The Politics of Religion in South and Southeast Asia

Ishtiaq Ahmed

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780415602273
• eBook ISBN: 9781136727023
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The notion of a 'politics of religion' refers to the increasing role that religion plays in the politics of the contemporary world. This book presents comparative country case studies on the politics of religion in South and South Asia, including India, Pakistan and Indonesia. The politics of religion calls into question the relevance of modernist notions of secularism and democracy, with the emphasis instead on going back to indigenous roots in search of authentic ideologies and models of state and nation building. Within the context of the individual countries, chapters focus on the consequences that politics of religion has on inclusive nation-building, democracy and the rights of individuals, minorities and women.

The book makes a contribution to both the theoretical and conceptual literature on the politics of religion as well as shed light on the implications and ramifications of the politics of religion on contemporary South Asian and South East Asian countries. It is of interest to students and scholars of South and South East Asian Studies, as well as Comparative Politics.

1 The politics of religion in South and Southeast Asia

Ishtiaq Ahmed

The notion of a ‘politics of religion’ refers to the increasing role that religion plays in the politics of the contemporary world. In some descriptions, often referring to industrialized countries where liberal democracy and its concomitant values of individual freedoms and minority rights are deeply entrenched, it is presented as an innocuous return of religion to the public sphere to cater for individuals craving moral and spiritual sustenance in a world beset with consumerism and crass materialism. Its return in the public sphere is therefore understood as a compensatory response for the alienation that obtains in capitalist societies. The conclusion drawn is that the secular state concept needs to be revisited and the assumption that modernity will do away with tradition is unwarranted.¹ Such public religion is an interesting object of study in its own right, but that is not the dominant character of the politics of religion in South and Southeast Asia. In this book, we deal primarily with politicized religious revivals that cannot reasonably be depicted as mere quest for a moral anchor in a world of flux and change.

It has been noted that in the early twentieth century, Protestant laymen in the United States were greatly perturbed by the challenges posed by modernity, liberalism, evolutionism and the scientific method to their Weltanschauung deriving from dogmatic theology. That movement came to be known as Christian fundamentalism. The Christian fundamentalists believed in the inerrancy of revealed truth as preserved in the Bible. Moreover, such a standpoint insisted on a literal reading of biblical texts. In the 1970s fundamentalism began to be applied as a generic term for politicized religious movements the world over that shared the same fear of modernity, especially the intellectual movement of liberal and free thought that it brought along. Perceiving that intellectual freedom, democracy and human rights threatened their distinct identity as a community of believers held together by acceptance of the absolute truth and unquestioning authority of their sacred scriptures, they began to fortify their sui generis religious identity by a selective retrieval of doctrines, beliefs and practices from a sacred past.² Such a development included internal reform aiming at purging ‘unauthentic’ accretions and deviations that had crept into the beliefs and practices of their members over the course of centuries and instead restoring a standardized version of the faith.

Now, whereas fundamentalism may be an apt description of politicized religious revivals pertaining to Middle Eastern religions such as Christianity, Islam and Judaism, where a core sacred scripture represented an authoritative and binding text that believers were supposed to read in a literal way and comply with, religions such as Hinduism and to a lesser extent Buddhism were not organized and structured in a similar manner. Yet, both Hindu and Buddhist extremists were no less militantly inclined in asserting that they constituted a distinct community and that such a community must be privileged to constitute the primary nation with special rights in the state. In practice it meant that through symbolic and substantive measures the state should institutionalize their religious identity as the official state identity and ideology. Such argumentation was directed at the modern ideas of secularism, liberalism and democracy and was meant to create a basis for differentiated rights instead of equal rights of individuals and groups that were outside their community.

