Nationalism and Religion

Abstract

Following the spectacular disintegration of the Soviet Union, popular and academic interest in nationalism and religion gathered momentum. In addition to recent ethnic clashes and religious conflicts in many parts of the world, particularly the Balkans, Central Asia, the Middle East, and many African states, questions have been raised about the relation between nationalism and religion. What, if any, is the relationship between nationalism and religion? To what extent can religion influence the emergence and maintenance of nationalism? Can religious beliefs and sentiments legitimize a nationalist ideology? What is meant by “religious nationalism,” and how is it related to nation-states, resistance, and violence? These questions were addressed during a one-day conference held at the London School of Economics, University of London on 22 March 1996. The well-attended conference was organized by the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, which was established in 1990 and has published the journal Nations and Nationalism since March 1995. The first paper at the Nationalism and Religion conference was presented by Bruce Kapferer (University College of London, London, UK). In his paper “Religious and Historical Metaphors in the Context of Nationalist Violence,” he addressed political action, the force of ideologies, and the relevance of mythological schemes to religious and ritual practice by means of a case study of Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka and the events of 1989-90. In his own words, his focus was “the dynamics of remythologization, or the process . . . whereby current political and economic forces are totalized within mythological schemes constructed in historical periods relatively independent of the circumstances of contemporary nationalism” and “the force of such ideological remythologizations, that is, how such remythologizations can became a passionate dimension of political activity and give it direction.” According to Kapferer, the relation of mythologization to routine religious beliefs and ritual practice is significant. In his paper, he argued that “nationalism is the creation of modernism and it is of a continuous dynamic nature whose power is embedded in and sanctified by the culture that has originated in the rituals of religion which provide a cosmology for nationalism. Cosmology of religion as diverse as nationalism itself that is far from universal claims but exists in diversity.” Kapferer’s theorization is based on his research in Sri Lanka where, he thinks, continuing conflict is related to nationalism based on cosmologies. The case of Sri Lanka provides an Seminars, Conferences, Addresses 425 excellent example of how the construction of state ideology is influenced by religious forces, in this case Buddhism. Kapferer asserted that religion had a deep territorialization aspect and that nationalism, in this sense, might have functioned as reterritorialization of a particular land and postcolonial state. One can discern from his statements that, in the construction of state ideology in Sri Lanka, myths written by monks and religious rituals were used to create a nationalist movement that eventually developed into a violent and destructive force in the context of Sri Lanka. Kapferer believes that the hierarchical order of the Sri Lankan state is embedded in the cosmology of ancient religious chronicles. Christopher Cviic (The Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, UK) analyzed another phenomenon taking place in Western Europe. His paper, “Chosen Peoples and Sacred Territories: The Balkans,” discussed the relationship between religion, nation, and state in the Balkans throughout history and analyzed how these forces have played themselves out in current events. According to Cviic, historical developments in the Balkans can provide important clues to understanding the ongoing Balkan crisis, in which the Orthodox Church has assumed the status of a nationalist institution representing the Serbian nation. The roots of these developments and the creation of a mythical “chosen” Serbian nation legitimized by religion can be traced to the defeat and fall of medieval Serbia at Kosova by the Ottomans. This defeat meant that they lost the land. However, under the Ottoman millet system, non-Muslim communities were allowed to organize their religious life and legal and educational institutions. This allowed the Serbs to preserve and develop their ethnic and religious identities under the leadership of the Orthodox Church. Thus, religion and identity became inextricably linked, and the Orthodox Church assumed an extremely important role in the public life of individual Balkan nations. Cviic pointed out that “in the case of the Serbs, their Orthodox Church played an important role in the formation of the modem Serbian nation-state by nurturing the myth of Kosova, named after the Kosova Polje defeat by the Turks. Essential to that myth was the view that by choosing to fight at Kosova Polje, the Serbs had opted for the Kingdom of Heaven. Later on the myth grew into a broader one, representing the Serbs as the martyr/victim people with a sacred mission of wresting their Holy Territory of Kosova from the infidel Muslims to whom it had fallen. A later variant of that myth defined Serbia in terms of wherever Serbian graves were to be found.” ...