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