This article originally appeared in the March 2010 edition of Himal Magazine.

The defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s general elections last year was greeted with relief by secularists and democrats everywhere. Not entirely unreasonably: they read the fact that the BJP lost a solid 3.4 percent of its previous poll share as evidence that Indian voters had rejected the majoritarian politics of Hindu pride and prejudice, peddled by the BJP and the rest of the Sangh Parivar. The general consensus is that the ideology of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, has lost its appeal among the urban youth and middle classes - that secularism has won and “God has left politics,” to borrow the elegant title of a recent essay by Delhi journalist Hartosh Singh Bal. Market reforms and globalisation emerge as the stars of this saga. Both the friends and critics of the BJP agree that it is the fervour for making money in India’s roaring economy that doused the flames of Hindu nationalism from the hearts of the middle classes. But that is not all. The ‘free’ market, we are told by a section of influential Dalit intellectuals, will not only free India from the menace of communal violence, but will also lift the curse of caste oppression. It is fair to say that the gospel of globalisation is gaining ground in India. Read the full story

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Note: This article first appeared in The Frontline as a cover story.

WHAT is good for the market is proving to be good for the gods in India. The more material acquisitions the middle classes make, the more pujas and homas they feel compelled to perform. Every vahan (vehicle) must have its puja, as must every tiny plot of bhoomi (land) before anything can be built upon it. Every puja, in turn, must have an astrologer or two and a vastu shastri, too. And then, every astrologer and vastu shastri worth his/her name must know how to work a computer, speak in English, and be “scientific” about it all.

Watching India’s thriving god market, one cannot help asking a simple question: where are all these seemingly modern pujaris, astrologers, vastu shastris and other retailers of rituals coming from? How does the supply of ritualists keep pace with the bottomless demand 21st century-Hindus have for religious rituals of all kinds?

Deemed universities have always served as crucial links in the supply chain that runs from traditional gurukuls and Vedic pathshalas to the homes, temples, offices, shops and even corporate boardrooms of the middle classes in India, going all the way to NRIs. The diplomas and degrees conferred by these universities, the majority of which are funded by taxpayers’ money, are actively “modernising” Hindu priestcraft and turning it into an economically comfortable middle-class occupation.

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This article has appeared in The Telegraph.

BJP has worked hard to create the impression that it is not pursuing an aggressive Hindutva agenda in the 2009 Lok Sabha election. It has made good governance, development and security its election plank, and has promised to give us a majboot neta, nirnayak sarkar. Old Hindutva favorites like the Ram temple, Ram Sethu and the much- beloved “cow and its progeny” do make an appearance in the party’s manifesto, but they are clubbed together under the unobjectionable idea of “preserving our cultural heritage” and tacked at the very end.

But like a leopard can’t change its spots, the party of saffron can’t turn saffron, green and white without losing its very reason for being.

The truth is that in this election, the BJP has pursued a Hindu agenda which, in the long run, may prove to be far more radical than the hot-button issues that we are all familiar with. The new agenda can best be described as Hindukaran of voters, that is, making voters vote as Hindus First.

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Update: The title of Meera Nanda’s upcoming book will be “The God Market: How Globalization is making India more Hindu” and not “God and Globalization in India” as previously reported. The book will be published by Random House later this year. This post contains the full text of the introduction, except for the chapter outline and personal notes.

Introduction: God and Globalization in India

Meera Nanda

India had its own “why do they hate us?” moment after the city of Mumbai came under attack in late November 2008 by a bunch of gunmen with links to terrorist outfits based in Pakistan. Many in India answered the question much the same way George Bush famously explained the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States: Islamic terrorists hate us because we are good and they are evil; we are free and democratic and they hate freedom and democracy. Some took this rhetoric even further and argued that we are good, free and democratic because we are a Hindu nation, and the Islamists hate us because we are Hindus.

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Editor’s Note: Meera Nanda is spending a year in Delhi at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. During this time she will be contributing stories of her experiences in the capital city.

This first of her entries from Delhi comes in the aftermath of some of the ugliest “moral policing” by the right-wing Hindu nationalists. A few days before Valentine’s Day this year a group of activists from the fringe group Sri Ram Sena attacked young women who were drinking at a pub in Mangalore. This incident was reported widely and it provoked young people all over the country to protest the attacks. One group, the Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women, with over 50,000 members on facebook, decided to send Pink Chaddis (pink underwear) as a form of protest to the leaders of the extremist Hindu groups.

The civil court building happens to be barely five minutes walk from my parental home in Chandigarh. Outside this house of justice, I witnessed the kidnapping of a young woman who had come there seeking justice.

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This post is inspired by T.V. Manoj’s earlier post “Why I Criticize Hinduism the Most.”

Like Manoj and other Indian rationalists, I have often been chided by fellow Indians - fairly mainstream, middle-class bhadralok, most of them — for picking on Hinduism.  I am asked if I am so concerned about irrationalities and pseudo-sciences, why don’t I take on Islam and Christianity?  Aren’t they full of faith-based nonsense? Hinduism, my critics tell me, is far more rational and “scientific” than these other “Semitic” religions in which you have to take the revelation purely on faith, no questions asked. I am often told rather gleefully that all my labors are wasted because they I am not aiming my rationalism against Christians and Muslims.   Some go even further and assume that because I am critical of Hinduism, I must be a secret Christian, and I must be working for “the proselytizers”! Apparently, no one born a Hindu can legitimately raise questions about the “Eternal Truths” of the faith.

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“New cars smell the same in India as they do in the US,” was the first thought that came to my mind as I took my seat in my nephew’s new Hyundai sedan in which he had come to pick me up from the Chandigarh airport. It was the first of August and I had just arrived in India for a short visit. My home-town was my first stop.

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