India’s Business Communities Await an Appointment with Christ

In 1925, American President Calvin Coolidge said, “…the chief business of the American people is business.” By 2025, the same may be true of India.

Business wasn’t always India’s highest priority. Of the four major caste clusters of the Hindu “pecking order,” the business cluster was third in status. These Vaishya, as they are called, were considered to be commoners. They were on the same status level as farmers, and their role was to ensure prosperity through agriculture and animal husbandry as well as trade.

From the end of the fourth century BC, India became increasingly stable. With stability came new trade routes, and Vaishya merchants were the first to benefit. They had wealth, but low status, a perfect recipe for resentment against the established order. They expressed their dissatisfaction by supporting efforts to reform Hinduism which later resulted in Jainism and Buddhism. As often happened in Hindu history, the powers that be managed to bring the Vaishyas back into the fold. They brought them back by giving Vaishya individuals honorary titles. Members of the trading communities lived mainly in the West Coast regions, and Sind in present day Pakistan. Trading communities were commonly called Banias, a distortion of the Sanskrit word vanik, meaning “trader.” In southern India, Chettiars and Mudaliars are prominent Vaishya communities.The status and fortunes of the other caste blocs have fluctuated throughout Indian history, but not the Vaishyas. They have preserved and perhaps improved their social and financial stability in modern India.

India’s Business Communities Today
Today, many of these same groups are prominent business communities. The Hindu Sindhis, who lived in Pakistan, fled for their lives during the post independence partition, with little more than the clothes on their backs. But in India, and beyond, they have managed to become world-class traders. Along India’s West Coast, we still have the Bania who prosper as bankers and moneylenders. India has opened up business opportunities to members of other faiths. The Memons and Bohras on the West Coast are local merchants. Zoroastrian Parsees and Jains have prospered in business, though they have succeeded in other areas as well. The peoples of Kerala, in southwestern India, many of whom are Christian, have become strong in the business world.

In Western nations, people often mistakenly believe that the Patels name is synonymous with motels. The reason is that they have quickly moved into the motel-owning niche. In almost any major city in the United States, you will find South Asian Hindus running motels.

Agriculture has become big business in India just as it has in much of the rest of the world. For this reason, the Jats, who dominate grain production in India’s Punjab State, are wealthy from this industry.

If you can’t lick them, join them! Ironically, the Brahmins have become a prominent Indian business community. Like many other Indian communities, the Brahmins have found that the computer technology and Information Technology (IT) are good ways to make a fortune. Indian nationals are now making their fortunes through the computer industries.

Indian nationals are noted for starting new businesses according to a May, 2002 article in the Times of India. In 2001, India accounted for the largest share of entrepreneurs, i.e., those that begin new businesses. The rate of adults involved with new businesses was 11.2 percent. Most of their new businesses are in India, the UK, and the US. A May 2003 article in the British Broadcasting Co. (BBC) quotes India’s financial minister, Jaswant Singh, as saying that India’s strong economic growth will transform this huge nation into a “developed” country by 2020. He might not be just bragging; India’s economic growth has been between five and seven percent since the mid 1990s. India is developing its cell phone industry. To help telecommunications, television broadcasting, and meteorology, India launched a satellite last April, according to another BBC article.

India has attracted many foreign corporations since opening this door in the early 1990s. Gurgaon, a city in Haryana State, just to the West of Delhi, is sometimes called the “Singapore of India.” More than 100 corporations, many of them foreign-owned, have opened offices there since 1990, according to a brief by India Mission Association.

Foreign corporations are drawn to India’s low labor costs. But they are also drawn to the market of over a billion people. The Swiss knife maker, Victorinox, hopes to enter into the large market produced by Sikh communities. According to Sikh religious beliefs, every man must carry a sword to protect the defenseless. With nearly 20 million Sikhs in India, that could be a big market. Accompanied by business leaders, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee met with Chinese leaders in June of this year. He said that it was “self evident” that India’s skills as a leading player in the global software market and China’s strong IT manufacturers provide a natural alliance. Business may be the magnet that brings these ancient rivals together.

