Murat AKAN

"the challenges to secularism and democracy in Turkey and India"

Religious nationalism is central in the current third wave of undemocratic movements around the world. While India and Turkey are both hotbeds of religious nationalism, they are also long-time pacemakers of modernity, democracy and secularism outside the West. The contrast between Indian and Turkish secularism cuts deep in the emerging secularism and the past political development literatures; one federal, the other a unitary state; one an example of “moderate,” the other of “rigid” secularism. This project explores the political struggles for these disparate paths in the founding of these nation-states, focusing on how certain institutions were written into law, and how the elites of each country assessed the developments in the other’s country. The project also answers the following questions: despite their vast differences, how have the two countries similarly produced religious nationalist political movements such as Islamist nationalist AKP, and Hindu nationalist BJP? How do the politics of these parties in certain spheres of secularism –speech, education, religious violence- compare? How do the different institutions of Turkish and Indian regimes mediate the struggle between the respective religious nationalist movements and the opposition they face?