From Indias largest newsroom, I'm Arun.
George and this is the Times of India.
Podcast. So as you can tell from the
title of this episode, this one isn't really connected with the
news. But that's something that
happens often when we're speaking with author and
mythologist Devdut Patnaik. In today's episode, my colleague
Jared Singh and I are in conversation with Devdut Patnaik
about why faiths and myths deal with money and business.
So we discuss topics like why do religions that are believed to
deal with higher topics like life and death also dictate how
people should use their money? Why do some religions caution
against the accumulation of wealth while others have gods
associated with wealth or worship?
And finally, how do we view the massive riches that popular
temples and places of worship? Have gods are believed to be
from a realm which is far removed from ours, where money
has no value for us when we meet a God.
But yet why do all religions seem to tell us about how to
handle money? Because shouldn't it not concern
a religion or the gods at all? You know, these are very modern
ideas which sort of separate the world of commerce from the world
of spirituality and religion. This is a very maybe 19th
century idea really, where God and divine is something
transcendental. So nothing to do with the body,
nothing to do with the society. It's something out there in a
rarefied space. When we talk of Upanishads,
Atma, Atma and other, but that's really not the origin of
religions. Religion really comes from a
very primal instinct. Human beings are animals.
Animals, like any Organism, is looking for food.
Plants and animals, every day, they get hungry, they run out
of, they run after food, they're seeking food.
Humans now start paying about food because we have the human
faculty of intelligence, imagination, all these new
things which animals don't have. We start imagining that out
there, there is someone who can help us, or magically I can
control the ecosystem and get animals to come towards us.
In modern language, we don't use the word food.
We are sort of removed away from food and we use words like
money, wealth, prosperity. We use these clever words, but
it comes down to food and religion is food.
It's foundational. Unfortunately, as I said, it's a
very new phenomenon. You know, you have images of
Buddha sitting there meditating. Somehow we don't connect it with
food and we sort of somewhere we sort of separated the two
realms. You know, I always hear people
think commercial ho. It is in a way it is the
opposite of spiritual. Spiritual people are not
commercial, and that's not true. All religions are highly closely
connected with the commercial world.
So are you saying that we should expand our understanding of
wealth or fortune? That it should include taste or
opulence, a luxury or a privilege.
The Srinathji Parampara which is there in Gujarat is very famous
amongst the Gujarati Vishnov communities and they came up
with the idea of Vallabhacharya and his son Vital Narji.
They came up with the idea of Pushti Marg, which is the path
of Greece. And the whole idea is that all
the wonderful things about life, the affluence, the music,
clothes, good food is the gift of the divine and we have to
celebrate it. Life is not something which is
to be. You have to withdraw from it.
So it's a very anti monastic approach to religion.
If you go to Srinarji temple, it's always about what is the
Lord dressed up as today? What is he eating today?
What is the music being offered to him today?
Srinarji is in Rajasthan, Udaipur region popular amongst
the mercantile community and in many ways it was kind of an
opposite of the Jain community which was also a competitive
rival merchant class and they were more austere while they
were also doing business. Their religion was an austere
religion about restraint. And there is push T market
coming around the 17th century saying that, you know, life is
about the wonderful things and we should celebrate prosperity.
So if you see the Vishnu temples will talks about ocean of milk.
So Vaikunt is the ocean of milk or Goluk Krishna's Goluk is
where there is milk. So milk is a metaphor for
wealth. And I think these visualizations
of affluence and abundance are very much part of religion.
It's just that nobody sort of connects the two.
I think this monastic ideal has taken over the world, especially
because most of the religious leaders, they look like these
celibate monks who are austere. But if you look carefully, they
travel in private jets in their own wonderful Mercedes.
And then of course they'll say that none of it belongs to me.
It is my devotees who are offering it to me in their
kindness, but the fact is you live in the lap of luxury and of
course you tell the idea that I'm not attached to it in the
Buddhist monasteries, one of the Chinese archaeologists said.
