Can Hindus Be Ambitious?

WHAT is it that prevents India being successful and stops it pulling its vast population of approaching one billion out of the rut of widespread poverty, illiteracy and general non-achievement? Is it, as is usually assumed, the size of the country and the enormity of its problems plus natural characteristics such as the grinding heat and dust and the devastating rains and floods? Is the scale of these challenges and the depth of the disadvantages so great that India is doomed to grow slowly and, more often than not, to fail to achieve?

Or are these the symptoms of something more, something rooted in the country's all-embracing Hindu religion—a religion and mindset that provides followers with the relatively soft unambitious option of taking things as they come, hoping for something better in the next reincarnated life, plus a caste system that defies ambition with a rigid hierarchical, often feudal, class structure? If this is so, one might ask whether Indians can ever be ambitious and, therefore, whether India's lack of achievement is man-made or god-made. Indeed, can India ever succeed?

Certainly it is unsuccessful by almost any yardstick. Since Independence 51 years ago, India has failed to tackle its basic problems on a macro level. On a micro level, most individuals also fail to achieve—despite notable successes by businessmen and professionals, especially outside India. Primarily, and this brings us back to the impact of Hinduism, the problem is that the elite mostly thrive on debate, not action, and on building prestige, not achievements. And the vast majority accepts failure as a way of life.

Corrupt politicians devote their energies to scheming for bribes, prestige and self-advancement, and making fine-sounding speeches—they scarcely spend time developing and executing publicly useful policies. Bureaucrats focus on perpetuating laws and regulations—for example on industry—that boost the prestige of their jobs and enhance the bribes that they can receive, instead of eliminating unnecessary rules that block progress. Academics argue about concepts and theories, but rarely try to turn their ideas into real policies (Nobel economics prize winner Amartya Sen being the exception that proves the rule). Even car drivers seem to believe they can get through traffic, not by lane discipline and orderly overtaking, but by blasting their car horns (given the state of India's roads and cars, it probably doesn't matter much what they do).

It is easy to blame all this on India's size and natural disadvantages and to say that it is all man-made. The country's problems are enormous. Decades of shortages and economic stagnation have certainly led to an acceptance of failure. "It is not available" is a phrase that rings in all shoppers' ears—and it is rarely questioned. "Our annual Republic Day parade and the Beating of the Retreat ceremony are the only things that work in India to the minute—and, even there, pigeons disrupt the parade's flypast," jokes one of the country's top civil servants. Such resignation to fate is not surprising; but it is so widespread that it is logical to suspect that there must be something more fundamental than simply the fact that people and governments are overwhelmed by the scale and apparent unsolvability of what needs to be done.

Hindu fundamentalists have argued since a revival movement was started at the end of the last century that religion is not the problem. They say that India's national pride and confidence was crippled by 1,000 years of being pushed around by Mughal and British rulers. As a result, people are incapacitated when it comes to taking decisions and implementing them efficiently. Now the fundamentalists want the BJP to develop Hindutva as a positive force that will cure the country's ills by rebuilding that lost pride and confidence. "Right through the Mughal invasions to the British time, Hindu civilisation was stunned and traumatised. Hence the lack of activity and ambition," says Prafull Goradia, a BJP MP. "To this day we haven't come out of the slavery complex—that I do not expect to be a master, but I have an ego which I satisfy by being the super slave and by keeping the other slave down. This is the major reason why we don't make the progress we have the ability to make—and we need a heavy dose of nationalism to develop national and communal self-confidence so we get over this."

That may be the BJP's dream for the future: but the reality is that the dominant Hindu religion and culture underlies, and is at least partly to blame for, India's problems. Hinduism covers more than 80 per cent of the population, and the teachings culturally influences the mindset of many Muslims, Christians and others who make up the rest. It is important not only because of the way it dampens ambition but because it also encourages acceptance of poor performance over a wide range of activities.

There are many interpretations of Hindu teachings. Basically it teaches fatalistic acceptance of a person's lot in life, performance of duty (rather than ambition to improve), and reincarnation (which holds out the prospect of a better life in the next life if you do nothing much wrong this time). One of the original revivalist leaders, Swami Vivekananda, justified Hinduism's limitations on ambition and success by saying that India's "bedrock" was its "spiritual genius" and added: "Let others talk of....the glory of acquisition or of the power and spread of commercialism....religion is the one consideration in India."

