Religion and politics in India make for a combustible combination, but a recent article in The Wall Street Journal on Azim Premi entitled Secular Engineer: How a Muslim Billionaire Thrives in Hindu India raises the matter of religion and economic advancement. The article profiles Premji, and gives a brief history of Wipro – transforming it from a seller of vegetable oil to the IT powerhouse of today.
A couple of things about the article rubbed me the wrong way. Part of it was the mention of religion in the title. Does anyone know of the religious background of billionaires from China, Japan, or Western nations? Only recently did I find out the owner of the Marriott hotel chain is a Mormon.
The article repeats one of the standard explanations of why Indian Muslims are under-performing their neighbors – that after partition, the best and brightest Muslims left for Pakistan. If that is the case, then Pakistan should be further along the development path than India, and there should be a number of world-beating Pakistani (or Bangladeshi) companies. Such is not the case – while both nations certainly have wealthy families, they are more likely to have garnered that wealth through methods usually seen in many developing nations – graft, monopolized markets, government favors, feudal relationships, etc.On the matter of prejudice – while there is prejudice towards Muslims in India, is that the main reason that they have not advanced? After all, there is no Hindu majority holding back Muslims in Pakistan or Bangladesh, yet these two nations have not produced a Premji or Yusuf Hamied?
Premji’s success is dismissed by Munir Ahmed, an imam who runs a madrassa about 30 minutes from Wipro’s Bangalore offices.
The madrassa’s imam, Munir Ahmed, says that for his students, a future as self-employed shopkeepers or peddlers is preferable to seeking formal work at a large company. “A job is like being a slave,” Mr. Ahmed chuckles, adding that his graduates are in great demand as teachers in other madrassas.
That’s self-serving nonsense – would he be so quick to dismiss Indian Muslims who have succeeded in high profile areas like film and sports? Secondly, plenty of the Indians that go to do back-breaking work in the Persian Gulf are Muslim. Is the imam suggesting that given the choice between being a construction worker in Dubai and answering phone calls in an air-conditioned office in Bangalore, that a Muslim will choose the former?
The article makes a statement that I find a bit hard to believe:
In southern India, where most of the country’s technology industry is based, Hindus speak a number of regional languages and are more likely to study English.
Had he gone to Calcutta, the reporter would have come across plenty of Bengali Muslims who speak English. Even though IT is primarily in the South, it attracts workers from throughout the country. He must not have come across Tamil Muslims or Malayalam-speaking Muslims. And considering that Hindi and Urdu are largely the same spoken language, how would language prevent a Muslim from becoming, say, a receptionist at an IT firm?
The article does end on a hopeful note:
Bangalore’s Al-Ameen college is run by a movement that seeks to modernize the Muslim community. About 360 graduate and undergraduate students, both men and women, are currently studying for computer-science degrees. Most are Muslims, including pious young men with long beards and women with an Islamic hejab that covers their hair, though not their faces. Many graduates have already gotten jobs at companies like Wipro and Infosys, says the college’s principal, Mr. Javeed, and have started to earn salaries well above those offered outside the booming technology industry. “This has brought awareness to the Muslim community about the need to pursue higher education,” he says. “People are beginning to realize that education is power, that education is money, that education is an opportunity.”
Indeed, Premji is a far better role model, for any Indian, than someone who tells you the best you can hope for is what your father did before you, and what his father did before him.
The most succesful minority ethnic groups in India are Ismailis, Parsees and Jains – by coincidence all these groups are Gujarati and speak Guju for their mother language. The most successful Hindus in India are also Gujaratis – hell, the most successful ethnic group in America are Gujaratis.
Occam’s Razor: There is something very special about the Gujarati speaking people that transcends religion and ethnicity.
(Just kidding…sort of)
he looks a bit like tariq aziz (iraq).
really. i’d wager that it’s actually some south indian group.
“success” is a loaded word. i know too many rich sad people.
yeah but we’re brown. success = money
what happened to finding a nice boy and settling down and making babies?
From Wall Street Journal:
Yes, JGandhi is correct, as the bulk of business done by South Asians is motel, and motel business is dominated by Gujaratis.
Thought I’d link in another video, this one from Davos 2007, also with both Premji and Nilekani, and Ed Tian of China Netcom, along with Dick S. Fuld of Lehman Brothers, and Maria Bartiromo moderating. The India vs China issue, and getting a sense of how it plays out through the personalities and voices of these gentlemen, with the global financial elite at Davos, is one of the main reasons to see the video; it’s also, of course, an absolute treat for Bartiromo fans. She does a great job of moderating the discussion, framing the issues and giving everyone a chance.
Don’t watch it without a strong cup of coffee, because Dick (S for soporific?) Fuld will send you straight to sleep within the first few minutes, before even the opening statements are over. Nilekani and Premji make some of the same points they made in the Charlie Rose segment, but also some others, Premji contending that India’s ‘infrastructure problem’ is overhyped, provides examples. Dick cuts in with a remark intended to be humorous, the only remotely useful thing he says during the hour – if he was actually running on all cylinders (and if he wasn’t, why wasn’t he) then I’m embarrassed on behalf of other US CEOs, some of whom at least are much more engaging and incisive. You can almost hear the rest of the panel groaning and rolling their eyes – when the mike goes to him, and the camera pans to the front row of grey hairs actually nodding off!
