From India led by Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi, to Israel, whose government includes ministers from religious Zionism, via Algeria, where Islamist rebel groups plunged the country into civil war during the “decade black” (1992-2002): various political-religious movements have acquired considerable weight in countries that are historically secular.
In The Paradox of National Liberations (PUF, 240 pages, 18 euros), the American philosopher Michael Walzer studies the trajectories of these three states – India, Algeria and Israel – to understand how, following independence obtained by an emancipatory left, a religious counter-revolution – which is embodied in different ideologies depending on the context – manages to seize minds and/or power.
In the three countries you studied, you describe secular national liberation movements, and even those opposed to religious traditions. What can we say about them?
In these three countries, I describe as “liberationist” certain movements which allowed access to independence, because they had a double ambition. They of course intended to free their people from a colonizer – British for India and Israel (in the certainly particular context preceding the birth of the Hebrew State), French for Algeria; and they also wanted to free him from a mentality considered retrograde, to move him towards a horizon of progress.
Also the liberationists of the Congress Party of India, the National Liberation Front [FLN] in Algeria or the left-wing Zionist party that was Mapaï in Israel, they criticized religious traditions for two things. Not only had they accustomed their people to passivity before the colonizer, but they were also an obstacle to its emancipation once independence had been acquired.
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If we find such ideas in Jawaharlal Nehru [1889-1964, premier chef de gouvernement indien] – but not with Gandhi, who is an exception –, Frantz Fanon [1925-1961, essayiste français impliqué dans la lutte pour l’indépendance de l’Algérie] or Ben Bella [1916-2012, premier président de la République algérienne]it is perhaps among the founders of Israel, for example Ben-Gurion [1886-1973]that they are most powerfully expressed.
For historical Zionists, Judaism is the religion of exile. In their minds, rabbis have, for centuries, taught Jews resigned submission. The creation of the State of Israel, a secular State, should therefore, according to them, make it possible to break with this humiliating docility by creating a “new Jew”, master of his destiny. In my opinion, Zionism was thus built against Judaism.
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