AMBITION is not seen as a virtue but as something that leads you to greed and acquisition of power," says Om Prakash Jain, a cultural philanthropist who runs the Sanskriti Foundation, an artists' retreat on the outskirts of Delhi. "Development primarily based on consumption and acquisition is not the philosophy of Hinduism". Sceptics might dismiss 70-year-old Jain's views—along with those of Vivekananda—as out of date; but they are echoed by Suhel Seth, a go-getting banker turned advertising entrepreneur who is about half Jain's age. "Religion has always been used as an escape mechanism," says Seth. "The lack of success is because Hinduism teaches us to be accountable only to god, not to anyone else, so no one in India regards themselves as accountable as politicians, economists, or businessmen to anyone but themselves. It is a passive religion that provides no propensity to try to beat the system."

Hindu teachings impact on the basic needs of daily Indian life as well as on business and development in many visible ways. First there are the teachings of tolerance whose impact is sharpened by the karma-induced acceptance of the inevitability of one's destiny (which leads to excessive superstition and reliance on astrologers). "If it's not really broke don't fix it" is an attitude applied to everything. It tolerates, for example, largely indolent corrupt politicians (who use Hinduism for their own ends), a decrepit spread of laws that date back 50 years-plus, Indian navy ships that are marooned in port and airforce jets that are grounded (or crash) because of poor maintenance and a lack of spares, pot-holed roads that feed even major business districts, massive power cuts that plague everyone, and polluted tap water that can never be drunk from the tap.

Linked with that is a requirement to do one's duty without seeking excellence, or monetary or other reward. That does not of course stop beggars begging or politicians and public servants extorting bribes for what they do; but it does lead to an acceptance of one's place in society, negating enthusiasm and the wish to earn merit by performing services well. Thus electricians will fix your wiring faults but care little if they break the next day; public servants will demand bribes and then fail to perform services properly; and companies will produce goods they know are below standard (until they face competition).

Another central factor is Hindus' primary concern for their own relationship with their god, which focuses attention on the person themselves and little else. This encourages great personal cleanliness (sometimes extending to a clean home) but a total lack of concern for what happens outside—which leads to a lack of community responsibility and civic pride. So, rubbish is thrown out into the street by even the smartest middle-class families; people spit betel nut juice on office staircase walls; there is no collective effort to improve the state of the roads; and a top industrialist like Rahul Bajaj, who controls one of the world's largest and most successful scooter manufacturers, sees no contradiction in being a pillar of the business establishment while at the same time polluting cities with fume-emitting scooters and three-wheelers, having persuaded the government for years to delay environmental reforms.

Finally, there is the debilitating and cruel caste system which is the most negative aspect of Hinduism. It combines the rigours of apartheid with the worst snobbishness of the British class system. For generations it has segregated people vertically in a rigid and status-conscious society which has blocked advancement for hundreds of millions of people, deterring ambition and stifling initiative.

But, sceptics will say, how can you blame these Hindu beliefs for holding people back, and therefore suggest that the problems are god-made, when Hindu Indian immigrants have had great successes working abroad—excelling in areas such as electronics, software, banking, and academia? And what about the many Indians in India who are also ambitious and successful (though, like many members of the Marwari caste, their ambition is often self-centred with little concern for the good of the community or country).

The answer is that Indians abroad are propelled by local cultures and the need to survive in a competitive environments into different behaviour patterns. At home in India, there are few such positive pressures, but a few rebels do manage to break through. This indicates that Hinduism holds Indians back when there are no stronger counter forces to push them forward.

The good news is that the balance of social and economic influences in India is changing, reducing the impact of the Hindu mindset and thus reducing adherence to more abstract Hindu beliefs such as reincarnation. These broad changes started in a small way 20 years ago when agricultural revolutions began in Punjab, generating new economy energy and consumer demand. In the 1990s, economic liberalisation opened up new horizons and ambitions, increasing competition and consumerism, and releasing a great surge of entrepreneurship. The impact has been hugely boosted by satellite TV beaming western images and consumer advertising into homes in rural and urban India.

So yes, India can be successful because its problems, though man-made, have developed in an environment set primarily by Hindu gods. Those gods will continue to provide safe reference points and benchmarks in the future, but other more materialistic forces will gradually help to shape India's destiny.

(Formerly with 'Financial Times', John Elliott, a long-standing India watcher, now writes from New Delhi for 'Fortune'.)