Temple and Dam, Fez and Hat: The secular roots of religious politics in India and Turkey

This essay offers a comparative examination of the historical processes through which secularism was adopted and consolidated in India and Turkey. It examines the historical choice and the ideological practices that worked to establish secularism as an essential component of national identity in each country at their time of founding (Turkey in 1923 and India in 1947) and shows how this reinforced rather than defused the political salience of religion in both cases. The rise of religious political movements in later years is related to the presence and persistence of these pre-existing, secular repertoires. As the article argues, in India and Turkey, the ascendancy of religious politics is built on secular foundations.