The Anoop Mandal is an anti-Jain Hindu religious sect that originated in Rajputana and continues to be prevalent throughout most of the southern districts of Rajasthan and northern Gujarat, as well as major commercial centers like Surat (in Gujarat) and Mumbai (in Maharashtra). Bhāviks regularly gather in large events (melas) to sing devotional songs to the group's founder, Anoopdas (1848-1921), to read from his only work, Jagathitkarni (“For the Welfare of the World,” 1909,) to extol the virtues of Dhartimātā (“Mother Nature,”) and listen to speeches about the problem of Jain power, which takes the form of a magically (jādūchala or indrajāl) inflected global conspiracy. These beliefs are presented through the language of common Hindu religious idioms, the Jains being likened to Kamsa, Hiranyakashipu, and most significantly, Ravana. On the basis of these beliefs, the Jains allege, the Anoop Mandal has carried out a hundred-year terror campaign against Jain communities, primarily ascetics, particularly by intentionally hitting them with motor vehicles.
According to Anoopdas and his followers, the Jains control all of the world’s governments, the global financial system, and somewhat curiously, the weather. The districts in which the Anoop Mandal has significant presence are some of the most arid in western India that are still capable of sustaining agriculture. According to surveys undertaken in recent years, the groundwater of this region is the second most hyper-exploited in India; in an average year three times the amount of water is taken as is replenished, and many of these districts do not have groundwater reserves at all and rely solely on the monsoon for both drinking water and irrigation. Significantly, the Anoop Mandal alleges that these ecological conditions are a product of Jain activity, both commercial and magical. Critics of the Anoop Mandal point to the groups popularity among the “scheduled tribes” (ST) and “other backwards caste” (OBC) communities as evidence of the backwards-ness of their beliefs, a product of the regions longstanding underdevelopment; a holdover of archaic superstition that has no place in modern India. I argue that these beliefs are not anachronisms but must be located in the very real conditions of social life in the region.
At the time of the Anoop Mandal’s emergence the small kingdom of Sirohi, an independent Rajput state, amidst a string of droughts and famines, began modernizing its agricultural infrastructure. These projects were undertaken through private-public partnerships, in which wealthy merchants, often Jain, would finance the construction of wells and complex irrigation systems. Water, which according to Anoopdas is the lifeforce of mother earth, increasingly came under social control and was subordinated not to the satisfaction of human needs but to the whims of regional markets. This paper argues that the Anoop Mandal’s conception of Jain power demonstrates an understanding of ecological crisis as socially produced – anthropogenic - it is emphatically un-natural. Jain power, it is asserted, is to be located in their control of money – the practice of indrajāl, writes Anoopdas, was taken up to fulfill this purpose. Anoop Mandal devotees almost exclusively refer to Jains by their colloquial regional caste designation: baniya. The influential subaltern studies historian David Hardimann glosses this term as “usurer.” “Megh aur mot / baniyon ke hāthon men,” goes a popular Anoop Mandal slogan frequently chanted at their rallies and marches (“The rain, which is life, and death, are in the clutches of the baniyas”). On this basis, I argue that the Anoop Mandal’s theory of Jain domination is not an explanation of the Anthropocene, but, rather, the Capitalocene.
Proponents of the Capitalocene concept, as an alternative to that of the Anthropocene, draw our attention to the fact that ecological devastation is not caused by humanity writ large, but rather by the social system that governs life on this planet: capitalism. Rather than simply being an economic system, theorists such as Donna Harraway and Jason Moore argue, capitalism is a way of organizing nature. Drawing on several years of fieldwork in Rajasthan and Gujarat, this paper argues that the Anoop Mandal’s ecological stance, and its subsequent theorizing on the nature of Jain power, follows this understanding, and represents a Hindu conception of the Capitalocene. However, rather than identifying the source of this problem as a particular way of organizing society, the Anoop Mandal’s formulation attributes this social order to the personal whims of a particular ethnoreligious group; in other words, a conspiracy theory. Why, and how, this paper asks, do the causes of ecological devastation become conceptualized as personal rather than systematic? How does religion facilitate this process? And why is the target of this theory an ethnoreligious group?
The Anoop Mandal is a century old anti-Jain Hindu religious sect centered throughout the arid and drought-prone districts surrounding the border between Rajasthan and Gujarat. According to devotees (bhāviks), the Jain merchant castes, baniyas, control all the world’s governments, the economy, and even the weather; they are the source of the current climate crisis. Critics contend that this is evidence of the backwards status of the group’s members, who are mostly low-caste, and the underdevelopment of the region. This paper argues that the Anoop Mandal’s beliefs represent not a pre-modern prejudice, but a form of Hindu theorizing which connects anthropogenic climate change with the demands of a specific economy; it is a theory of the Capitalocene. Why, this paper asks, do the causes of ecological devastation become conceptualized as personal rather than systematic? How does religion facilitate this process? And why is the target of this theory an ethnoreligious group?