A contemporaneous tale of Turkey’s Erdogan and India’s Modi: using their religions as a cover-up 

Faizul Islam
Published : 18 August 2020, 10:29 AM
Updated : 18 August 2020, 10:29 AM

Two news headlines — "Erdogan joins thousands in first prayers at Hagia Sophia" and "Modi lays foundation stone for Ram temple in Ayodhya" — have captured international media attention in less than two weeks apart. History is replete with instances where political leaders have used to conceal their weaknesses and failures as well as promote their own personal agenda. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and India's Modi now join that growing list.

On Ju 24, Erdogan took part along with tens of thousands in Friday prayers in Hagia Sophia, seated on the first row of the Muslim's weekly afternoon congregational prayers. The nation's TV showed him reciting the Quran in fluent Arabic in a melodious voice.

Hagia Sophia was built as a cathedral by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in 537. The church was converted into a mosque with the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. The founding leader of the secular Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, converted the mosque into a museum in 1934.

Ignoring criticism from around the world, including Greece's Orthodox Christian church leaders, Erdogan issued a decree restoring the iconic building as a mosque in early July, soon after a Turkish high court ruled that the Hagia Sophia had been illegally made into a museum more than 80 years ago.

1) Erdogan's decision was consistent with his ambitions to raise Islam's profile in Turkey and to make his country a leader nation in the Islamic world. 2) His move is viewed at consolidating his conservative and religious support base at a time when his popularity is declining amid an economic slump, the country's isolation on the world stage following its military expeditions in Syria and Iraq, and amid international disputes over oil and gas rights in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

A similar scenario just took place in India. On Aug 5, Modi offered prayers and laid a ceremonial foundation stone for a grand Hindu temple at the site believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram in Uttar Pradesh's river city of Ayodhya. Hindus believe Muslims built a mosque — the Babri Mosque — over the temple in the 16th century.

The temple construction has been facilitated because of the country's Supreme Court verdict in November 2019 that ended a decades-long legal battle and awarded the site to Hindus. The Muslim community was given a five-acre plot at another location to build a new mosque to compensate for the five-century old Babri Mosque demolished by a mob of Hindu fanatics in December 1992, an incident when hundreds of people were killed.

Bolstered by landslide parliamentary election in 2019 and coupled with the ascendant Hindu nationalist movement, the Modi government on Aug 5, 2019 swiftly and unilaterally annulled Article 370 and 35a of the Indian constitution – thereby revoking the semiautonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.

Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), political flag bearers for the Hindu nationalist cause, chose Aug 5, 2020, to coincide with the first year anniversary of removing the semiautonomous status of Indian-administered Kashmir.

India has banned a special form of divorce previously allowed for Muslims. The BJP government says the intent was to protect Muslim women from a practice that gave them no voice or legal recourse.

On Aug 31, 2019 the Modi government published a new citizens' register in the northeastern state of Assam that left nearly two million residents without citizenship in any country. This deliberate and controversial process was widely believed to be an attempt to exclude Muslims, many of whom moved from then-East Bengal to Assam prior to 1947 partition of the Indian sub-continent. Those who were identified to be illegal immigrants were expected to be placed in detention camps.

Then there was the December 2019 passage of the Citizenship Amendment Law, which expedites citizenship for followers of six non-Muslim religions from three neighbouring Muslim-majority countries, namely, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. But, Muslims—including those from vulnerable minority sects or from other neighbouring states like China and Sri Lanka—would not receive such privilege.

India ranks third globally in recorded coronavirus infections. Even before the pandemic hit India, the economic growth rate fell from double-digits to 5 percent in recent years. Goldman Sachs expects the Indian economy to contract 5 percent in the current fiscal year. Moody's downgraded India's credit rating to the lowest investment grade level, a notch above the "junk status." On Modi's watch, India has reversed nearly 30 years of trade liberalisation. India abandoned plans to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade grouping last year. On the Organization for Economic Development's FDI Regulatory Restrictiveness Index of 70 countries, India ranked 62nd and Vietnam 53rd. A recent study by Nomura Securities found that of 56 countries that relocated production between April 2018 and August 2019, only three chose India. Nearly half of them went to Vietnam. Tensions between India and China remain high, due to disputed Himalaya border skirmishes in mid-June that left 20 Indian soldiers dead, and an unspecified number of Chinese troops were injured or died as well.

Washington, DC-based Freedom House, has made very scathing remarks about India in its Mar 4, 2020 report: "The Indian government's alarming departures from democratic norms under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party could blur the values-based distinction between Beijing and New Delhi."

In essence, the Hagia Sophia or the Ayodhya Hindu temple as religious edifices demonstrate that political leaders will use their religion to change the narrative of the time and engage in cultural wars to promote their self-interest.