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Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts

Monday 4 March 2024

A Religious Market Theory Explained

Nadeem F Paracha in The Dawn

In 1987, the American sociologists Rodney Stark and William S. Bainbridge formulated a ‘Religious Market Theory.’ The theory is a critique of the ‘Secularisation Thesis.’ The secularisation thesis was initially developed by the German sociologist Max Weber in the early 20th century. In the next five decades, it was further evolved by numerous scholars.

To Weber, due to modernisation, especially from the late 18th century onwards, societies entered a process of ‘spiritual disenchantment.’ Space for ‘pre-modern’ beliefs in magic, faith and superstition shrank and people began to adopt more rational modes of thinking.

Even non-Western societies started to adopt models of modernisation and, indeed, here as well, the traditional variants of religion began to decline. They were replaced by secularised formations of traditional faiths, framed and monopolised by the state.

But the secularisation thesis came into question when, from the mid-1970s onwards, the exhibition of religiosity, especially in modernised Muslim-majority nation-states, began to grow.

In the 1980s, when religiosity saw an increase in the US as well, Stark and Bainbridge formulated their religious market theory, challenging the secularisation thesis. The religious market theory suggests that when religiosity declines, it eventually revives itself, because the decline opens up spaces for new faiths and modified versions of the old faiths to emerge.

Stark and Bainbridge saw the rise and decline of religiosity as a cycle, which moves like markets do in capitalist settings. Religions which fail to adjust to the needs of changing conditions, fall by the wayside and lose followers. Readjusted religions and new faiths begin to emerge in a scenario where religiosity seems to be receding.

Gradually, though, new and readjusted variants are able to revive interest in faith, by providing services and products that are better suited to meet the needs of changing conditions.

According to Stark and Bainbridge, this cycle produces a diverse collection of faiths, cults, sects and subsects, which compete against each other in the ‘marketplace of faiths’ and improve to attract followers. The religious market theory posits that this renews an interest in faith and religiosity.

In 19th century India, during the complete fall of the Mughal Empire and the mushrooming of British colonialism, the established variants of Islam began to struggle to keep pace with the changing conditions. It seemed that the modernity introduced by the British was rapidly secularising the polity. But as the old religious ethos dwindled, new variants emerged to address the changing needs of India’s Muslims.

On the one hand, new Sunni sects such as Deobandi, Barelvi and Ahl-i-Hadith sprang up and, on the other, the Ahmadiyya, the Ahl-i-Quran and Muslim Modernism emerged. They competed against each other, promising the most suitable narratives to India’s ‘depressed’ Muslims and, in the process, gathering followers — more importantly, followers who had political and economic clout.

From the mid-19th century till the 1920s, the marketplace of faiths in South Asia flourished with new variations of Islam and Hinduism. The variants were products/brands, and their followers were consumers. This indeed witnessed a renewed interest in religion and religiosity.

However, from the late 1940s, when India split into two nation-states, Bharat and Pakistan, the state in both countries decided to monopolise the marketplace of faiths, through an overarching meta-narrative.

India formulated a nationalist secularism that sought to build a socialist democracy. It was to provide economic services that religious organisations had been offering to attract followers. The state in Pakistan began to shape a nationalist-modernist variant of Islam and it regulated the marketplace of faiths by bringing its shops and products under the state’s control.

According to some contemporary proponents of the religious market theory, the presence of a centralised and ‘official’ faith eschews religious diversity. It nationalises the marketplace of faiths. This causes a decline in religiosity, as has been the case in various Scandinavian countries and in Britain.

The state in India (through nationalist-secularism) and Pakistan (through modernist-nationalist Islam) attempted to do this. Religion did not decline as such, but religiosity did.

In the 1970s, new economic and political challenges emerged in Pakistan and India. These also challenged the nationalisation of the marketplace of faiths. In Pakistan, political elites tried to absorb the alternatives offered by Sunni and Shia sects and subsects. They privatised the marketplace and began to gather fresh followers, who could not find remedies anymore in the centralised state-approved variant.

