Saturday, August 11, 2012

A Hindu economic conference



Though recovering from an acusticus neurinoma operation and still severely handicapped, I took the risk of flying to Hong Kong (the lure of that city was just too strong) to participate in the World Hindu Economic Forum on 30 June and 1 July. And I haven’t regretted it for a moment.

Conferences of academics, especially in the field of religion and Asian Studies, tend to be disappointing. Everybody reads his very own paper while nothing actually happens. Well, I can live with that as it is the occupational hazard of scholarship. But academics should be pursuing truth, and in my field, truth is often absent from the meetings. And in some of the questions I specifically pursue, I see rather too many colleagues making fools of themselves. Here, it was different.

First of all, by composition this was not the kind of conference I am used to. Though a few professors of Economics participated, most people present, even among the speakers, were businessmen. They were businesslike and meant business. This starts with the keeping of time. Whereas I have witnessed panels where one of the scheduled speakers ended up not speaking due to shortage of time, i.e. because the chair had allowed the earlier speakers to go on and on, here everybody effortlessly kept to his allotted time-span. The businessmen also got their website ready, and donated money to get their organization running. That’s different from the complicated situation prevailing in academia. It also had to do with the sense of initiative of the local Hindu (mainly Sindhi) community and of the conference’s no-nonsense originator, the Vishva Hindu Parishad’s General Secretary Swami Vigyananda. Of course the Sangh Parivar (“family” of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) can get things done, but this man was getting something very good done.  

Hindu businessmen are not like Indian academics. They have succeeded, not by greasing the right palms or conforming politically, but by their own initiative, inventiveness and work. That success was what for once I got to see here. To be sure, I had seen Hindu businessmen – at conferences meant to be academic, where they had donated money to make the conference possible and in return got some speaking time (and used it to make fools of themselves by giving their opinions on things they didn’t understand). But here they spoke on their own achievements, and that was more impressive. Many existing and new projects were presented. Space, the environment, banking, and of course ICT, Indian businesses are active everywhere. A very optimistic speech was also given by Anil Kumar Bachoo, deputy PM of Mauritius, who invited Indians to settle in his country and accelerate its progress.  

Profs. Subramaniam Swamy, Gautam Sen, R. Vaidyanathan and Subhash Thakrar had their speeches printed in the conference book. The economists developed a postcolonial framework for India’s regaining its rightful place in the world economy. As a Westerner, I should note that the speakers were not impressed with the advantages America still has, and they laughed at Europe with its crisis. One reason for their optimism was demographic, another was ethical. Among the major economies, India has the youngest population, but it also has an ancient system of morals and of cosmology that works better than Western individualism. 

You want some criticism? Well, here goes. This conference was full of patriotism, which is allowed, but sometimes they overdid it. “I am the richest man in the world – because I am a Hindu”, said a Mister Alpesh Patel from Oxford. At a time when so many poor Hindus succumb to the lure of conversion to Christianity, the statement seemed unduly triumphalistic. Some of the non-speaking attendees gave their opinion at the table and I found their antipathies to the West less than realistic. Thus, I heard a few people fumbling about Western conspiracies against India, when I know for a fact that Westerners generally don’t care about India; and those few who do, see India as a bulwark against China and the Islamic world, worthy of our sympathy and support.

And of course, the proceedings of the conference only were what we got to see. Speakers who announce that they will donate so much money to a good cause are a familiar sight. But I know Hindu organizers who remain skeptical till the money is in, because people seek prestige and photo opportunities and therefore make such announcements without meaning them (or meaning them sincerely but later getting influenced by their families to be more careful with the family assets), so the actual giving never comes through. However, this being a business conference, these fears may be unfounded, and the money may have really materialized. At any rate, they came across as very successful and very Hindu.

7 comments:

  1. "I am the richest person in the world, because I am a Hindu" just means that the person is aware of his heritage, and finds it awesome! The issue is not of triumphalism in that one claim, but one of awareness of heritage. He merely wants to state that if everybody would be aware of their heritage, they too would feel the same way as he does!
    Nothing more than that!

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  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. "I am the richest person in the world, because I am a Hindu", It is simply a foolish statement. Bill Gates can say "I am the very richest person on the earth because I am a christian". People go crazy if you give a mic to them.

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  4. hi,

    sanatana dharma does NOT consider soiled currency notes, or a computer figure as RICHES.

    RSS is being used to deliver body blows to Hinduism. This was first started by Indira Gandhi after she declared emergency.

    want to know the reason?

    punch into google search

    RSS RASHTRIYA SWAYAMSEVAK SANGH- VADAKAYIL

    and

    PROUD TO BE INDIAN , PROUD TO BE HINDU- VADAKAYIL.

    capt ajit vadakayil
    ..





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  5. Sudhee Sri Elst, Can you please tell your thoughts in this subject?
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botanical_identity_of_Soma-Haoma#Candidates_for_the_identity_of_soma
    Stay Well.

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  6. Mr Elst, you mention Hindu cosmology as a ground for Hindu society against western "individualism"- in my studied experiences of the bigger family, can tell you the inner situation is worse than the West.

    old ladies who become very modern against inaspicious symbolism like widowhood etc for the taking and then will probably tell their daughters to "beware of that inaspicious widow( a young girl who has life ahead of her).

    personal experiences galore which makes me understand what we call in the South of India as "mayajaalam":)

    Hope you are taking care of your health and cheers!

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  7. [but it also has an ancient system of morals and of cosmology that works better than Western individualism.] We hear this a lot, but I don't think people are thinking too hard when they say it. Let's cut the crap: we're all individualists here, and I don't think there's anything too western about it. And in any case, how terrible is individualism, and do you really want to be living in a world in which it is not one of the guiding principles? What's the opposite of individualism? Groupism, with its subcategories of racism, nationalism, classism, casteism, communalism, and all the lovely things that go with them, like genocide, communal riots, and so on. Let's face it: no sane and civilized person anywhere in the world has ever wanted these things. The term "western individualism" is a spurious, motivated attempt to culturalize and thereby discredit what has always been one of the most powerfully liberating concepts, and one of the most threatening to established powers.

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