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Review of 'The God market: How globalization is making India more Hindu' by Meera Nanda. Neoliberalism, economic growth and the rise of religiosity in India.
Review of 'The God market: How globalization is making India more Hindu' by Meera Nanda. Neoliberalism, economic growth and the rise of religiosity in India.
Review of 'The God market: How globalization is making India more Hindu' by Meera Nanda. Neoliberalism, economic growth and the rise of religiosity in India.
Neoliberalism, economic growth and the rise of religiosity in India. By Joshua F Leach
A s globalisation brings out the
latent faddishness in every corner of the society, journalists and commentators are often the first to be tugged along in its wake. Take the pre-modern past. At the heart of the book is an open challenge to this reading of globalisation. Nanda herself is a globalist and internationalist – that is not the issue. She which assumes the inherent goodness of the market mechanism. One of the favourite anecdotes of neoliberal writers on India’s economic transformation, quoted by Nanda, recent economic growth in India, over has nothing whatsoever to say against the involves a young teenager who is saving which every pundit and observer has shrinking of the world as such. up money for computer school so that he been crowing for the past two decades. What she finds distressing, rather, is can follow the footsteps of the richest man The most reductionist analyses and the economic ideology of neoliberalism, in the world, whom he knows as Bilgay. superlative praise have been produced on with its free market gospel and dogmatic This story is taken by such writers as sure the subject, and there is no end in sight. opposition to social spending. The evidence that the horizons of ordinary One writer who has refused to join the unwarranted conflation of these two ideas Indians are widening, as are statistics chorus, however, is Meera Nanda. – globalisation and neoliberalism – is one indicating that poverty in India has A well-respected philosopher of of the chief objects of her ridicule. To been reduced since free market reforms science working at the Jawaharlal Nehru make her case, Nanda must argue against were implemented in the 1990s and that University, Nanda has made something two decades of commentary emanating economic growth has skyrocketed. of a name for herself as a deflater of from the West and from India, all of The reverse side of all this, as faddishness. Not only because of its Nanda states, is that for every teenager shallowness, but also because of the dreaming of becoming Bilgay there are evil which it can disguise: the ancient millions upon millions who can not injustices and prejudices which can lie even dream of feeding their families. behind it. The Indians being pulled out of poverty Her first book, Prophets facing backward, over the last years have not entered the was a dissection of the supposedly new, middle class, which makes up a stable ground-breaking ideas of postmodernism. fifth of the population and does not open This complex academic phenomenon its doors to newcomers. Rather, India’s stresses the impossibility of discovering a stellar economic growth has been jobless single truth or universal moral standard. for most of the population. Her point in that book was that the Those who have left the ranks of fad of postmodernism, fresh though it the extremely poor have mostly moved may be, is actually lending credence to into the teeming informal sector, where the most reactionary, far-right forces in they scratch a living on less than half a India and around the world. From the dollar per day. These people are poor notion that there is no truth, after all, by any human standard, but just well- Holocaust denial and similar frauds are off enough to pull themselves above the only a step away. official poverty line. Indians living in this In The God market, her latest work, horrifying condition make up as much Nanda takes aim at another and much as 80% of the population, or roughly 836 more significant fad: globalisation, which, million men, women, and children. it is often claimed, will wash over India Meanwhile, the Indian state has come like a rejuvenating stream. While it may down hard in support of the very rich, leave damage and debris in its wake, the dispossessing farmers of their land to The God Market story goes, it will ultimately save India How globalization is making India more Hindu make way for large corporations (leading from its age-old poverty, its Hindu rate By Meera Nanda to unprecedented suicide rates among of economic growth, and the relics of its Random House, 2010 the rural poor), and slashing all social
44 ISSUE 5 Independent World report
