5 august 2019 http://www.openthemagazine.com http://www.openthemagazine.com 5757
Press; 304 pages; rs 3,999). iyer notes, ‘in general, riots are posi-
tively correlated with the percentage of Muslim population
and urban inequality, and negatively correlated with economic
growth.’ in fact, iyer carried out an econometric exercise where
she tried to look at the effect of riots, among a number of other
variables, on economic growth. The result showed a very small
effect that riots have on growth: an extra riot leads to a 0.027 per
cent decline in economic growth.
This is but to be expected. religious riots are just a subset
of the larger issue of how economic growth affects religious
attitudes. The indian case defies the Weberian claim (not
to speak of the Freudian and Marxian ones) that economic
development should lead to a decline in religious belief. india,
if anything, shows a reverse trend: it was during a period of
relative economic stagnation—the time of the so-called ‘hindu
rate of growth’ when the country averaged 3.5 per cent growth
from 1950 to 1980—that indians were less favourably inclined
towards religion. Contemporary historians of Leftist and
liberal persuasion are quick to latch on to the idea that this state
of affairs was due to the presence of a ‘strong secular state’ that
did not allow religion to ‘get out of hand’. it may be too specula-
tive but it is worth noting that many such secular-minded
economists also look with alarm at the spurt of high growth
seen in india in recent decades, though that concern is couched
in terms of the dangers posed by rising inequality.
The truth, however, may be considerably more complicated.
even if one accepts the claim that india was a strongly secular
state in 1950s, it is not hard to see how that situation unravelled.
The key determinant here is secularisation—or progressive
withdrawal of religion from day-to-day affairs—and not secu-
larism, which was nothing more than a top-down emphasis
on keeping religious conflict at bay. The process of economic
development, one that is sufficiently deep, never really oc-
curred across india during the so-called secular years. it was an
enclave-type economic development, restricted to certain sec-
tors and specific geographic locales. The vast indian country-
side remained more or less immune to this mechanism.
if anything, the empirical puzzle is why does india defy
the european pattern of economic development and secu-
larisation? Why is intense religiosity a product of those years
when the country witnessed an economic boom? at one level
there may be more than mere economic cause-and-effect at
work, necessitating careful work by specialists in compara-
tive religious studies. at another level, the usual economic
problems, lags in cause and effect, missing variables, measure-
ment issues and the like may be at work. it is worth noting
that economic studies of religion on india are sparse to the
point of being non-existent. Finally, it may be the case that
at the empirical level, the relationship may not be stable. For
example, during 2007-2013, when the United Progressive
alliance Government executed a ‘socialist turn’ in economic
policymaking, religiosity slowly began ratcheting up. This
was a complex interplay between economic and political fac-
tors. it will be interesting to speculate about the situation now
when a similar economic pivot is on. The difference is that the
india of today is suffused extensively with religious belief. nSaurabh SinghPROSE & POLITICS By siddharth singh