Will India Destroy Her Own Efforts to Modernize?
India faces some major obstacles as she attempts to become a modern nation. Mohandas Gandhi said that the test of a nation’s greatness is how they educate the next generation. India has excelled in producing people who excel in mathematics and computer science through their polytechnic institutions. According to an article in Business World, the city of Bangalore alone has 181 such polytechnic institutions. India had only 30 universities in 1950. Today they have 214.

But on the other side of the proverbial tracks, only one in 100-200 will graduate from high school. Of high school graduates, only one in 20 will be able to go on to college, according to a February, 2001 series of articles in the Christian Science Monitor. The same article notes that the number of schools run by the Hindu neo-fascist RSS have tripled since 1980. Their goal is to indoctrinate their students in the mythological glories of India’s Hindu past. Hindutva, meaning “Hindu-ness,” is the core of their studies. To the people leading these schools, there is no room for anyone but Hindus in India. Delhi University School of Education Dean Dr. Anil Sadgopal comments, “when you hear about education, we are talking about the top 15 percent. That is the emerging India. In the emerging India, you’ve got info-tech for 15 percent, and Hindutva values for the rest.” In sum, India’s educational system is going two directions at once.

Hindu militancy is already a major threat to India’s economic progress. Gujarat, on the West Coast, has been one of India’s key states for conducting business for the past 150 years. Here, Jains, Banias, Sindhis, and other key business communities reside in great number. Some of these business groups are Muslim Bohras and Memons. During the communal riots in the spring of 2002, the Muslim business communities took the brunt of the brutality. Some articles about this massacre suggest that the reasons for the mayhem was to destroy Muslim business competitors of the high caste Hindu powers that be. If so, they may find themselves destroying Gujarat’s role as a future leader in commerce. A similar issue that may hold Indian business back is the caste system. A CNN article about Gujarat’s deadly earthquake that happened around the time of the above-mentioned communal riots, said that the quake left thousands in tent camps. Tent camps were divided according to religion and caste. High and low castes are sharply divided in today’s India regarding the reservation system that began in 1981. This system guarantees a certain percentage of government jobs for the lower castes and outcastes. Resentment concerning the reservation system has often led to communal violence. Division is a luxury that India can ill afford if she is going to compete on the world market.

India’s frequent episodes of brinkmanship with Pakistan stifle its ability to attract foreign clients for its burgeoning software industry, according to a June, 2002 article in the New York Times. This ongoing tit-for-tat conflict between these two nuclear powers shows no sign of ever ending. Those who want to do business in India or Pakistan must weigh the cost of dealing with the possibility of war. Finally, there is the issue of bribes. Throughout most of the two-thirds world, it is common to have to pay bribes for services. This system leaches off the infrastructure as thoroughly as organized crime. Does Hindu India have the willingness or the ability to combat this menace?

What Do Christians Have to Offer?
Hatred, division, corruption, bribery, etc., all reflect spiritual problems. The teachings of the Bible offer answers to the social and economic problems that plague our world. The “us vs. them” mentality promoted by Hindu militants can weaken this great nation in a number of ways. Bribery, which is soundly denounced in the book of Proverbs, can drain any nation and prevent the people from getting the services they need. When money that should be used to build roads and schools winds up in a government official’s Swiss bank account, everyone but the corrupt one loses.

An article in the Hindustan Times points out that Christian schools in India teach about four million students, 80 percent of whom come from middle or upper caste groups. Could these schools be useful to India by teaching biblical ethics to India’s future leaders in a way that will also draw them to Christ? Integra (www.IntegraUSA.org) is a Christian endeavor that works in Eastern Europe. They are dedicated to developing business and job developing projects. They also have anti-corruption training that they hope will “push back the darkness.” Perhaps Indian Christians could begin similar projects in their part of the world.

Let’s Pray!
Let us pray that India’s Christian communities will act as salt and light to the business communities, most of which have no gospel witness. Pray that Christian schools will have a lasting spiritual impact on those they teach. Pray that India’s Hindu, Jain, Muslim, and Zoroastrian business communities will find wisdom and truth in the Bible that will help them improve their businesses, and give them thankfulness and allegiance to Christ.