Religious nationalism 101: How the growth of state educational systems strengthened religious nationalist movements in colonial-era Egypt, North India, and Indonesia

Standard explanations for the strength of contemporary religious nationalist movements presume that it is state weakness---as measured primarily by the state's withdrawal from the provision of social services---that creates the conditions under which religious nationalist movements can thrive. I use the cases of three religious nationalist movements active in the colonial period---the Arya Samaj in north India, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Muhammadiya, in Indonesia---to demonstrate the opposite. It was precisely those colonies in which the colonial state was the most heavily involved in one particular aspect of social service provision---the creation of centralized Western-style educational systems---that religious nationalist movements were most likely not only to flourish during the colonial period but also to outlive the colonial context in which they were created to play an important role in post-independence politics. When the creation of Western-style education systems was accompanied by a pronounced role for missionaries in the educational arena, religious nationalist movements availed themselves of state educational subsidies to found their own alternative networks of schools. These schools contributed to the longevity of the movements by providing them with a platform from which to espouse their religiously-imagined conceptions of the nation and by funneling substantial human, financial, and organizational resources into the movement as a whole. When the foundation of Western-style educational systems was not accompanied by a strong missionary presence in education, religious nationalist movements did not found their own networks of schools, but they nonetheless benefitted from the incorporation of an unprecedentedly large proportion of the population into state-run schools by working as teachers within those schools. The dependence of religious nationalist movements on state institutions and resources to succeed raises fundamental questions, in turn, about the validity of analytical frameworks which presuppose the existence of the state as a category entirely separate from "society" and organized movements within it.