Consequently, both these variations of politicized religious revivals represented religious nationalism seeking to dominate the state and use its power and authority to install discriminatory laws. Given its intrinsic arbitrariness and exclusionary thrust, the politics of religion that evolved was patently aggressive, seeking to supplant religious pluralism based on tolerance and acceptance of differences of beliefs and faith, the real as well as nominal equal status and rights of all members of society, and whatever modicum of liberal democracy existed in society with discriminatory constitutional and legal provisions. The experience from South and Southeast Asia confirms incontrovertibly that such a politics of religion has been invariably violence-prone and can take recourse to terrorism, wrecking innocent lives. In short, religious nationalism seeks to impose the will of brute majorities on hapless minorities; among assertive minorities, it takes the form of separatism and secessionism; and it provides an illegal basis for extraneous forces to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states in the name of worldwide religious bonds. At times, even in majoritarian situations, such as in Islamicdominant Indonesia and Malaysia, there have been assertive minority factions within that have tried to impose their views on the silent majority, thereby affecting the existing status quo. In effect, the politics of religion is subversive of the territorial nation-state project and if not brought under control can destabilize societies and threaten the security of states.

It is not, however, the argument of this book that religion in politics is ipso facto dysfunctional with regard to peace and stability. Recent history is replete with examples of religious opposition to totalitarianism and dictatorship. Similarly, religion can play a positive role in inspiring charity and philanthropy, and providing culture codes and symbols that emphasize the unity of humankind. Critiquing abuse of power and authority, rampant corruption and neglect of the weak and needy are issues on which religious authorities can legitimately express their opinion. Moreover, it is perfectly possible that a religious revival is no more than a collective endeavour by believers to perform their religious duties in a chaste and stringent manner. As long as it does not harm others and its objective is to seek solace in communal activism it does not constitute a politicized religious revival that has been identified as pernicious to communal harmony and peace within and without nations. In fact, democratic states must provide full freedom for such religious activism.

The destabilizing juggernaut of modernity

Modernity here is used in the sense of an intellectual transformation that resulted in the materialist, sense perception-based scientific method supplanting the reigning biblical creationist theology as the means of cognizing the world and using such knowledge to transform the natural economy and repetitive social order of feudalism into a dynamic economy of growth and social change. It gave birth to ideas of popular sovereignty and secularism as well. Needless to say, the subversion of the authority of the church was never complete and religion continued to appeal as a moral and spiritual code to substantial sections of Western societies.

In any event, the trajectories of modernization – with its democratic, emancipatory as well as anti-democratic and repressive trends – in the West have been quite different from those of Asia and Africa. In both cases, the processes of change and transformation wrought by modernity have by no means been peaceful and smooth. In the West, the way forward from feudalism to industrial society was marred by wars of religions and sects, civil wars, wars between classes and wars among nations. Beginning in the seventeenth century liberal thinkers, notably John Locke, began to defend the inalienable rights of individuals to a number of freedoms and thus rejected feudalism and absolutist political doctrines such as the divine right of kings. The liberal dispensation evolved gradually. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England, the American Declaration of Independence (1776) and the United States Constitution (1787), and the French Revolution’s (1789) principles enshrined in the Rights of Man and Citizens (1790) were triumphs of liberalism and capitalism. The US Constitution was the first to separate religion and state and thus herald the secular state, which simultaneously provided complete and unfettered religious freedom to citizens.

Liberalism was challenged by both left- and right-wing critics. From the left, the main criticism was directed at negative freedom or the absence of constraint upon the pursuit of egotistical individual rights to property and wealth without regard for community. On the other hand, right-wing critics deplored the rationalist bases of liberalism, which depreciated the role of traditions and customs, often immersed in religious myths. Its most vicious forms were Nazism and fascism. However, it was not until the end of the Second World War that liberal democracy became truly universal and inclusive in terms of granting equal rights to all citizens. In the United States such constitutional change had to wait till the late 1960s before racial discrimination was rejected as the basis for the rights of citizens.

The universalization of the Western liberal state model dates from the founding of the United Nations (1945). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which recognized a whole range of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights, was a triumph of liberal as well as social-democratic ideologies. Thereafter, UN conventions and covenants dealing with racism, genocide, freedom of religion and belief, discrimination against women, rights of the child, minority rights and so on were adopted. Thus in principle the paraphernalia of a modern polity with emphasis on equal rights for all, including scope for special measures for vulnerable groups, began to be recognized as legitimate claims under the law.

