Friday, March 18, 2011

Indian minorities serving the global majority: Rajiv Malhotra

Indian minorities serving the global majority: Rajiv Malhotra: "

I claim that Nagaland Christians are a branch office of the US based Baptist church, and in the global sense they are part of a powerful global enterprise, hardly a minority. To make the point intuitively clear, I cite the example that when we see a McDonald’s restaurant in India, we don’t think of it as some minority establishment even though in purely local terms it is a small portion of the city’s restaurant industry. We know it to be the local footprint of a global multinational. The same rules of global criteria should also apply to religious multinationals such as the various churches headquartered in the west with branches in India.


This point was very well applauded in my talks, as the videos show. I also wrote about this a decade ago in my two-part Sulekha.com articles, titled, “A Business Model of Religion,” in which I applied standard business corporate criteria to examine religious enterprises. The rules of a business being minority is clearly based on looking at worldwide assets, sales, overall clout, etc. and not merely the local position. The old rules for determining who is a minority no longer apply in this age of globalization when national boundaries do not isolate of partition global clout, funding, centralized governance, etc.


Who is a “minority” in the present global context? A community may be numerically small relative to the local population, but globally it may in fact be part of the majority that is powerful, assertive and well-funded. Given that India is experiencing a growing influx of global funding, political lobbying, legal action and flow of ideologies, what criteria should we use to classify a group as a “minority”? Should certain groups, now counted as minorities, be reclassified given their enormous worldwide clout, power and resources?


– Rajiv Malhotra


INTERROGATING THE TERM “MINORITY”: The book raises the question: Who is a “minority” in the present global context? A community may be numerically small relative to the local population, but globally it may in fact be part of the majority that is powerful, assertive and well-funded. Given that India is experiencing a growing influx of global funding, political lobbying, legal action and flow of ideologies, what criteria should we use to classify a group as a “minority”? Should certain groups, now counted as minorities, be reclassified given their enormous worldwide clout, power and resources? If the “minority” concerned has actually merged into an extra-territorial power through ideology (like Maoists) or theology (like many churches and madrassas), through infrastructure investment (like buying large amounts of land, buildings, setting up training centers, etc.), through digital integration and internal governance, then do they not become a powerful tool of intervention representing a larger global force rather than being simply a “minority” in India. Certainly, one would not consider a local franchise of McDonalds in India to be a minor enterprise just because it may employ only a handful of employees with modest revenues locally. It is its global size, presence and clout that are counted and that determine the rules, restrictions and disclosure requirements to which it must adhere. Similarly, nation-states’ presence in the form of consulates is also regulated. But why are foreign religious MNCs exempted from similar requirements of transparency and supervision? (For example: Bishops are appointed by the Vatican, funded by it, and given management doctrine to implement by the Vatican, and yet are not regulated on par with diplomats in consulates representing foreign sovereign states.) Indian security agencies do monitor Chinese influences and interventions into Buddhist monasteries in the northern mountain belt, because such interventions can compromise Indian sovereignty and soft power while boosting China’s clout. Should the same supervision also apply to Christian groups operating under the direction and control of their western headquarters and Islamic organizations funded and/or ideologically influenced by their respective foreign headquarters? Ultimately, the book raises the most pertinent challenge: What should India do to improve and deliver social justice in order to secure its minorities and wean them away from global nexuses that are often anti-Indian?

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