Transnational Religious Communities in the International Relations - Research Paper Example

The transnational religious communities leading the Sikh’s cause has produced conflict with territorialized nation-state which has vowed to work towards secularization of civil society. In the paper, I have argued that the rise of trans-national religious actors would affect state sovereignty. In this regard, I will focus on two religious societies, viz., imagined Ummah and the Sikh Diaspora.This study focuses on how transnational religious communities have come to acquire a critical role in reshaping the very canvas of international politics.

For a long time not only did religion and all its manifestations have any role in international politics but it was kept away purposefully from statecraft. The 1648 Westphalia treaty envisioned European states’ sovereignty as the supreme manifestation of people’s secular will above all else. The system did provide credibility for much of the time until as late as later half of the 20th century. Religion, however, started to interfere with state politics in a variety of ways, thereby, becoming an effective outlet for people’s, expression of pent up religious desires and dreams.

The migrant community or in other words, the transnational communities who went to the US and the European countries as part of the post-colonial ‘second wave’ of migration had strong roots in religion which they did not subvert under influence of Western secularism. Religion in international relations is a relatively new phenomenon.The post-Westphalia international politics takes into account the central role of state sovereignty, unchallenged until the arrival of globalization in the 1980s.

Globalization, however, has created new socio-political spaces for transnational actors as well as challenges for the state and its citizens alike. The transnational actors have used globalization as a very handy tool to advance the cause of ‘deterritorialized’ religious nationalism.