India/western Sociology

[ramana]

Meanwhile book review of Meera Nanda- aka indigenous Wendy Donniger.

from Telegraph, 22 OCt 2009....

Return of the Gods

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->THE RETURN OF THE GODS 


The God Market: How globalization is making India more Hindu By Meera Nanda, Random House, Rs 395

If you want one good reason to read Meera Nanda’s book, you need not look far. It is evident from the subtitle that this is a provocative work, although Nanda insists, rather gratuitously, that it is not “a book of polemics or ideological argumentation”. <b>According to her, “as India is liberalizing and globalizing its economy, the country is experiencing a rising tide of popular Hinduism”, which is being cultivated by “the emerging state-temple-corporate complex [that is] replacing the more secular public institutions of the Nehruvian era”.</b> There can hardly be any quarrel with this line,  :eek: except that Nanda, at times, can be quite combative, even a bit blinkered, while pursuing it. <b>The other problem is her occasionally lopsided logic, a result of her excessive reliance on facts and figures at the expense of politics and history.</b> :mrgreen:

Consider her claim that “this book is about Hinduism and not about organized movements for Hindutva or Hindu nationalism”, followed by a reference to India’s “saffron-tinged superpower dreams” a few lines later. If this is not confusing enough, wait until you get through the rest of the book, a large chunk of which is devoted to charting the rise of “popular Hinduism” among the middle and upper classes. <b>In Nanda’s lexicon, “popular Hinduism” stands for the aam admi’s increasing propensity for observing archaic rituals and allowing themselves to be led by godmen (and women) or spiritual gurus who preach the Art of Living.</b> Many of these influential figures are co-opted by the Hindu far-Right to garner electoral support. These are fascinating, if familiar, facts. Only it remains unclear as to how Nanda’s distinction between popular Hinduism and Hindutva holds true after she herself provides scores of examples to show that the line between the two, in modern India, is rapidly becoming blurred.

Nanda makes no secret of her disdain for religion. <b>She bitterly complains that “religious belief remains widespread among scientists” in India, as if atheism is a pre-condition for pursuing science. Her innate resistance to religion makes her gloss over crucial moments in the history of Indian modernity.</b> In Karnataka, for instance, the traditional goddess of smallpox, Mariamman, has been reinvented as AIDS-amman by a schoolteacher to increase public awareness about the disease. No doubt a beguiling social experiment, but Nanda reserves only scorn for such developments. <b>When she bemoans the emergence of China as “one of the most religious countries in the world” from being a “once atheistic” nation, one is seriously alarmed. Perhaps she is not aware of the atrocious means by which atheism was imposed on China by the Communist Party. Or, maybe, she prefers not to go too deep into matters that can potentially shake her premises.</b>  :mrgreen: For instance, while criticizing the illegal allocation of land for temples, Nanda is silent about the recent irregularities of the wakf board involving property earmarked for underprivileged Muslims.

Nanda would probably prefer a world without religion (although she grudgingly admits in the final chapter that religion is a fact of social life). Hers is an essentially utopian, if not a simplistic, vision, disengaged from the complex reality that is India. <b>Nanda is charmed by Nehruvian socialism, which, she believes, instilled a spirit of secularism close to the letter of the Constitution. So, according to this logic, the economic model followed by Nehru was also a good thing, which the liberalization of the Nineties destroyed.</b>  <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo-->( Nanda admits that the economy was opened up in 1991 to “reduce fiscal deficit”. In reality, the picture was far more disquieting: in 1991, India was reeling from soaring oil prices during the Gulf War, close to defaulting on international debt, and burdened with a corrupt public sector. The economy was deregulated with caution. The then prime minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, and finance minister, Manmohan Singh, carefully controlled prices of essential commodities to avoid inflation.

However, avowed critic of neo-liberalism that Nanda is, she cares neither for good intentions nor for a balanced view, convinced that liberalization has spawned inequality and is the sole reason behind India’s dismal position on the United Nations Human Development Index. Politics does not figure much in her calculations. (The Singur agitation, in Nanda’s summary, becomes a peasants’ revolt against global forces, never mind the complex dimensions of that episode.)

Meera Nanda’s self-proclaimed “work of honest and rigorous scholarship” has much to offer in terms of facts, but not enough by way of nuanced interpretation. More rigorous editing would have made her arguments cogent and less repetitive. And howlers like ‘Maynard Keyenes’ or ‘Keyensian’ (p.19) stick out rather shockingly.

SOMAK GHOSHAL
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