‘Globalization is making the whole world more religious and all religions more political.’
Did you know:
• Educated Indians in small towns are becoming more religious than less educated villagers?
• India has more places of worship than educational institutions or health services?
• Half the total number tourist trips in a single year are for religious pilgrimages?
• State governments are selling land to temple trusts at throwaway prices?
• Corporate houses are setting up institutions for ‘value-based’ education?
The secular Indian state is constitutionally bound to have no official religion. However, India is not free from politicized religiosity which expresses itself in a growing sense of Hindu majoritarianism. The rising tide of popular Hinduism is directly linked with India embracing the gospel of free markets.
Middle-class Indians are becoming more actively religious as they are becoming prosperous. The last decade has seen the proliferation of powerful new god-men, a massive rise in temple rituals, the creation of new gods, and the increased demand for priests. The state is enabling the Hinduization with the help of the private sector. From actively promoting religious tourism, to handing over higher education to the private sector, some of whom use religious trusts to run the institutions that impart ‘value-based’ education, to giving away land at highly subsidized rates to gurus and god-men, many of the privatization measures of the government are linked with the promotion of Hinduism.
In this hard-hitting and controversial book, Meera Nanda uncovers the nexus between the state, temple and corporate India to reveal the ugly truth behind India’s leap into globalization and poses the question:
What room does this India that dreams saffron-tinged superpower dreams have for non-Hindu minorities? What happens to the India that Muslims, Christians, non-believers and other non-Hindus also call home as the country begins to see itself as India@superpower.OM? Can the country deliver on the promise of secularism without cultivating a secular culture in a secular polity?
Meera Nanda writes on science and religion. She is a philosopher of science with initial training in biology. She has received fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the John Templeton Foundation, USA. She is a visiting fellow (2009-10) at the Jawaharlal Institute of Advance Studies, JNU. She is the author of the award-winning book, Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodernism, Science and Hindu Nationalism.
Publication: August 2009
ISBN: 9788184000955
Extent: 320 pages
Price: Rs. 395
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