In her work _Holy Science_ (2019), Banu Subramaniam introduces the term “archaic modernities” in order to characterize the attribution of technologies, institutions and epistemologies conventionally understood to be products of modernity to the distant past. The concept is familiar to those who have a finger on the pulse of popular media in South Asia as it pertains to claims of advanced medicine and technology having existed in hoary antiquity throughout the Indian subcontinent—forms of discourse popular within Hindu and Buddhist nationalist circles in India and Sri Lanka. Outside of the scope of Subramaniam’s monograph but intimately related to such fantastic technological claims are attempts to locate aspects of modern liberalism within the earliest stratum of Indian civilization. A increasingly prevalent example of such a discourse of “archaic modernity” with instantiations across the political spectrum of Hindus and Jains concerns the suggestion that principles of free market capitalism were articulated in Indian antiquity, with mythologist and popular author Devdutt Pattanaik (author of _The Success Sutra: An Indian Approach to Wealth_) coining the term “Dharmic capitalism” in reference to the proposition that economic liberalism has from the time of the Vedas been an intrinsic aspect of Hindu culture.
This paper considers Jain participation in discourses of “Dharmic capitalism,” surveying a spectrum of emic attitudes toward the relevance of principle tenants of Jain religion to navigating complexities of 21st century global free market commerce. Making use of interviews, popular media, and popular and academic publications advancing normative and prescriptive viewpoints, I highlight Jain efforts to locate principles of free market capitalism within their own scriptural tradition, alongside present-day Jain attempts to reconcile the moral vicissitudes of the global financial marketplace with the strict Jain precepts of non-violence, non-possessiveness, and absolute truthfulness. I examine what are in some cases direct correspondences between Hindu and Jain sentiments regarding the historical presence of liberal economic models in India historically, direct interface between Hindus and Jains which has generated a portion of this discourse, as well as discourses of “Jain exceptionalism,” i.e. insistence that Jain economic success has been historically supplemented with superlative models of philanthropy.
The Jain perspectives under consideration range in their sympathies toward the role of the welfare state: from literature produced by Atul Shaw and associates advocating the importance of collective governance and redistribution of wealth through state apparatuses; to the mixed, neo-traditionalist “sapeksha arthashastra” economic philosophy articulated by Acharya Mahaprajna (1920-2010), influential in Jain commentarial circles; to the explicitly “anti-socialist” views of manufactuing magnate Abhay Firodia (b.1943), one of the most well-known Jain philanthropists in India (whose anti-welfare-state views are nonetheless accompanied by a caveat that some degree of state spending is necessary to stimulate industrial production at scale).
Beyond comparison between Hindu and Jain discourses of “Dharmic capitalism,” the theoretical dimension to the paper consists in an analysis of the means by which Jains argue that participation in capitalist enterprises creates a space for the cultivation of personal virtue (e.g. through philanthropy, through conducting business adhering to (of even inspired by) foundational Jain moral precepts). I compare this perspective with that of Christian-libertarian theorists associated with the Acton Institute, a pro-free-market think tank which funds advocacy programming in South Asia through various NGOs, in order to contrast the theological presuppositions at work in both sets of authors what appears to be a shared assumption that free markets are a necessary condition for the cultivation of virtue.
This paper considers Jain participation in discourses of “Dharmic capitalism,” surveying a spectrum of emic attitudes toward the relevance of principle tenants of Jain religion to navigating complexities of 21st century global free market commerce. Making use of interviews, popular media, and popular and academic publications advancing normative and prescriptive viewpoints, the author highlights Jain efforts to locate principles of free market capitalism within their own scriptural tradition, alongside present-day Jain attempts to reconcile the moral vicissitudes of the global financial marketplace with the strict Jain precepts of non-violence, non-possessiveness, and absolute truthfulness. The author examines what are in some cases direct correspondences between Hindu and Jain sentiments regarding the historical presence of liberal economic models in India historically, direct interface between Hindus and Jains which has generated a portion of this discourse, as well as discourses of “Jain exceptionalism,” i.e. insistence that Jain economic success has been historically supplemented with superlative models of philanthropy.