connectivity but of resemblance, intersection, and comparability in at least four different ways.

For one, they shared certain ideas about diversity. These progressive thinkers acknowledged religious as well as ethnic diversity as an insurmountable actuality that deeply shaped their societies. Because this diversity was to them an established fact, it was both a precondition of postcolonial politics and at the same time one of the key subjects of political intervention inseparably connected with questions of legitimacy, institutional arrangements, and social as well as political power. For this reason, the organisation and ultimately the handling of diversity through secularism were a core element of their political ideas.

Second, these milieus shared similar sources of inspiration. Many of them had come into contact with Karl Marx’s political economy and Max Weber’s ideas on state, economy and (Asian) religion, were guided by Mazzini’s thoughts on nationalism, or were inspired by Gandhi’s political philosophy and non-violent strategies.⁴ These sources were themselves global perspectives on social phenomena and political solutions that transgressed national boundaries. These perspectives also had a clear political dimension. In the interwar period, many Asian, African, and Latin American activists had met in European cosmopolitan cities such as Paris, Brussels, or London. Their shared experience of migration became the framework for their own cosmopolitan anti-imperialism.⁵ Back in the colonies they perceived the major ideological confrontations of their time including the struggle against fascism, imperial racism, inter-religious conflict, or the Cold War largely in secular terms. To meet these challenges they enhanced international cooperation, including the League against Imperialism Congress in Brussels in 1927, the Asian Relations conference in Delhi 1947, and the Bandung Conference in 1955.⁶ In this light, the following chapter is a search for what Akira Iriye has once called the “transnational state of mind” that shaped ideas about the state, religion, and secularism.⁷

Third, these progressive milieus were confronted with similar challenges within their national territories for which they formulated strikingly similar answers. In this case, the transnational scale stems not necessarily from direct connection and exchange across borders but from the comparability of otherwise hardly interdependent patterns.⁸ Before independence, these challenges included the collective experience of imperialism, the Great Depression, and the Second World War. After independence, this experience turned into a shared memory that guided the perception of new issues such as territorial integration, Cold War dynamics, poverty, illiteracy, forced migration, and the necessity of inter-religious coexistence for the survival of the young nations. The following discussion of these challenges and, more importantly, the ideas with which they were met is selective and cannot claim to comprise all the ideas that might have had an impact on secular practice. My focus on various transnational scales presupposes a choice of ideas I consider successful and relevant in this respect. The main point of this selection, however, is to illustrate that the development of ideas on secularism was intrinsically connected with a shared contemporary context.

Fourth, even without personal connection and exchange secular-minded thinkers, activists, and politicians did refer to each other in several specific ways. They observed each other through the media, learned from the others’ experience, and tried to draw theoretical as well as practical conclusions for their own local tasks. Political leaders and social activists informed themselves about how pluralism was defined and managed in other late colonial and postcolonial societies, particularly in Asia but also beyond, and drew their inspiration from similar examples they considered archetypical for their own cause. Mustafa Kemal’s Republic of Turkey was one such archetype of aspirations around secularism in other Asian societies. By highlighting these transnational perspectives, I intend to show the mutual dependencies of secularism ideas in their various local manifestations and, further, how ideas and modes of implementation reinforced each other.

Secularism as a strategy for spatial integration in Indonesia

In none of the four countries of interest here was territorial integration a self-evident fact after colonial rule. India, Malaysia, and Singapore all underwent different forms of spatial partition, during which their geographical borders were redrawn on the basis of ethnic as well as religious criteria. What is more, India and Indonesia inherited a politically highly fragmented territory, comprising princely states, local monarchies, as well as leftovers of colonised territories that were not integrated into the national geography until years after the formal achievement of political independence. In all these cases, religion and ethnic affiliation played some, in many cases even the decisive, role for national integration or separation, and consequently ideas of secularism took shape against the background of these historical experiences. These ideas were primarily meant to provide a means to prevent further territorial disputes or even ultimate disintegration. Secularism can historically be understood as a reaction to religion that functioned as a marker of spatial identity, geographical separatism, and political disintegration.

For Sukarno, the first Indonesian president who, in the eyes of US diplomacy, had an “obsession with national unity”,⁹ geographical as well as political unity was the most crucial precondition for a successful struggle against colonialism. In his view, though, Indonesia and India had different requirements for such a struggle. The Swadeshi movement in India had already succeeded in the early 20th century to unite a national bourgeoisie, which challenged the economic backbone of British imperialism. In Indonesia according to Sukarno, only a remnant bourgeoisie remained.¹⁰ It was thus vital for this society to find an alternative unifying force. Pancasila, Sukarno’s five principles of national coexistence, which called for mutual respect for all religions and thus prevented Islam from becoming a state religion, was a precondition as well as the fundament for national unity:

How could we possibly unite these groups, so diversified in religion and currents of thought, if we do not provide them with a basis, on which to stand together? The Pancasila is the answer to this question! (…) The Pancasila is like a belief, a mode of thinking, or a faith, not a religion, but an undefined faith of the people.¹¹

Although in its early form, Pancasila systematically excluded animists as well as followers of other traditional religions and made it hard for Hindus and Buddhists to feel truly appealed, in particular the first of these five principles, the belief in one God, was intended by Sukarno to stimulate spiritual compassion that would foster national integration among adherents of different religions. Ganis Harsono, a close companion of Sukarno and for a short period also Indonesia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, later recalled this integrative meaning of Pancasila in the following words:

The belief in God was natural. Indonesia was by and large an agrarian country in which the people depended entirely on the condition of the soil and of the water in the country to survive. This greatly affected their attitude of mind, and it made them religious, whatever religion they might embrace. But religion alone was not enough. People, Sukarno found, can be religious but still fight one another like barbarians unless there is another spiritual wisdom infused. The wisdom and compassion of a loving God – not a fearful God – was added. And through this, Sukarno hoped religious tolerance among his people would be nurtured. This love for God was thus his answer to promote mutual tolerance and understanding among his people.¹²

On the occasion of an Indonesian state visit to New Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, expressed his suspicion that in practice Pancasila might favour Islam over all other religions. Nehru nevertheless called it the “right thing”. Even though Indonesia might not always live up to it completely, “it shows us the right path, and even though there might be some evil behind it, by saying the right thing and trying to act up to it will gradually do away with that evil in the end.”¹³ Nehru recalled that these five principles, without being mentioned explicitly, were also the pillars of the agreement achieved between the People’s Republic of China and India relating to Tibet “to regulate our relations with each other”. In his view, Pancasila, a Sanskrit word, “was a suitable description of the five principles of international behaviour to which we subscribed” and were thus not only about national integration, but also about international solidarity and coexistence as a life principle.¹⁴

For Sukarno, on the other han...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: secularism as historical practice
• 1 Traces of a transnational mindset: thinking secularism for the postcolonial era
• 2 Contesting urban space: places of worship, the secular state, and social disintegration in post-Partition Delhi
• 3 Prosecuting the ‘non-secular’: the conflict with the RSS in Delhi after Partition
• 4 Redefining secularism in the Cold War: Christian missionaries in Malaya’s New Villages, 1948–1960
• 5 (Anti-)secularism and social struggle: Christian and Islamic groups during the anti-communist mass murder in Indonesia, 1965–1966
• 6 Religion and secular education in Java, Singapore, and India
• Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index