Religious entanglements with the politics of infrastructure in the Maldives

Abstract In this article, we explore the material and discursive spaces around the Sinamale’ Bridge, which at the time of its construction was the sole infrastructure project financed by foreign investment in the Maldives archipelago—a distinction it held until recently with the start of the new Thilamale’ Bridge project funded by India. We look at the ways in which this Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure project produces, both socially and symbolically, particular and often contradictory conceptions of religion and nation in this ‘100 per cent Muslim’ country. Under the presidency of Yameen Abdulla (2013–2018), mega development projects were envisioned primarily as symbols and sources of economic transformation. Simultaneously, there was a targeted government effort to revive sentiments of nationalism across the country through the circulation of songs, folk stories, and national heroes. Elaborations of the concept of Dhivehinge isthiqlaal (Maldivian national sovereignty) conflated religiosity and nationalism in popular discourse on development. The concept is also used to frame narratives of geopolitical relations and tensions, particularly with reference to the competing regional profiles of China and India, which are often framed in the Maldives along domestic political party lines and pitted against the other as presenting a lesser or greater threat to Maldivian identity. Examining the symbolic deployment of the Bridge through the analytic lens of political theology, we argue that it affords a prominent locus of political contestation around which understandings of religion and national sovereignty come together at both the local level and on the sprawling trans-regional scale of the BRI.