provisions. Money is quite literally being This is the national religious ideology taken from the poor and given to the rich of an aspiring global power. It seeks to These, she argues, are increasingly – an outright inversion of the Robin Hood find the sources of its newfound success turning to religion. Far from style of economic justice. in the innate characteristics of the Hindu As a result of this, India has slid in the mind – a sorry reductionist explanation becoming secularised through global human development index from a for economic growth which has been education and an encounter position of 124 to 132 in only eight years parroted by Western journalists all along – this, despite having one of the world’s the way. with the outside world, the most impressive growth rates. China, by Of course, the achievements of India Indian middle class is shifting comparison, sits at a rank of 81. are attributable as much to Muslims, Perhaps more importantly, we may Christians, Sikhs, Jains, and atheists toward the theological. India is say that however many Bilgays and as to Hindus. The Indian constitution, a nation of many religions, yet slumdog millionaires India produces, they renowned for its democratic and will always be few and far between. progressive content, was authored by when one speaks of the religion However much wealth India creates due a Dalit Buddhist, and the heroes of the of the wealthy, one is speaking to its growth, the desperately poor and independence struggle came from every downtrodden will still form a seething, conceivable caste and religious group. of Hinduism – and Hinduism, at resentful majority, unless India finds a Never mind – it is the praises of that, of a very strange and un- way to pursue social justice along with Hindu science, Hindu wisdom, and so forth growth, or what Amit Bhaduri has called which the middle class now sing, and Gandhian variety. Sleek, modern, development with dignity. international commentators have no and repackaged to suit the That is not the path it appears to qualms about joining in. Here we see be taking, however, and the situation will faddishness at its most craven – we might needs of the rich and powerful, no doubt get worse before it gets better. even say deadly, for the worship of Hindu this new religion is shot Rather than pursue justice, the Indian qualities is often used to legitimise the privileged classes are sealing themselves victimisation of religious minorities. through with a hearty dose of within a police-protected bubble, a Not only does the new religion help an nationalism and triumphalism. situation reflected in the fact that one aspiring middle class feel good about its of the few booming job markets at the own civilisation, it also assuages any guilt moment is private security. they may feel about their wealth. The vast which is obvious enough. Nor is it merely The notion that neoliberalism is majority of the Indian middle class are to attack the callousness which grows leading to economic progress in India is decent people, after all. Statistics quoted out of a religiously-sanctioned quest for therefore the first great myth that Nanda by Nanda show that nearly all of them competitive edge. Rather, it is to challenge explodes, and she does so with facts believe that the government should help the entire notion that globalisation and such as these. The second myth is that the poor and that it is morally preferable the unfettered free market are progressive it is secularising and modernising the to live simply than ostentatiously. forces which will ultimately liberate consciousness of the Indian people. It is However, the new religion is working India. this latter point which Nanda addresses to undo such guilt, both in India and The fact is that one simply cannot in her analysis of the mentality of the abroad. This is the phenomenon of Karmic pursue unjust social policies and expect Indian privileged classes. capitalism which has reached even into that they will result in social justice. These, she argues, are increasingly Western business schools. Packaging and Farmers’ suicides, desperate poverty, and turning to religion. Far from becoming selling the wisdom of the East everywhere cheap religiosity in the present do not secularised through education and an from Mumbai streets to corporate presage equality and secularism in the encounter with the outside world, the boardrooms, this new ideology suggests future. To free ourselves of the bankrupt Indian middle class is shifting toward that Hindu texts such as the Gita are notion that they do, or that they are the theological. India is a nation of many designed to guarantee worldly success. necessary evils, will take some time. religions, yet when one speaks of the Ancient self-help books, as it were. With this book, Meera Nanda has religion of the wealthy, one is speaking The wildly popular Deepak Chopra made a step in the right direction. � of Hinduism – and Hinduism, at that, of a and his ilk have produced a steady stream very strange and un-Gandhian variety. of faddish guru-ism in recent years, all Sleek, modern, and repackaged to suit intended to offer spiritual secrets which the needs of the rich and powerful, this will grant the consumer wealth in this life. new religion is shot through with a hearty One of the most common prayers heard dose of nationalism and triumphalism, in the booming Hindu temple industry mostly preached by the BJP, the is addressed to Lakshmi, the goddess of opposition political party in India which wealth. Joshua F Leach – currently a student at has been responsible in the past for race Nanda’s purpose is not merely to the University of Chicago – is a writer and riots which killed thousands of Muslims. demonstrate the inanity of all this, human rights advocate.