New York: Routledge, 2018. xii, 305 pp. US$149.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-05202-4.
Secularism, Decolonisation, and the Cold War in South and Southeast Asia is a compelling and ambitious book by Clemens Six that proposes to shift the study of secularism from the margins of global history to the centre. In the process, it recasts our understanding of secularism from a Western-oriented, constitutional, or legal, practice of separating the state from religious affairs—and vice versa—to something far more nuanced and inclusive: “a comprehensive effort to accommodate religious diversity by locating the state beyond individual religious communities in a mode of strategic difference” (2). In this light, Six contends, it is a project undertaken by state and non-state actors to manage religious pluralism that, in the case of South and Southeast Asia, was shaped by the transnational “processes” of the Cold War and decolonization with “far-reaching consequences for the power structures, social relations, and political hegemonies within the societies concerned as well as in the international arena” (2–3).
Six makes his case through five case studies that examine how “religion was redefined as a political subject and relocated within society” in the avowedly secular states of India, Malaya, Indonesia, and Singapore as they transitioned from imperial rule to postcolonial state formation (6). These societies, he argues, shared many “questions and challenges” that arose from the dynamics of the Cold War and decolonization: “territorial integration, inter-religious violence, social and political reform, communism” and “mounting socio-economic problems” (10). Each of these concerns shaped, and was shaped by, the particular society’s secularism project.
Before getting to the case studies, however, Six opens with a chapter that examines the transnational exchange of ideas between actors in these four states about “how to organize religious pluralism after colonialism” and establish functional state and/or social institutions to sustain this diversity. These ideas, he continues, emerged “in close consideration of Western philosophy and history” but “were infused with local intellectual traditions and thereby translated to meet the specific requirements… historical challenges and social conditions” of a particular time and place (14–15). From there, he moves to Delhi, India after Partition with the first two case studies which deal with the way “urban space” was used to define and implement a “postcolonial secularism” (15). First, he looks at inter-religious conflicts that broke out over places of worship as they were intimately associated with the political and social position of Muslim and Hindu organizations in India’s postcolonial (and post-Partition) society. Second, he explores the Delhi government’s effort to deal with the Hindu nationalist organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as it violently harassed India’s Muslim population, challenging the government’s claims that India was a secular state.
The subsequent chapters introduce the Cold War, examining how it shaped the dynamic between the state, society, and religion in the waning days of Britain’s control of Malaya and Sukarno’s rule in Indonesia. The Malayan case considers the opportunities the Cold War presented Christian missionary groups who were working in the New Villages—a counterinsurgency initiative designed to separate the rural population from communist guerrillas and win them over to the government’s side—to define secularism through their social reform activities. The Indonesian example examines the prominence religion played in the mass violence against the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in 1965 and 1966 as Christian and Muslim organizations found common cause in their opposition to the PKI’s vision of a secular state and social structure. The final case is a comparative study of religious schools in the secularism projects of Java, India, and Singapore as these postcolonial states embarked on education reform. To stay relevant, private religious schools promoted a more secular education that emphasized math and sciences to produce graduates capable of being more productive members of society. However, they were still forced to contend with the problem of teaching religion as a subject—as it was part of their identity—and how it would be funded in a secular state.
Each case demonstrates how secularism projects consisted of a negotiation over the location of religion relative to the state carried out by a range of groups including intellectuals, local militias, women’s movements, youth organizations, missionaries and school officials who were all trying to defend their position amidst the turmoil of the burgeoning Cold War and the postcolonial moment. Often, secularism was used as a means to promote religious freedom as it created room for religious groups to maneuver as they sought to redefine the delicate boundary that existed between the state bureaucracy and religion.
This book is engaging, well-written, and extensively researched, drawing from archival sources in nine countries across South and Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America and an exhaustive array of secondary source material. It is also novel in its argument and strategic in its use of case studies, very effectively demonstrating how secularism should be conceived as a project undertaken by state and non-state actors that transcended social and national boundaries. Finally, Six’s book makes a very convincing case for moving secularism studies to the centre of twentieth-century global history, making it a must-read for scholars of international and global history, secular and postcolonial studies, and the Cold War.
Geoffrey C. Stewart
The University of Western Ontario, London