In India, Religion and Neoliberal Individualism Have Converged

Today, there are two unmistakable strands to the aggressive mobilisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party. One is instrumentalising religion and the second, weaponising the free market. Aggressive neoliberalism is hand in glove with militant imageries of religious figures. The monetisation and privatisation of public assets have combined with de-privatising religion and dragging it out to the streets. "Free market" is not about being free but "compensatory consumption" for the middle classes and subsistence for the underprivileged. In the same way, religion is not about spirituality but justifying majoritarian dominance.

Postcolonial scholars had vociferously argued that the sacred would militate against instrumental market value. The spiritual domain was supposed to involve a collective investment in otherworldly pursuits that shun crude materialism. The market was supposed to bring in relations based on free exchange and contractualism in the place of rigid hierarchies. As Amartya Sen has argued, the market is like language, a medium to promote choice without judgment.

Against most of the prognosis, religious ethics and market values seem to have come together to strengthen muscular majoritarian rhetoric. Both religion and the market don't seem opposed to authoritarian forms of governance. Latent practices within religion and the market are simultaneously being conjoined and mobilised by Hindutva politics. A closer look allows us to see that religion is about individual self-realisation. It offers an individual a path to realise the finality of truth. Faith-based practices are deeply experiential but in a tautological sense: One needs to believe to experience faith and have unflinching faith to experience truth/God. Not realising God only means a lack of faith or inability to get rid of doubt.

In other words, the failure to experience faith is itself a lack of faith. To experience faith, one must pursue it without asking questions or thinking of outcomes. Viewing faith through the outcome lens amounts to a corruption of faith. In turn, a lack of faith leads to a loss of the desired outcome.

On the other hand, the instrumental logic of the market is about being 'atma nirbhar' or self-reliant. One moves up the ladder through enough prayas or effort ("sabka prayas"). However, failure is an individual's responsibility or the result of chance, luck, which did not put a person in the right place at the right time. Every individual must take responsibility for their success, so it is all about individual commitment, talent and effort. What is valued in such a frame is not freedom but security—a search for security through personal effort. Strangely, then, freedom is the collective price paid for individual safety. The State, like God or the leader, only keeps a watch. God cannot be blamed for an individual's failures, just like a leader cannot be held responsible for lack of motivation, and the market cannot account for lack of merit.