Secular Occident and Religious Orient?

The Western notion of geoculturally looking at the world through the prism of the Oriental-Occidental binary is flawed but continues nonetheless

- Snigdhendu Bhattacharya

ON February 6, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order establishing a task force "to end the anti-Christian weaponization" of the government and the "unlawful conduct targeting Christians". In a country where Christians make up two-thirds of the population, he promised to protect Christians from religious discrimination.

The task force, officially known as the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, will review the activities of all departments and agencies to identify and eliminate antiChristian policies, practices or conduct. The departments, as Trump's speech indicated the same day, include the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Trump argued that until and unless Christians in the US had religious liberty, "we don't have a free country". The next day, he signed an executive order to open a 'Faith Office' at the White House. Trump banned the legal recognition of transgender people by the US government. He pardoned anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading the entrances of abortion clinics.

Trump had literally announced the arrival of Christian nationalism-an ideology that fuses Christian religion with national character-at the helm of US affairs. Such a chain of developments in any Muslim or Hindu majority nation would have triggered a flurry of reportage over the capture of state power by religious fundamentalist/nationalist/communal forces. But in the case of the US, the coverage appears to be rather mellow.