The Politics of Religion, Nationalism, and Identity in Asia tackles the curious phenomenon of the rise of “[m]ajoritarian religious nationalism [that] promotes intolerance toward ethnic and religious minorities and hostility toward diversity” across Asia in the past few decades (p. 3). Jeff Kingston's analysis covers all of the major religions of the region—Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and different sects of Islam—and touches on a number of societies in this diverse part of the globe. Kingston's examination of each case is informed by his expert knowledge on the subject, extensive reading of recent scholarly research, his own direct observations, and numerous interviews.

On the topic of the rise of Hindutva in India (chapter 2), Kingston makes crucial updates to Ashis Nandy's 1991 assessment. Between the early 1990s and 2018, India went through a surge of violent chauvinist politics and clashes, which Kingston characterizes as “cultural wars” (p. 21). This crusade against India's secularist tradition has been carried out by the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Patriotic Organization), a Hindu extremist organization with strong ties with the current majority party, the Bharatiya Janata Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Examples of India's “cultural wars” include religious zealots’ efforts at the “saffronization” of history textbooks to glorify Hindu civilization's past and to “marginali[ze] Islamic and other foreign influences” on the country (p. 28).

Another endeavor of the Hindutva zealots has been “Shuddhi,” or “reconversion” of Muslims and Christians whom they claim had been forcibly converted from Hinduism in the past (p. 22). Citing the Home Ministry's investigation conducted in Kerala between 2011 and 2016 as evidence, Kingston shows that no such massive conversion of Hindus by other religions occurred (p. 23). Food culture is also a ground for India's chauvinist politics. The RSS has been pushing Modi's government to establish a countrywide ban on cow slaughtering, targeting Muslim minorities (p. 31). What Kingston presents is a convincing picture of Hindutva extremists’ recent migration from the “religious fringe to the mainstream” of populist politics that promotes a Hindu nationalist identity in spite of India's considerable diversity and its secularist tradition (p. 38).

As the “most extreme triumph of majoritarian politics in Asia,” Kingston discusses the violent persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar (p. 160). After debunking the myth that Buddhist monks are “nonviolent and detached from the petty concerns of the world” (p. 109), through examples from Japan, Tibet, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar (chapter 5), chapter 6 details the complex history of the Rohingya issue in Buddhist majority Myanmar. Under Ne Win's long military dictatorship (1962–88), Burmese-centric ethnonationalist politics resulted in the 1982 Citizenship Law that stripped the Rohingya of recognition as an ethnic group and citizenship. While there was no ground for this claim, Rohingya's “[s]tate-sponsored statelessness” (p. 149) was widely propagated by the ultranationalist Buddhist organization Ma Ba Tha (Association for the Protection of Race and Religion), often through fake news on social media. Kingston's interviews in 2017 with a number of young liberals—supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy—show that even these pro-democratic intellectuals share disdain for the Rohingya or are reluctant to express support for them in public.

Other chapters analyze themes such as the rise of Christianity (chapter 2), the force of globalization in the form of “Arabization” emanating from Saudi Arabia (chapter 4), and a wide range of trends related to LGBT rights (chapter 9). In these theme-based chapters, Kingston's transregional analyses are most superlatively presented. For instance, chapter 7 demonstrates the pattern of reciprocal escalation of violence between majoritarian repression of Islamic minorities in China, India, and Kashmir, among other places, and the growth of extremism based on shared grievances and victimhood. The most extreme case concerns the Uighurs who live in Xinjiang, China. In the global shockwaves following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Chinese government began tightening control of this Muslim minority group and engaged in “extreme state repression of Islam” (p. 166). Bans on religious meetings, fasting during Ramadan, and wearing of Muslim-style beards for men and face coverings for women were part of Beijing's “efforts to extinguish Uighur culture and identity” (p. 167). Not surprisingly, these extreme measures provoked a backlash. On March 1, 2014, militant Uighurs violently attacked ethnic Han in Kunming, killing twenty-nine of them. This incident, dubbed “China's 9/11,” further intensified state repression of the Uighurs (p. 167). As shown in this case, state-sponsored violence against minorities, which is often advanced with “invented menace” of separatism, generates a pattern of reciprocal violence.

Chapter 8 focuses on another recent phenomenon that is prevalent in Islamic communities across Asia: increasing use of blasphemy charges as weapons in majoritarian attacks on minorities. Kingston finds two concurrent developments that are closely linked to this trend. First, the “typhoon of Arabization” (p. 187), or the spread of puritanical Wahhabism and Salafism advanced by Saudi Arabia, has “transformed Islamic communities across the region at the expense of tolerance” (p. 186). Under this current, the minority Shi'a and Ahmadiyya Muslims are ostracized by the dominant Sunni Muslims. Second, the advent of internet and social media provided platforms for “diversity-deniers” (p. 250) to carry out sensational attacks on anyone with blasphemy charges. Through cases in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, Kingston lucidly demonstrates how “[d]emocratic competition creates space for this escalating attack on diversity” in which hysterical othering of minorities and state-sanctioned violent attacks on them for blasphemy charges ensures the majoritarian rule and conformity (p. 212).

While covering a great many societies of Asia with religious and cultural diversity, The Politics of Religion, Nationalism, and Identity in Asia superbly illuminates the trend of identity politics waged by the majority and how religions are often used in this crusade against secularism and tolerance toward diversity. Readers in Asian studies and religious studies will appreciate Kingston's wide and expert knowledge. Furthermore, anyone who is perplexed by the rise of religious conflicts, violence, and receding of tolerance in Asia will find this book highly enlightening. In fact, Kingston's concluding remarks have significant implications to non-Asian societies as well: “Denying a voice in mainstream politics to the angry and alienated is not a sustainable solution to maintain that system or the integrity of the political process. The risk to inclusiveness and radicalizing the excluded are undeniable, while the consequences are unpredictable and could well come back to haunt both the venal and well-intentioned” (p. 257).