. Introduction
john stratton hawley
andvasudha narayanan
BANGALORE AND BEYOND
January 1, 2004, was a happy day for India’s surging middle classes. For the first time
in history the Sensex, which measures investments on the Bombay stock exchange,
was hovering on the verge of 6,000. Reports issued on that day confirmed that the
country’s GNP had risen 8.4 percent in the year just past, and the news sent the stock
exchange over 6,000 as soon as it opened on the second. Nowhere could the mood
of optimism be felt more palpably than in Bangalore, the graceful southern city on
the Deccan plateau that serves as capital of India’s information technology indus-
try.^1 Bands of young revelers roamed through the streets on New Year’s Eve, people
ate out, fireworks lit the sky, and there were plenty of parties throbbing with the lat-
est mix of Bollywood hits and Western rap riffs.
Had religion been forgotten in this thrust toward a global future? Not at all. For
many years Bangalore ’s Christian communities had marked the shift from old year
to new with masses and services at midnight, and this year was no exception. Mus-
lims observed the evening call to prayer. Yet nothing could compare with the vast
crowds of people who filled the city’s Hindu temples the following morning. Many
sought the blessing of Hanuman, the monkey deity whose strength and unwaver-
ing devotion to Rama and Sita had earned him his own prominent place in the pan-
theon. They filed before his massive, twenty-two-foot granite form in Bangalore ’s
Mahalakshmipuram neighborhood, echoing his devotion with devotion of their