Money and Masculinity in Late Capitalist Jainism

This paper evaluates contemporary Jain representations of capitalism and neoliberalism as expressed in interviews, Jain magazines, and biographies of Jain laymen, teases out continuities from Jainism’s mythic pasts to its contemporary religious practices. In communities such as the Jains where well-being and masculinity are publicly expressed through capital, much can be gained from examining the strategies deployed by men whose middle-class economic status limits their ability to participate in such material expressions of key values. The imperative of modern masculinity shapes how Jain laymen must negotiate the tensions between participating and winning at traditional Jain masculinity—the family man who is a generous religious donor—and integrating the economic pressures of neoliberal capitalism and its attendant individualism. Individuals have adapted modernist discourses, such as democratization, and the liberalization of the Indian economy, in order to open space for a new kind of Jain masculinity.