By the 1980s, the marketplace of faiths was once again booming. In Pakistan, the state continued to try absorbing the new variants by discarding the old modernist variant. But, as the middle class and the lower-middle class segments expanded, they became the most active consumers of new variants, thereby re-energising the marketplace of faiths.

These variants ranged from renewed and modified versions of evangelical Islam, to the more radical versions of Sunni and Shia sects and subsects. Religiosity revived itself.

In India, economic liberalisation weakened the monopoly of the nationalist-secular narrative in the marketplace of faiths. The Indian historian Meera Nanda, in her book The God Market, has closely tracked the trajectory of the expanding elite and middle-income groups in India, from being consumers of the nationalist-secular narrative, to becoming the most prominent consumers of Hindu nationalism — especially after benefitting from the post-1980s ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies.

According to Nanda, these segments, who now exercise increasing economic influence, “re-ritualised and re-enchanted Hinduism.” They now view Hinduism as being inherently compatible with modern economic ideas that guarantee profitability and prosperity. This, too, is how the renewed evangelical variants of Islam peddled their narrative to the elite and middle-income groups in Pakistan.

Consequently, exhibitions of religiosity have witnessed a manifold increase in both the countries. However, within the marketplace of faiths are also variants that are problematic. These include the more reactionary manifestations of faiths. For example, those looking to undermine Muslims in India in a violent manner will shop for variants that aid the consumer to theologically justify acts of violence.

This is also true in Pakistan. There are sectarian and sub-sectarian variants in the marketplace of faiths, which ‘theologically’ validate actions of those who want to use or instigate violence against an opponent in the name of faith.

More worrying is the fact that many urban, ‘educated’ folk, too, buy these variants, especially products (in the shape of narratives) that justify or instigate violence. These are often used to demonise perceived enemies as ‘Ahmadiyya sympathisers,’ or ‘anti-Islam’.

The marketplace of faiths is now almost entirely unregulated. And the state and governments whose job it was to regulate it, too, have become consumers in the marketplace of faiths to justify their own existence.

Wednesday 28 February 2024

Dhruv Rathee is wrong. If Modi is a dictator, why did he fail so often to get what he wants





Dilip Mandal in The Print

Content creator Dhruv Rathee’s recently uploaded video, ‘Is India becoming a DICTATORSHIP?’, has set social media abuzz, amassing over 13 million views on YouTube alone. The viral video examines concerns around Narendra Modi and Bharatiya Janata Party’s ‘One Nation, One Party’ ideology, citing instances of media control, horse-trading of MLAs, and the alleged misuse of enforcement agencies against opposition leaders. Of course, it also goes on to suggest that India is becoming a ‘dictatorship’ under Modi.

But in his two terms as Prime Minister, Modi has demonstrated an accommodating and somewhat indecisive leadership style. He really doesn’t carry the authoritarian tendencies of Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, or Indira Gandhi.

In fact, the PM has, on many occasions, developed cold feet or compromised despite being an undisputed leader of his party and scoring two consecutive Lok Sabha terms. He has never been one to bulldoze, always stopping to rethink his decisions in the face of resistance. Call it statecraft, or simply a compulsion to govern a nation as diverse and complex as India.

I will list here some of those instances:

No reform for the collegium system: Narendra Modi introduced a significant reform in the judiciary shortly after becoming Prime Minister for the first time. The National Judicial Appointments Commission Bill 2014, aimed at overhauling India’s judicial appointment process and modifying the collegium system, was introduced in the Lok Sabha on 11 August 2014 and subsequently passed by both houses of Parliament. Endorsed by over 20 state legislatures, its objective was “to broad base the appointment of Judges in the Supreme Court and High Courts, enable the participation of the judiciary, executive, and eminent persons, and ensure greater transparency, accountability, and objectivity in the appointment of Judges in the Supreme Court and High Courts.”However, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court declared the National Judicial Appointments Commission Act and the 99th Constitutional Amendment unconstitutional, arguing that maintaining the judiciary’s independence from government influence forms the basic structure of the Constitution. The Act, which sought to give politicians and civil society a role in the appointment of judges, was struck down by a 4:1 judgment to preserve “judicial independence.”This decision marked the end of the road for Modi’s judicial reform agenda. He did not attempt to reintroduce the bill or press for changes to the Collegium system. A single setback led to the withdrawal of an important reform agenda. The decision of just four judges overruled the will of the people – which was reflected in Parliament and 20 state legislatures – and Modi let it happen. Clearly, he went by the rule book and respected institutions from the get-go.