When you do archaeological studies of the Buddhist
monasteries, you realize it is filled with gold and silver and
jewelry and rare objects and rare artifacts which are being
given to it by the Buddhist lady.
So here you have the Buddhist monastery of the man who walked
away from the world. So you have these images of the
Buddha dressed in very saffron robes and he's given up the
world. But what is happening in that
monastery where the monks are living?
We don't connect. The fact that there is
withdrawal from wealth and commerce is also function of the
fact that they live in a world of commerce and they're
negotiating their relationship with wealth and money.
And maybe religion is a way of sort of regulating your greed,
regulating your needs. So it's not that you give up
wealth, but it is how do you manage wealth.
Religions view money very differently, right?
It depends on where you go, but religions often tell you that
you need to look at money as something that just you take but
you pass on. Like I am talking about things
like say Islam, where you say don't earn interest on earnings
or you know you're not supposed to keep more than you need.
Is money just something then that we we should only have as
much as we need? Sort of like food where you only
keep as much as you need and then don't take more.
One of the problems we face in society is that wealth is
generated but it is sort of hoarded by one group of people
and the other group sort of is denied that.
So naturally religion comes up with narratives which tries to
regulate the movement of wealth. A classic example is Islam where
Islam is anti usury that is not considered good, equity is
considered better and therefore you see a very direct
correlation because the Prophet Muhammad was a merchant and he
obviously did not like money lenders.
He loved partners, business partners who would profit from
his profit. And when he loses money he they
don't expect the money back. So he it's a kind of thing that
you know, be a partner, be part of the brotherhood, help me
succeed, don't sort of succeed at my cost that even if I lose
money, I have to repay my debt, which is what money lenders
would do. So you have Islam coming in and
therefore the concept of Haram and halal.
So halal being that you enable people to make wealth
participate in their prosperity while Haram being where you make
money from other people's misery.
In many ways this was one of the reasons that Islam has a very
strong anti Jewish sentiment, because Jewish communities came
up with money lending and money lending was a very powerful
means of generating wealth because the Jewish community was
not allowed to own property, so the only way they could make
money is out of money. And therefore these ideas of
money lending emerged and money lending around the world is not
liked, right. I think religion, one of the
roles it played is regulating the commercial ecosystem so that
people don't go overboard. I mean in Jainism for example,
what is their religion all about?
Religion is all about this. The Gambara, the person who sort
of gives up all wealth, basically telling you that you
know wealth, not the source of happiness.
While it's important, it should keep rotating.
So one of the Jain practices which was there is something
that many people forget is that the Jains were told to build
temples, remember document unlettered societies so they
didn't know to write. They would say build temples so
that people know about Jainism and keep the temples going, that
the sound of the workmen should be non-stop.
Which means you have to earn enough money to pay the
Craftsman. So the temples keep building, it
should never stop. And in a way it is about rolling
the money, right? Because otherwise the artisan
doesn't get employment And to ensure the quality control that
he they didn't just build some rubbish is that they would be
told to give the dust of their carvings from stone and that
would be put through a sieve to see what the fine quality of
dust. So you don't just get money from
the businessman easily, he also ensures there's a quality and
therefore the Jain temples, especially the older ones, are
very detailed and fine. So you see this kind of a
rotation of money happening. You have the Muslims talking
about don't go for debt, go for equity.
You have the Jain saying invest in the artist community.
So you suddenly see the wealth distributing to different
communities not remaining within.
It's not locked within one community.
So I think religion plays this very powerful role of ensuring
money moves. It's interesting that you bring
up temples. Give that in light of money,
because our understanding is that the temples were at one
time places where wealth was kept, right?
And so now when we hear about invaders coming and breaking
down temples, it wasn't so much to say that they were wanting to
do so to spread the religion, but in order to attack the
financial hub of a blaze. Can you elaborate on this
history? How do you run a temple right?
What is the source of income for a temple?
Let's say there is a temple that are priests, that are musicians,
that are dancers, that are weavers.
