ABSTRACT

This chapter uses Polanyi's concept of 'self-protection of society' to argue that political Islam and political Hinduism are reactions to the effects of self-regulating market systems imposed by European powers on Ottoman and South Asian geographies. It reviews the possibilities for global democracy depend on the potential of Islamism to undermine Eurocentrism and combine with the world left on the one hand; and on the weakening of political Hinduism through constructive combinations between the Indian Left and the world Left. It also evaluates the genealogy of political Hinduism and the simultaneous formation of Hindu and Muslim identities lie within the framework of Indian nationalist movements for the self-protection of society in response to the commoditization, and communalization of colonial state-space. Contemporary political Islam remains a revolutionary and anti-systemic movement for the protection of Muslim societies targeted for primitive accumulation by the US and its European 'coalition of the willing'.