The death of farm laws: In 2020, the Modi government tried to reform the agriculture sector with three farm laws, namely The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act. The laws were designed to facilitate direct farmer sales beyond Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) and without state taxes, allowing contract farming, deregulating certain commodities’ trade (except in emergencies), and enhancing trade freedom and farmer autonomy. However, the farmers protested saying that the new laws aimed to facilitate outside-APMC trade that would diminish government purchases in mandis, make the Minimum Support Price (MSP) system irrelevant and destabilise their assured income.Landed farmers, mainly from Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, protested by blocking arterial roads leading to New Delhi. The government soon gave in, stopping the implementation of laws that could have modernised Indian agriculture.

Didn’t push too hard for land acquisition: The Modi government introduced the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (Amendment) Bill in 2015 to simplify the land acquisition process for industries. However, after facing significant opposition from both political allies and competitors, as well as protests from civil society organisations, the government decided to withdraw important amendments to the bill.These amendments included removing the consent and social impact assessment clauses, which were part of the 2013 legislation and made land acquisition for industry difficult. Nine amendments were made to the bill before it was finally passed in the Lok Sabha. This was a big setback for Modi, who has not attempted to reintroduce these changes since. Industrial land acquisition remains a slow process in India because the Modi government prioritised consensus.

Citizenship Amendment Act—a law made but not implemented: The government amended the Citizenship Act of 1955 and passed the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019 to assist individuals from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh who migrated to India after facing religious persecution in their home countries.Previously, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who entered India without proper documentation or stayed after the expiry of this documentation were considered illegal and faced difficulties in obtaining Indian citizenship.The CAA aims to simplify the process for individuals who arrived in India by or before 31 December 2014, allowing them to become citizens under more lenient rules. This amendment means they will no longer be viewed as illegals and can reside in India permanently. Although the bill was passed by Parliament and published in the Gazette, the government, probably in the wake of extensive anger and protests, has yet to frame the necessary rules. As a result, no one has been granted citizenship under the amended act to this day.

Uniform Civil Code: Despite its long-standing inclusion in the BJP manifesto, the Modi government has never attempted to advance the Uniform Civil Code. This reluctance stems from apprehensions about opposition, making the issue too contentious to handle. However, the Uttarakhand government recently passed a bill to implement the UCC, suggesting that the Union government may be gauging public sentiment and potential resistance before introducing nationwide legislation. A democratic approach, isn’t it?

Rohini Commission, too hot to handle?: In October 2017, the Commission for Other Backward Classes was established via notification to explore the sub-categorisation of OBCs. Justice G Rohini, a retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, was appointed as its chairperson. The Rohini Commission submitted its final report to the President in August 2023, marking a critical step in addressing the complexities of OBC classifications.The commission sought 13 extensions before finalising its report. The slow progress of the commission and the government’s inaction on its report indicate that dividing OBCs into sub-categories is proving to be a complex task for the Modi government. This hesitancy raises questions about decisive leadership.

Women’s reservation, a project deferred: This Act intends to reserve one-third of the seats in Lok Sabha and State Assemblies for women. However, its implementation is contingent upon the next Census and subsequent delimitation for seat allocation, postponing its effectiveness until at least the 2029 Lok Sabha elections. The government recognises the contentious nature of this issue and understands that the process of building consensus must continue beyond the bill’s passage through the legislative body.
Ram temple construction: The recent construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya does not bear Modi’s stamp. The government waited for the Supreme Court’s order before proceeding with construction work. It is also waiting for relevant court orders to build temples in Mathura and Varanasi. This approach marks a departure from the BJP era of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, and Murli Manohar Joshi, during which the Babri Masjid was demolished in the presence of top party leaders. The BJP is far more law-abiding under Modi’s leadership.