You need key for lighting the lamps, you need metal Smiths,
you need carpenters. So there's a whole ecosystem
that keeps the temple running. They all have to be fed, you
need resources. Where do you get it from?
The king would give the land, it's called Devabhoga land.
Earlier when in the Vedic period when there were no temples, they
would just give it to the Brahmin saying you perform the
rituals. But then that sort of lost
favour around 1500 years ago and the gods said no, no, we won't
give it to the Brahmins, we'll give it to the gods and through
them all these people will get fed.
So the temples across India are really very big landlords, Even
the Nalanda University. In the older days, the sustupas
and the viharas were major landlords.
They had lots of land, so the temple had a lot of money.
Now the what happens with all the money, the extra cash
generates a lot of wealth. So there's a lot of gold and
people also start giving gold even today you'll see
Siddhivinayak temple if you go to Shirdi Sai Baba.
When people are successful things have gone well for them.
They'll give a percentage of their profit to the temple.
So the temple starts accumulating a lot of cash and a
lot of gold and metal and that sticks to the form of the the
deities gold crown and the gold masks.
Then there are these lamps made of gold.
Now that starts accumulating, right.
So you have Ratna Bandar, you have a treasury now that's
across India. There were these treasuries, and
obviously these were forces of great metal, great wealth, and
the kings would attack them. When the Islamic invasion took
place, this was the wealth they wanted.
But how do you motivate people living far away to come to read
them? You use like even politicians
today. If I tell them that there's
money, come let's steal the money.
But that doesn't sound good. That's not great to motivate and
mobilize the people, because nobody wants to be greedy.
So what? You'll say that, hey, we have to
establish the true faith. We have to destroy paganism, we
have to destroy idolatry. And that's a great PR.
So the PR machinery is very clearly faith, religion and all
that. And then of course there's
underlying everybody knows it's about the plunder and the money
to be made. So the two cannot be separated.
So yes, the religion is spreading and we must not take
away the fact that it was a read and they were reading and they
were plundering at the same time.
And religion helps. Now what happens later when the
Sufis start to come to India, they start establishing the
Kanika. Now Kanikas are also like big
establishments, people are working, they need land to
support. So the land which was meant for
temples was now being transferred to them by the
sultans. So the wealth which was first
with the Buddhist monasteries moved to the temples.
From the temples they moved to the Sufi establishments.
So you know, religious spaces, it's like giving to God is so
much easier than giving to a brother you hate or a child you
fought with. So all this land, it's something
that we don't realize that they were being given to these
religious establishment to earn spiritual merit because, you
know, I'm supporting the monk. In fact, some people argue that
Buddhism was a prosperity theology.
Wherever the monks would go, they would take with them
technology of agriculture, water harvesting, and they would
introduce wet rice farming and sugar cane and they would take
it around the world. These Buddhist monks would go
and establish these farms and they would say that you know
what? When you are prosperous, you
have extra money to feed the monk and therefore you support
Dhamma. So your prosperity supports
Dhamma. Now when you are more
prosperous, you will build a bigger stupa, a bigger pagoda, a
bigger vihara. You will feed more monks and
therefore it is a symbiotic relationship.
I help you make money, you help me spread the Dhamma.
And if you think about it, it becomes a kind of a virtue cycle
of prosperity enabled by the Buddhist monks.
So it sounds ironical, but that's exactly what happens with
the churches. That's what happens with the
Sufi Kanakas. That's exactly what happens with
the temples, where one temple is built, a grand temple is built,
and then there's so much money coming.
You build a baby temple and more temples and then there is a
circle of temples and you have more money.
So the temple becomes bigger and bigger and bigger.
Religion motivates you to give money away.
Greed, which hoard makes you hoard.
Religion is this powerful tool to take it out of your system,
what the giants called a pari graha, you know, letting go of
wealth, letting, allowing wealth to flow out.
And I think of course that also leads to corruption.
So therefore the temples and religious institutions which
originally may have begun as a very clever way of taking
resources from rich, powerful people to ensure it reaches
hungry, then over time the temples become corrupt.
