In market for faith

We get to talking about Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and his popular message. We watched him being interviewed on TV, identified many of the established traditional swamijis who were present at the convention and then in a flash Ram came up with one of his uncanny insights. 8220;Hindus are the ultimate believers in free markets,8221; he said. 8220;Nonsense,8221; said I. 8220;With their commitment to asceticism and parasitic Brahminical ways and their constant preference for self-abnegation and the curbing of individual wants, Hindus as I prefer to call them were socialists long before Marx was born. Healthy capitalistic wealth creation and pursuit of achievement was beyond them. Distribution of poverty and encouraging low aspirations among common folk in order to preserve caste hierarchies 8212; that8217;s what Hindus are all about,8221; said I, brimming with satisfied sarcasm.

8220;You are being harsh and choosing perverse examples merely for effect,8221; he said. 8220;Consider the realm of ideas. Hindus believe in free entry and exit. Anybody can set himself up as a religious teacher. The incumbent gurus do not have any monopoly rights. The new entrant is free to put forth new ideas or new variants of old ideas. Customers have choice. The old guard has no privileges. All ideas and their purveyors are judged by the standards of a free uncensored information marketplace. The Hindu ideas-bazaar is even gender-neutral. God-women have the same market access and opportunities for market acceptance. Market capitalism is first and foremost about the absence of entry barriers, and this is the very basis of Hinduism as we know it,8221; he said, as he sipped a glass of the divine Kingfisher in its home city.

Slowly, I began to empathise with the awesome logic of my elder sibling8217;s insights into the realms of free individual choice and the compulsive necessity for Hindu religious product offerings to keep pace with the changing needs of customers who have multiple choices. I thought of the concept of ishta devata where the human being chooses God on the basis of his or her own liking. I recalled the couple where the husband is a regular pilgrim at Tirupati, while the wife is a frequent visitor at Shirdi. This is a terrific example of individual members of the same family choosing intimate personal products differently. Incidentally, however overbearing the husband may be, in the realms of religious choice and consumption, patriarchal tyranny does not prevail. The woman is free to choose her favoured ishta devata.

I thought of the efforts of so many Vedantic scholars to ensure that their teachings do not get superseded and condemned to irrelevance by painstakingly making sure that their core offerings are not in conflict with the empirical findings of science. They have been concerned with product obsolescence and the need for new versions of software that are supported on new platforms and operating systems. The Hindu thinkers of antiquity had anticipated that getting trapped in one medium, or in one epistemological paradigm, could lead to their products losing credibility with customers. If scientific advances end up challenging prevalent ideas, our gurus are willing and able to bend, adapt, alter, re-interpret and revise existing theology and doctrine falling back on metaphorical explanations, if necessary, in order to ensure ongoing relevance of their ideas through changing times. The Art of Living, which seems to effortlessly integrate modern social psychology with the Yoga Vasishta an ancient treatise, is a brilliant example of this.

This approach is a necessity due to the fact that the entry of new players is not only free but very easy. You don8217;t even have to be a rigidly defined Hindu to have customer appeal. Shirdi Sai Baba is a good example of how superior charisma and spirituality enabled a Muslim mystic to become an authentic 8220;amsa8221;, worthy of veneration. The intellectually inclined, too, have considerable flexibility. Aurobindo coined new expressions like 8216;supramental8217;. He is, of course, considered almost mainstream Hindu. What can one say of J. Krishnamurti, who criticised the very institution of gurus? Strangely enough, Pupul Jayakar mentions that several people considered Krishnamurti to be a Vedantic guru! Obviously, we have a model where product identity is defined on the customer8217;s terms. The producer has to accept this situation with humility. Any contemporary professor of marketing would understand.

I, for one, am now convinced that the Hindu love affair with free market will ensure on-going strength for this religious product portfolio. We will never run short of doctrines or gurus to provide answers to questions that have haunted and will haunt humankind through the ages.

The writer is chairman 038; CEO,8216;Mphasis8217;. Write to him at jerryraoexpressindia.com