This paper is a critical exploration of how religious rhetoric coupled with the presumably populist project of “development” has been utilized to advance neoliberal economic policies in Turkey and India. Grounded in historical narratives of conservative religious ideology and nationalism, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi or Justice and Development Party) in Turkey and BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) in India both emerged as reactions to the secular nation-building project championed by post-colonial and post-revolution secular political elites in both nations. These two parties are exemplars of what we refer to as neoliberla religiosity, a broader global movement of political parties (particularly in the Third World context) that use religiosity and social conservatism as a cloak to market neoliberal expansion under the guise of “development.” There are striking parallels in the trajectories of neoliberalism and ascendance of national religious parties in both countries. In both Turkey and India, nation-building elites, led by strong leaders in Ataturk and Nehru respectively, championed populist/socialist and secular-statist policies in an effort to mark a clear break from each country’s immediate past. In India, the immediate past was British colonial rule; in Turkey, the Ottoman Empire ruled by Islamic law. In each polity, the nation-building elite was represented in the founding political parties –Ataturk’s CHP in Turkey, and Nehru’s Indian National Congress Party in India. We trace the formation and rise of the AKP and BJP, analyzing the evolution of religious ideology and discourse within the development of these parties through an initial phase of religious-communal identity politics, to the current phase of neoliberal development coupled with a social conservative agenda. In both Turkey and India, religio-nationalist political movements eventually produce the current governing parties, AKP and BJP respectively, which in turn have become champions of a complex yet unsurprising mix of certain individual rights, implementation of conservative social policies, privatization projects, deregulation or easing of regulatory systems to benefit the private sector, to name a few. In tracing these parallel trajectories, we examine cases from the two countries’ constitutional courts and survey development projects including urban restructuring and environmental projects.