Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism

What is the relationship between the functioning of a democracy and the prior existence of religious plurality? In Negotiating Democracy and Religious Pluralism, Karen Barkey, Sudipta Kaviraj, and Vatsal Naresh put together a group of scholars to examine this question in Turkey, India, and Pakistan. The authors shed light on pre-modern legacies before the era of nation-states, the interactions between state and religion, and the development of violence and domination against religious outgroups. In the introduction, the editors provide a theoretical framework of the study and historical context of the Turkish, Indian, and Pakistani transition from imperial states to modern nation-states, focusing on the inherited management of religious pluralism in each context. Then, the contributors of the volume develop their arguments in three sections. In the first section, the authors discuss the historical trajectories of the transition from empire to nation-states. The authors analyze how states developed strategies for managing religious minorities by negotiating their political needs and religious doctrines (Saida Saeed), how the pluralist elite was taken out of politics by authoritarian political rulers in the late Ottoman period (Christine Phillou), the multiplicity of political theories to deal with the difference in Southeast Asia (Faisal Devji), Gandhi’s perspective on religious diversity that was informed by his religious convictions (Uday Mehta), and the views of earlier ideologues that prepared the groundwork for Islamism in Pakistan and Hindu nationalism in India (Humeira Iqtidar).

Democracy · Epistemology · Negotiation · Pluralism (philosophy) · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Law · Philosophy · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · Religious studies · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies