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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2018
The religious conceptions in this country are so vast that they cover every aspect of life from birth to death. There is nothing which is not religion … We ought [therefore] to strive hereafter to limit the definition of religion in such a manner that we shall not extend it beyond beliefs and such rituals as may be connected with ceremonials which are essentially religious.
—Bhimrao Ramji (B. R.) Ambedkar, addressing India's Constituent Assembly (1947–49) as Chairman of its Constitution-Drafting Committee and Minister of Law and JusticeThe fundamental point … is the separation, in an absolute sense, of religion and the state. Religion is to be revered as long as it remains a matter of conscience from the point of view of the state … In separating religion from the world, the state of the present century … allocates religion to the conscience as the real and eternal throne for it.
—Mahmut Esat, Minister of Justice, in his speech to the Turkish Grand National Assembly in February 1926 tabling the Republic's secular Civil Code based on the Swiss modelIn the late 1980s, the Turkish scholar Serif Mardin observed ‘the idea of a secular state’ to be the ‘foundation myth’ of the Turkish Republic. Indeed, the nearly transcendental status accorded to secularism (laiklik, based on the French laicite) in the ideological framework of the Republic after its formation, obscures the fact that the establishment of a secular state was not a declared goal of the Turkish struggle for national statehood of 1919–23 and hardly features in its discourse. To the contrary, during the Turkish war of independence (1919–22) Mustafa Kemal often deployed the rhetoric of Islamic solidarity, including the idiom of the ‘holy war’ against infidel enemies (Greeks, British, French, Armenians) to mobilize the masses. Whilst touring Anatolia, he would go into mosques, especially during the Friday prayer, take the minbar (pulpit) and deliver rousing khutbas (sermons) to the faithful gathered for the congregation. He frequently stressed the shared religious faith of the Turks and the Kurds, the two Muslim peoples inhabiting Anatolia, particularly in eastern Anatolia, where the large population of Kurds made them a critical factor in the struggle.
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