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 Jayraj Singh and Anuja Singh. For a daily spotlight on people, ideas and stories that matter, subscribe to us. We're available on TOI, Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts, and all other platforms of your choice. For any news tips, e-mail us at TOI Podcast at Timesinternet dot in.