You see this constant conflict between the Matas of South India
is really based on land issues. Who is going to head the
establishment like the Sri Vaishnavas split into different
groups because it it's as much ideological as its commercial.
And usually I feel, I mean, this is of course sounds cynical, but
the ideological split is really the marketing department of the
operations department, which really wants to control the
land. If that's the case, then why do
we have specific say gods for wealth in some religions like
you have Lakshmi or Kuber in Hinduism but in say the Bible it
is Mammon who is this sort of devilish creature who is not
somebody worship for sure. Why does that exist?
When you say the rule of the regional oligarchy is the rule
of a small group of people, theocracy is the rule of the
priestly class. So the rule of the rich is
called plutocracy and Pluto is the God of the land of the dead
Hades. In the Greek world it was
basically the land of the dead. When you die, all your wealth is
buried with you, carry the coin with you and he has coin of all
the dead people so he becomes super rich.
But in the Christian world, this Pluto Hades character becomes
the devil. Pluto becomes money and wealth
and all the negative things. So even when Disney starts
making the film based on Greek mythology, it tries to show
death as the enemy and as an evil thing, which it was not.
It was just death. And Pluto was just the God of
death. And he just sort of eventually
he'll come to my realm kind of thing.
At best. He was a very miserable man
because he lived in a land without sunlight and wind.
Remember, the rise of Christianity was a counter to
the hedonism of the Roman Empire.
And really, the Roman Empire was, you know, rich and vulgar
and corrupt, and it ruled the world for 1000 years.
Even the Roman orgy was where you will eat food and then you
vomit and then you eat again. And human beings were purchased
and it was a very vulgar display of wealth.
The whole world existed to provide Rome with objects of
pleasure. The older religions, like the
Sumerian religions, the Mesopotamian religions, they
believed that gods created humans so that humans will
labour for their pleasure. That's the purpose of human
existence. And the Romans believe that we
are like the gods, we are privileged, we live like the
Olympians and humans exist and our slaves exist for our
pleasure. Now that's the world in which
Christianity comes. It's a counter movement in a way
and it comes up with the idea that blessed are the meek for
they shall inherit the earth. So it's an opposite idea.
So hedonism, pleasure, wealth. Bunny was seen as dark mammon.
It's the world of the bad people.
And then the church sort of manifests itself and church
really creates ideas, institutions like marriage.
This whole idea of the nuclear family emerges as the church
progresses. Because in the old days land was
owned by the family, you know, the tribes, clans, old land.
But the moment you start creating individualism and
nuclear families, lots of single people have access to property
now that can easily go to the church.
The church could inherit individual property, which is
difficult from tribal property. I can't take away tribal
property because 100 people own the property.
But if one man owns the property and when he rises he says I give
it to the church this sort of inner way.
Over 1000 years the church became the largest landlord of
the world, but it sort of began its movement in a anti rich,
very socialist, very communist language.
But as time passes, which is exactly what happens in
Buddhism, what happens with other spaces, You begin as a
socialist that we want to we serve the poor.
But then over time you yourself become the plutocrat because
you're so much money and money corrupts maybe a monk but luxury
material things are very seductive in Hinduism.
They would say Lakshmi Ki Bahane A Lakshmi and if you don't know
the value of Narayan that is Vishnu and ensure that she comes
to him, she will bring her sister Lakshmi with her and he
she will create trouble and all negative energies will come into
your house and brothers will fight.
Gluttony will happen. Greed, laziness.
As I said, if we go back to the basic premise of food, your
relationship with food, it's what can sort of make you noble,
but you can also pull you down and make you like plutocracy.
It take you to the land of Plutus, so it can take you up to
Vicunta or it can pull you down to Patal.
So that is the, I think the power of money and religion sort
of draws attention to it, but it also falls prey to itself.
You know, you come up with these noble ideas.
It's very nice to come up with these ideas, but to live by
those ideals. But then how then how do you
look at, say, something like a Lakshmi or a Kuber, right?
