Introduction:

Every so often when reading books of non-fiction written by great thinkers you come across one that you find yourself hoping is wrong about the multitude of depressing facts it presents. Line after line, this is the emotion that Meera Nanda’s latest book, “The God Market: How Globalization Is Making India More Hindu”, evokes. Beginning with post-independence India, Nanda walks us forward in time, pausing at influential points in the story to build a bullet-proof case for her central assertion that- in her words- “Globalization has been good to the Gods in India”. While it is a fast and thoroughly engaging read with all references relegated to the back pages, the sheer quantity of facts is still overwhelming at times.

Since my position on Nanda’s work is familiar to most followers of this website, I will present this review in an unconventional format. I will first describe the structure and content of the book. Then I will present some popular criticisms. Read the full story

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While it is not very difficult to be theoretical about one being or not being a Hindu, for those of us who are out in the field, sometimes faced by an audience of thousands, questions do get asked about what we are doing and/or whether we are the narrow end of the wedge being used by the missionaries to convert people to their religions. There are queries as to when we question the miracles and/or the articles of faith  of Hindus- which is not very difficult to do- and make them lose their faith, if there will be a spiritual vacuum into which the Christian missionaries would step into and convert the lot to their faith. While this would seem to be totally illogical to anyone who has an idea of what our movement is, it is also a fact that most of the audience does not know anything about our movement except the programs which are conducted for the public-generally the miracle exposure programs. So, this most popular face of the movement get projected as the only face of the movement visible to the people. Read the full story

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June 2009. Itarsi, Madhya Pradesh.

I was accompanying Prof. Narendra Nayak on his tour of MP and Bihar, conducting workshops exposing the miracle-men (and women!). Itarsi was reeling under scorching heat. We regularly gulped chilled bottled water to get some relief from the debilitating heat. Power cuts and load shedding - scheduled and unscheduled - added to the misery of the people. Business establishments - including roadside juice parlors - had installed diesel generators to get over the frequent power cuts. Sitting there in a tiny room in President’s Hotel, opposite Itarsi Railway Station, I could hear the booming sound of generators. I read in the newspapers that the whole of the State was similarly affected from a delayed monsoon. Wells and lakes had dried up. The Hitavada reported (June 19, 2009, Jabalpur edition) from the state capital, Bhopal, that the water level of Upper Lake, the life-line of the city, was at 1674ft- the lowest in its recorded history. In many parts of the city, police were called in to control the crowd collecting drinking water. It is thus only natural that the state government explored all available avenues to lessen the hardships of its people or at least to divert the wrath of its citizens.

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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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There was a protest meet held at Mangalore on the 20^th Feb against violence in the name of “Protection of Culture”. These groups consisting of antisocial elements, had been holding the city to ransom for the past several years through various acts directed mainly against people who did not conform to their so called value systems. Though that was flaunted as the main motive, the members of the groups are basically anti-social elements trying to take advantage of the situation in which a pro-Hindutva party had come to power. These so called cultural police are not bound by proprieties and niceties such as civil rights or even the fundamental rights under the constitution. Theirs is the right of might. Anyone who protests against their modus operandi would be hounded, persecuted and even prosecuted by an ever compliant government machinery.

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