How do Politics and religion go hand in hand?
Answers
Gandhiji used to say that religion can never be separated from politics. What he meant by religion was not Hinduism or Islam but moral values that inform all religions. He believed that politics must be guided by the morals and ethics drawn from religion.
Human rights group in one country has argued that most of the victims of communal riots in India are people from religious minorities. They have demanded that the government should protect religious minorities.
Women’s movements have argued that ‘family laws’ of all religions discriminate against women. So they have demanded that the government should change these laws to make them more equitable.
The most functional definition for religion I have is an abstract and meaningful sense of a system of perceiving and interpreting the world through structured hierarchies of value, which allows us to derive meaning and to aim at goals, while keeping our actions in line with that hierarchy of values. (Keeping it in the abstract actually allows it to include all the things we call religion)
Politics, is a field that seeks to direct the social decisions and actions of a population, aiming at the best available outcome. (Let’s assume everyone is acting in good faith, and no one is just trying to act purely destructively, in the “get rich - and to hell with the world” way)
You can already see the overlap. direction of social decisions and actions (of a population or individual), are squarely in the religious sphere. On top of that, the idea of a “best available outcome” is a value-claim, and a hierarchical value-claim at that. Again, there’s something of a full overlap.
[In case you’re wondering, the above definition of religion also happens to include atheists, because religion is not about believing in an old white man in the sky. An atheist still treats their highest moral values (value-hierarchy again) the same way a religious person treats the idea of God. As a result, we can say that all human behavior is religion-like in these respects, regardless of one’s belief in the supernatural - because that part isn’t a necessary part of “religion” anyway. This is also a point made by Jung.]
Since the political realm is an expression of those values that are “religion-like,” the connection is necessary.
Now, just because politics fall under the “religion-like” realm, does not mean that you try to force people to believe ALL the things in your “religion-like” ideology. This principle is fairly old. The Romans forced the conquered people (who did not believe in Roman gods) to pay taxes - expression of political unity with the Roman state - but allowed them to worship their own gods and all that. There are still Jews in Iran who have been there since the Persians enslaved them way back when, and who chose not to go back home when they were released. The continuous change of political structure governing that region allowed the Jews to remain religiously Jewish, but like all other citizens, they paid taxes and had to abide by the political norms. If that was not the case, you’d never find any religious structures of non-dominant ideology.
In fact, here in the US (though the same is true all over), a great deal of ideology underlying the founding principles of the country are the result of Christian ideas. Case in point, “Inalienable Rights” of Thomas Jefferson are Christian “Natural Law” - which is an expression of the Divine. (Which is not to say that the founding fathers of the US constitution were “religious” Christians in any orthodox sense. Instead, they were the product of their context, which was heavily religious)
Ultimately, not only are politics and religion connected, they can’t seem to be disconnected. Even when we don’t have an overtly religious values in play, the very system of hierarchical structuring we all use is about as religious in its structure as you could be.