Because here you're saying you worship well or you worship
treasure. Wouldn't that say, sort of run
contrary to so many other faiths which tell you sort of give it
up? One of the things I always tell
people that the earliest images of Hindu gods appear on coins.
So the earliest images of Krishna, Balaram, Shiva, Lakshmi
are all on coins, Indo Greek coins, Kushan coins, all the
gods around the world, if you see the Roman gods, the Greek
gods, they all appear on coins and coins is where you first
find the images of gods. I think somehow it sort of made
it auspicious because money is auspicious.
So you at one level you recognize the fact that money is
that which sustains the world and therefore it makes it
auspicious. So what is called Shubham
Mangalam Kalyanam. It's good because you're hungry.
Imagine you're starving and money comes, flows into your
life. Things are good.
Your house is clean. You, you have food to eat, your
children are feeding. You know.
Sudama ke kharma Krishna Aye or pasadie.
Now that's level one. But then what do you do with the
wealth as the well? Because she'll keep coming in.
And when does what was a beautiful rain in a parched
land? When does it become a marshy
land? When does it become a flood?
And I think that regulation is what religion is talking about.
How do you say that? OK, enough, enough, enough
contentment. How do I ensure its
distribution? And that's where the flip side
happens. So it begins with I'm poor and I
want to be rich. What happens when you really
become rich? Now you want to become the Kobe.
So if you look at the Buddhist monasteries, old Buddhist, if
you go to Sachi for example, Buddhist monastery surrounded by
these pillars. And on these pillars they have
these fat yakshas deformed but bejeweled.
They're all bejeweled. So they are all this Kuberas and
they're all bejeweled. And on top of them, this
beautiful woman standing in jewelry.
You know, this Buddhist establishment is funded by these
guys and it's constantly reminding you of what Buddha is
trying to say that you should know when to pull back.
When do you say pause? This is enough for me, but not
enough for you. So I'll keep earning money, what
is called karma yoga. I generate money, but I don't
use it for myself, but I use it for the larger society, invest
in the larger world, which is very difficult to do.
It's a very difficult challenge and I think that's the idea
which Kuber and all these gods are meant about, just laughing
at you because they are like, OK, we'll come to your house,
but we'll also mess your life up.
We will completely mess with your mind because money is
seductive. It's like, it's like food,
right? Religion is a tool which helps
us regulate it if you use it correctly.
But we can always fool ourselves.
I always notice the religious rich people are very, very
religious, but they're religious.
Not to saying that I must not let wealth corrupt me, but we
they're religious because they want more wealth.
They want more and more and more.
They want to get buried under the gold.
They want to get buried in the ocean of milk rather than
enabling them to distribute the wealth.
And I think that's the challenge.
How do you distribute your wealth?
You know the Hindu word for God is bhagavan, which really comes
from BHAG, which is proportion or apportioning.
And the whole idea is about life is about how do you apportion
your wealth to others, How much do you keep for yourself, how
much do you give to others? And that's the challenge.
Ultimately, you just find it very difficult to give away
wealth even when you have an unending supply of wealth.
The church came up with tithe, the Muslims came up with zakat.
Now the secular world has corporate social responsibility.
Why is it so difficult for super rich of the world to?
They will keep saying, but we're investing so much in the market,
we're investing so much in the market.
But you're not investing for the market, you're not investing for
society, you're investing for yourself and you're fooling
nobody. And I think that's the
conversation that religion wants you to have.
That's why the Jains, who are they worshipping?
The person who owns nothing, who has nothing, and I think it's
sort of amazing how people will worship someone who has nothing
while craving to be the masters of everything.
I just want to finally get into this fact that, you know, you've
written about how all our myths deal with kings and rarely with
merchants, who are perhaps a more integral part of society.
Is it because they are also the funders of religions?
Invariably, and we don't want to make parables about them and
offend them. So Hinduism emerged in more
agricultural ecosystem while Buddhism and Jainism emerged in
the mercantile ecosystem so broadly.
