Voters in India begin casting ballots in their country’s general elections on Friday and the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, is all but certain to be re-elected. The 73-year-old leader, who first came to power in 2014, is a symbol of a worrying worldwide trend of the rapprochement between nationalism and religion. The strongman of India, who shamelessly uses Hinduism to consolidate his power, has many associates. Whether in Russia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Israel, Turkey, or in evangelical Trumpist America, the sword no longer hesitates to lean on the pinions of all kinds in order to install authoritarian and sometimes repressive regimes. The nationalism of the 19th and 20th centuries was intended to be secular. The nationalism of the 21st century, on the other hand, is rooted in religious identities, taking advantage of people’s fears that globalization is threatening their culture and values.
Should we see this as a danger, a clash of religions? It’s not as simple as that. After all, Orthodox Russia is fighting Orthodox Ukraine, with the support of an Islamist Erdogan… In reality, the frontier of identity-based nationalism is crossing within religions themselves. This transformation of the link between religion and nationalism undoubtedly owes much to populists. For the latter, religion is the ideal instrument for defending “the people” against the foreigners and minorities who are accused of betraying a nation defined by its religion.
Places of worship are reinvested in this sense, as when Modi inaugurated a temple on the site of a former mosque that was destroyed by Hindu nationalists. The first victims of this unholy alliance are a country’s religious minorities, such as Muslims and Christians in India. The defense of religious freedom and minorities must therefore remain the cardinal value of international law. Not just in India, but throughout the world.
Isabelle de Gaulmyn is a senior editor at La Croix and a former Vatican correspondent.