In this long haul, spanning several centuries, the movement of ideas and the struggle of social forces were dialectical – the state and society developing together through interaction. Often the movements for rights emanated in the underclass, though reforms from above also took place. In contrast, in South and Southeast Asia – as for that matter in other parts of Asia and Africa – the elites to whom power was transferred by the colonial rulers became agents of modernity while much of indigenous society was permeated by traditional values.

South and Southeast Asia’s encounters with colonialism and modernity

Pre-colonial South and Southeast Asia were religious and ethnic mosaics constituted by a plethora of local religious cults, deities, anti-conformist spiritual and social movements, and ethnic and linguistic groups, notwithstanding the fact that Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity constituted high cultures backed by princely rulers. On the whole, the popular fiction prevailed that the ruler was the guardian of all his subjects. Society in general was hierarchical but proto-pluralistic.

The people of South and Southeast Asia, as elsewhere in Asia and Africa, were exposed initially to modernity as a manifestation of superior military technology, with the help of which European colonial powers defeated them. The loss of political power and inevitably control over their affairs initially caused despair among the upper crust of indigenous societies. After establishing their military control, the colonial powers introduced such institutions and practices as were consistent with their economic and military interests. However, some reforms became necessary as the colonized societies were integrated into the imperialist economy. European penal and civil codes were introduced in modified forms, but religious laws were retained to cover personal matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance.

It was also a period in which invasions from the north-western passes into the Indian subcontinent virtually ceased and Britain consolidated power. On the other hand, Chinese workers and petty traders as well as Indian indentured labour were brought into Southeast Asia by the colonial authorities. There was some movement of people into French Indo-China as well from neighbouring countries. Such changes strained traditional hierarchies.

In the longer run, the colonial state could not prevent ideas of nationalism and freedom from foreign domination being transplanted among the peoples of South and Southeast Asia, as modern-educated native elites learned and imbibed them in colonial educational institutions, both at home and in their respective mother countries. They also became acquainted with liberal and socialist ideas. Also sections of the indigenous underclass, especially the so-called Untouchables of India, acquired awareness of their right to better treatment and status.

On the whole, the colonial powers based their power and authority on superior military and naval might, thereby exerting political, economic and social control over their distant colonies. Nevertheless, once colonial rule was terminated, the radical leaders of the freedom struggles in South and Southeast Asia were committed to modernizing their societies. In other cases, power passed into the hands of conservative land-owning elites who wanted to maintain the protopluralism that had existed before the colonial intervention and which was retained by the colonial states.

Membership in the United Nations and commitment to reform

South and Southeast Asian states sought membership of the United Nations as it was the harbinger of norms that appealed to them. Among them were the new concept of sovereign equality of all states and the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states, unless genocide and massive human rights violations within them threatened regional and world peace. However, the Charter simultaneously upheld norms and values that obligated member-states to promote human rights and create benign conditions for economic development. In short, the modern state was assumed to be essentially a secular entity purported to improve the life conditions of its people.

Now, in the 1950s and 1960s, religious parties and organizations already existed in these regions. Some of them had taken part in anti-colonial struggles and, after independence, began to develop standpoints on democracy and nation-building that were hostile to democracy and equal rights. In the deeply religious societies of South and Southeast Asia, the lives of people were affected in a profound and comprehensive manner by religious faith and, therefore, the erstwhile elites had to take cognition of such objective realities. Thus, the colonial practice of applying religious law to personal affairs dealing with marriage, divorce and inheritance were retained while religious extremism was kept at bay in the early years. In constitutional terms, some elites adopted secular, liberal democracy; others sought a synthesis between religious precepts and democracy; while some others adopted a religious basis for the state, albeit within a traditional proto-pluralist framework. Yet again, there were some that tried to impose their religious-oriented worldviews on the mainly dominant secular nationalists, often at great cost, as happened in Indonesia from 1948 to 1962. On the other hand, religion-based separatist movements continued to challenge the dominant majorities as happened in Thailand and the Philippines.