That's the reason. So when you read the Ramayana
and Mahabharata, land plays a very important role, not trade
routes. But when you read the Jatakas or
when you read the Jain stories, they talk about ships and
merchants and promissory notes and caravans.
Traditionally, Hinduism was a agricultural religion and it was
all about agriculture. So when you read the Vedas, that
Ashramadeiya games about land, when you talk about the later
temple traditions, Devabhoga, they talk about land, land, land
all the time. They do not talk about
mercantile. Even the Harappan civilization
was mercantile. I mean it's completely
mercantile. The agriculture was supporting
the mercantile system other than the Srinathji temple which
became famous amongst the Gujarati Vaishnavis and to a
degree to a degree, the Meenakshi Madurai temple was
controlled by the Chettyar communities of South India.
These are rare Hindu temples which are linked to mercantile
communities. But generally a temple in India
is is like Puri temple in Jagannath Puri's.
All the Kerala temples are land owning, huge land owning things.
And it's in the 17th century that you see as the Mughal
empire was waning. As you know the the the
mercantile community of Northwest India, the Marwar,
Marwar, Rajputana area, Gujarat area sort of reasserting itself
using a Hindu language. So the Jains were really
controlling it, but there was a Hindu emergence in so and it
takes Vaishnavism becomes the form taken.
So you have Jaipur becoming the center of vaginalism, Vrindavan
becoming a center of vaginalism, all supported by mercantile
community and the Rajput communities.
So you find this kind of a mercantilism connecting with
Hinduism in a very big way from the 16th and 17th century,
especially in North India. They sort of become the funders
of the religion. Today.
Of course, you know, you see the political movement, they're
funded by the mercantile lobby. So the agricultural side, I
think they lost control because of agriculture was taken over by
the Mansabadis and the kings and the royalty took over, then the
British took over the lands. So that kind of an agricultural
connection with the religion sort of suffered a big, big blow
in the Mughal period and the British period and then the
mercantiles sort of sort of in came to its rescue.
And does the mercantile community, I mean like in a
general community, sort of sense you have someone like a Lakshmi
or Kuber who get associated with commerce and wealth.
But does the mercantile community then, say, have their
own favored gods? Are they different in any way?
Not really, not really. It's it's sort of, you know,
it's very difficult in Hinduism because the gods take so many
different forms, like for example, Ram becomes the God of
royalty. Ram would typically not to be
seen as a mercantile God, but Vaishnavism in the larger sense
of the word, and especially Krishna, the baby Krishna and
with his pastoral roots is somehow connected to
mercantilism in a very big way. Now there's nothing mercantile
about Krishna at all, but yet he has become a major deity in the
mercantile community. Shaivism, not so much.
Shaivism is more linked to the royalty.
Ram as a person becomes a very royal image.
Again in the 17th, 18th century, all the kings of India
identifying themselves around Shiva becomes the ascetic form.
So it sort of doesn't connect unlike say about 1000 years ago
when the Pashu Patas were there and all the kings were
connecting themselves with Shiva and the great Shiva.
So you see these gods changing. Like the Buddhist God Avalo
Kiteshwara becomes a very big God in the mercantile community
in the 8th century AD and he's very popular.
And Avalo Kiteshwara becomes connected with Shiva in the old
in the old form. So merchants did like Shiva at
one time. But I think in the current form
it is Vaishnavism which is more mercantile, relatively more
mercantile. As I said, exceptions exist.
Madhuram in action temple has a very strong chettyar which is a
mercantile. So the goddess plays a very
important role. If I were to make a broad
sentence, then I'll say Ram becomes more a King's God.
Krishna becomes more a merchant's God.
Shiva is for the ascetic communities.
These are broad rule of thumb things.
Odissa for example doesn't have a very large mercantile
community. Jagannath is not linked to the
mercantile idea. Tirupati Devastanam is linked.
Now a lot of merchants love Tirupati because there's a Hundi
system and some say that has a very strong link with Jain
traditions. So this you do find in Tirupati
a very strong mercantile link. There's not much of an
agricultural link. Today's episode was produced by
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