Religion As The Structure Of The Indian Economy
The following will evaluate and analyse the claim that economic development in India has been closely related to religious factors.As will be discussed those religious factors relate to social and economic practices or behavior, which in turn has affected economic development.The analysis will discuss whether those religious factors have had a beneficial or detrimental affect upon economic development in India.The evaluation will also analyse whether religious factors have given economic development in India unique characteristics or not.The religious factors discussed derive from the main religions that have taken root within India, namely Hinduism, Islam, and the Sikh faith.Each of these religions has its own concepts about which social and economic activities are to be encouraged, simply accepted, or are unacceptable upon religious ground.
The impact of religious factors upon the economic development of India can be traced back some 4,500 to 5, 000 years.In other words religious factors can be linked to the social and economic development of India since the emergence of the first civilisation on the Indus around 4,500 years ago.1 As the civilisation based around the Indus developed so the Hindu religion began and started to evolve.At that stage Hinduism, was not linked with attempting to tightly controlling the social and economic relationships between everybody within Indian society.2 The Indus civilisation lasted for around a thousand years before it was overrun by the successful incursions of the Aryans.With the Aryans came the caste system that was adopted as part of Hinduism.It was widely believed that this system delayed the development of large cities and meant that the pace of technological developments was slowed downed.3
Without a doubt the caste system is a religious factor that has had a profound affect upon the economic development of India.The caste system affected Indian economic development due to it being used to determine the economic, social, employment, and legal status of all Hindus within the country.The operation of the Hindu caste system did not prevent India from enjoying extensive and lucrative trading links during the Mauriyan Empire.Those trading links stretched as far west as Rome and as far east as China.4 Another reason the caste system has had such a strong influence upon Indian economic development was because the ownership of land, as well as the means of production, and the work that people could perform was chiefly determined by the position they were born into.This rigidly adhered to caste system allowed for the concentration of wealth as well as leading to a highly regulated social and economic order.It also arguably meant that people had very little incentive to work harder or increase the rate of production, as they would not be able to improve the social and economic position they had been born into.Without the incentive of being able to improve their social status or economic wealth 5 It is therefore no surprise that the vast majority of Hindus remained in their rural villages rather than migrating to the cities.Explanations for why people stayed in their villages ranged from them being too poor to move, being tied to the land through the caste system, through to the economic system producing enough to provide for everyone and there being no need to migrate to cities.However, although the social and economic policies of the various Hindu kingdoms or empires were restrictive of personal choice and the possibility of advancement past the caste people were born into, there were other factors that made the lower castes more content with their lot.For instance the Mauriyan Empire provided a relatively high level of social or welfare provisions that other parts of the world would not experience until the twentieth century.The caste system also provided the infrastructure for the priests to serve the spiritual and religious needs of their communities.After all the caste system was not established to serve economic purposes, it was established to maintain social order, and make everybody’s life religiously complete.The economic consequences of the caste system were a by -product of its social and religious objectives that were inadvertent rather than planned.6
Of course the caste system set out which occupations were religiously worthy and those jobs that were less pure or even unpure.People’s occupations when the caste system was established determined the jobs that their descendants were allowed to perform.The Hindu priesthood, followed by the land-owning classes was the most favoured by the caste, with the unworthy poor being the most discriminated against.The caste system survived the rule of Muslim emperors and British colonial control, as both had left the system unaltered to gain the acceptance of their rule by the Hindu leadership.However the system was soon formally abolished after India gained independence from British rule.As India had become a democracy its abolition was inevitable as the members of the lower castes formed the majority of the electorate and they wanted greater social and economic equality.The abolition of the caste system had an affect on Indian economic development as it removed barriers preventing people from entering the occupations of their choice or migrating to the cities.There has however been a great deal of debate as to whether the caste system still has a legacy that continues to affect the economic development of India.Social and economic discrimination based on people’s caste system position has certainly not disappeared completely.7 The independence movements that grew during the last years of the British Raj had various motivations, political, economic, and religious.For Gandhi had known enough about Indian society to stress that independence would improve the material prosperity of India as it would end British control and exploitation of the country’s economic development.8
There was one aspect of the Indian economy that the Muslim Emperors and the British had been glad to inherit from the previous Hindu dynasties, a comprehensive taxation system.9 For a period of around four centuries it seemed that Hinduism position was threatened as Buddhism challenged India’s predominant religion.In the end Buddhism social and economic influences did not last long, and therefore had no long-term impact upon the economic development of India.10 However it would be Islam that would arrive in India and would provide religious factors that affected the economic development of India.Islamic influence began to grow from about 700 AD.11 Although the Muslims were able to establish an empire based around Delhi they did not control all of India for sustained periods of time.12
Whenever the Islamic states that controlled all or part of India it did alter the economic development of India as it reduced the number of people that were subject to the caste system without removing that system altogether.Islam was socially more egalitarian than Hinduism, and therefore did not favor such rigid economic or social restrictions as those brought about through the operation of the caste system.13 Economists such as Muckerjee have argued that Islam, and to a lesser extent the Sikh faith did not alter the economic development of India as much as might have been expected.Instead the Indian economy evolved other many centuries and maintained a heavily rural basis until the onset of the twentieth century.14 Muslims and Sikhs were just as subject to rituals, set activities, and acceptable standards of behavior as their Hindu compatriots, although they were not exactly the same ones.15 Other economists have noted that the majority of the Indian peasantry was efficient at accumulating as much wealth as possible, a trend that was affected by their religious beliefs and practices.16 The speeding up of Indian economic development during British rule was motivated by the search for profits rather than religious factors.17
Therefore the religious factor that had the most significant impact upon the economic development of India was the adoption of the caste system that was most closely linked with the Hindu religion.Hinduism had not originally embraced the caste system and started to evolve as a distinct religion during the era of the Indus civilisation.It was the Aryans that brought the caste system to India, and it was able to affect Indian economic development through various Hindu dynasties, and kingdoms and the system was not significantly altered by Muslim and British rulers of India.Indeed the development of the Sikh religion in the Punjab did not change much either.The caste system left economic, social, and political decision-making powers in the hands of the Hindu priests and the large landowners whilst making upward social, and economic movement very difficult if not impossible.
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