Violent conflicts of the 1960s

During the 1960s, on the world stage, the Cold War raged in full fury and Southeast Asia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos bore the full brunt in actual war of such a vicious conflict. Border wars between China and India in 1962 and between India and Pakistan in 1965, and the liquidation of Communists in Indonesia (PKI) in 1965 were not conflicts deriving strictly or even nominally from religious fervour; they were conflicts arising out of conflicting claims to territories, even though in the case of the PKI’s liquidation, the Indonesian military did mobilize political Islam to rout its atheist adversaries. However, in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Indonesia religious political parties had begun to vie for power.

Modernization and development in the 1970s

In the 1970s, the modernization projects in South and Southeast Asia took markedly different routes. To begin with, the oil crisis caused by the 1973 Arab–Israel War hit the world economy in a devastating manner. Not surprisingly, the poorer nations were affected most seriously as the bill for their development policies shot up. In South Asia, economic stagnation considerably slowed the processes of modernization and development, resulting in an intensification of the mass uprooting of youths from rural surroundings and adding them to the army of the unemployed in the towns and cities. Some relief was found through migration to the industrialized world by sections of the intelligentsia but most were stuck in an increasing pool of misery and despair. Some of them were sucked into left-wing guerrilla activities while some others were appropriated by right-wing religious and nationalist forces.

Such difficulties were seriously compounded by the fact that the states in South Asia lacked a shared sense of regional solidarity; instead the two major states, India and Pakistan, inherited bitter territorial disputes and memories of a bloody and painful separation that claimed at least one million lives and forced some twelve million people to vacate their homes in search of safety from genocide – Hindus and Sikhs to India if they happened to be living in areas that were given to Pakistan and Muslims in the opposite direction, to Pakistan, from their homes in what became India in 1947. The India–Pakistan rivalry and enmity resulted in massive spending on armament and defence. The other states – all having borders with India – complained of ‘Big Brotherly’ behaviour by it. Because of a lack of trust, economic interaction and cooperation remained minimal in South Asia. Even when the South Asia Regional Cooperation Association (SAARC) was founded in 1985, it did not fundamentally change the atmosphere of suspicion and fear among the South Asian states. Therefore South Asia still remains a very impoverished region, with the largest concentration of poor people in the world notwithstanding that India is now fast becoming a major economic power in Asia.

On the other hand, Southeast Asian countries were able to ride over the rising price of energy more successfully. South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore went through economic transformation within a neo-liberal market economy framework, and Malaysia and Thailand also joined the upward rise because of oil wealth and integration into the capitalist economy. Indonesia could also rely on income from oil. The neo-liberal Southeast Asian economies were backed by the strong state, mixing authoritarian and democratic practices. Increasing economic prosperity kept radicals of both left and right on the margins. The Philippines remained the exception to the rule in Southeast Asia as corruption among the ruling elite defeated its efforts to attain rapid economic growth and prosperity. Myanmar took an entirely different path and became an insular socialist polity ruled by a military junta.

Such developments within Southeast Asian nations were augmented by increasing regional cooperation through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), formed in August 1967. ASEAN members based their cooperation on two main principles – to resolve their disputes peacefully without recourse to force and to refrain from interfering in each others’ internal affa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Preface
• 1. The politics of religion in South and Southeast Asia
• 2. Religion as a political ideology in South Asia
• 3. Islamism beyond the Islamic heartland: A case study of Bangladesh
• 4. Secular versus Hindu nation-building: Dalit, Adivasi, Muslim and Christian experiences in India
• 5. Sikh politics and the Indo-Pak relationship
• 6. Religious nationalism and minorities in Pakistan: Constitutional and legal bases of discrimination
• 7. Women under Islamic Law in Pakistan
• 8. Religion as a political ideology in Southeast Asia
• 9. Political Islam in Indonesia
• 10. Religion and politics in the Philippines
• 11. Creating a Muslim majority in plural Malaysia: Undermining minority and women’s rights
• 12. Keeping politics and religion separate in the public square: Managed pluralism and the regulatory state in Singapore1
• 13. Transnational religious-political movements: Negotiating Hindutva in the diaspora
• 14. Negotiating rights through transnational puritan networks: Religious discourses; cyber technology and Pakistani women
• Index