Meera Nanda Rush hour of the gods
Today's generation of middle class Indians are discarding the secular- humanist version of Hinduism that appealed to an earlier generation of elites and opting for a more overt religiosity. Meera Nanda asks what lies behind the Hinduisation of the Indian public sphere.
"The world today is as furiously religious as it ever was. [...] Experiments with secularized religions have generally failed; religious movements with beliefs and practices dripping with reactionary supernaturalism have widely succeeded."
- Peter Berger, Desecularization of the World
Those looking for evidence to back Peter Berger's conclusion can do no better than take a closer look at the religious landscape of India, the "crouching tiger" of 21st-century global capitalism.
India today is teeming with millions of educated, relatively well-to- do men and women who enthusiastically participate in global networks of science and technology. The Indian economy is betting its fortunes on advanced research in biotechnology and the drug industry, whose very existence is a testament to the naturalistic and disenchanted understanding of the natural world. And yet a vast majority of these middle-class beneficiaries of modern science and technology continue to believe in supernatural powers supposedly embodied in idols, "god- men" or "god-women," stars and planets, rivers, trees and sacred animals. By all indications, they treat supernatural beings and powers with utmost earnestness and reverence and go to great lengths to please them in the hopes of achieving their desires.
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