The panel is a sort of allegory of globalization – where the value creators are Indians and Chinese, while the US provides and intermediates the (financial) capital, and packages it all together. Don’t know what lessons it has for where the eye candy comes from 🙂
Is that what the kids are calling it these days…. Where is Rahul these days?
dude, my comment has nothing to do with Premji being muslim, most Indian CEOs I heard are not really good public speakers, they seem to struggle with public speak.
i was joking 😉 just doing a spin on the barack-obama-is-articulate thang.
Razib, could you possibly clarify the socio-economic differences between the different “flavors” of Muslims in India? Such as the average success comparison between Sunni’s, Shia’s, Ishailis(counted as different here, per your earlier post) and any others.
i don’t know that much, a lot of what i got was from Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity Among the Daudi Bohras. daudis are more ‘traditional’ than nizaris in terms of holding to islamic orthopraxy, but a lot of the generalizations about literacy and economic success that hold for nizaris hold for them. the short of it is that the ismailis in south asian are socioeconomic basically a forward caste, most of them are descended from bania groups anyway (or the case of khojas, a land owning group of some sort). the difference in terms of vital statistics is really big. it is notable that muhammad ali jinnah seems to have had ismaili antecedents, though he nominally seems to have converted to sunnism later in life (a deeply religious man he wasn’t).
as for the sunnis and shia, i know that in some north india cities the shia have voted for the BJP because if their problems with the sunnis. the ithna ashari shia are probably a little mroe successful than the sunni (working off memory), but the sunni themselves are heterogenous. after all, there’s the urdu speaking north indian hanafi muslim. then there are the gujarati and bengali hanafis. in the south there are the malayalee shafis, who were more hooked in with the south arabian than turco-afghan variants of islam which are normative in north india.
Ok seriously, the first thing that pissed me off was calling India ‘Hindu India’ While there are some jokers in India who would love to see it happen, India is secular and there is no institutional discrimination in India. That is the black and white view and this dude who seems to have a B&W view for so many things in this article could have at least got this B&W view right too.
Coming to the grays, like some people have aptly pointed out, a bulk of India’s middle class Muslims migrated to Pakistan. A lot of these went to Karachi and thus Karachi is the most economically progressive non feudal part of Pakistan. Plus a bulk of Pakistans middle class is centered around Karachi. Thus KXB, your observation that Pakistani muslims are not over performing Indian muslims may not be entirely correct. I think it depends on the sample you take.
More importantly from an Indian POV, after partition the Indian muslim middle class become very less. A bulk of Indian muslims were from the poor demography. Plus I think after partition, the feeling of two separate identities – Hindus and Muslims has not reduced if not increased. Thus you have a community that was and is poor and uneducated and relatively isolated from the Hindu middle class and thus there is no ‘seed’ in the community or encouragement for advancing their education or socio-economic status. Plus with India’s screwed up affirmative action policy which does not care one bit about anyones socio-economic status, poor muslims completely lost out in terms of the help from the Govt. for advancement. What needs to be done is for the Indian Govt. to actively try to get the muslims to educate themselves and make it into the middle class, but first we need to fix the affirmative action policy in India.
Thus KXB, your observation that Pakistani muslims are not over performing Indian muslims may not be entirely correct. I think it depends on the sample you take.
you know, if you have a distribution you can prove anything if you constrain the samples you compare 😉
The beauty of statistics after all. Is it too far fetched to give the analogy of Newtonian Physics and QM here when it comes to constraints and proving things?
The WSJ article certainly made for an interesting read. However, the title alone was probably potent enough to begin with; throw Muslim + Tycoon + Hindu India in the same sentence and you are certain to have heads turn. Attract South Asian readers with a title that is sure to make desi bloggers work overtime: Score one for WSJ!
Oh yes, it’s quite a victory for them.
/sarcasm
@Razib:
Thank you for the in depth response, Razib, as you raise some interesting points that I was very unaware of, such as some Shia branches actually supporting the BJP due to Sunni pressure. I do have to admit that a lot what you are saying is a little out of my league, but enlightening none the less. It appears to me that the nature of the Islamic religion in India, and its relationship to South Asia in general, is a very nuanced and complex subject to study, and one that probably needs a complete paper just to summarize its dynamics.
I think I am going to look into getting my hands on that book you mentioned, “Mullahs and the Mainframe”. Amazon seems to have it.
Thanks again!
cyrus, generalizing about south asian islam is like generalizing about european christianity. spanish catholics and finnish lutherans are both christian…but very different.
@Razib:
“cyrus, generalizing about south asian islam is like generalizing about european christianity. spanish catholics and finnish lutherans are both christian…but very different.”
Point taken.
I’ll try and use that as a logical comparison when reading about the subject.
Re: Ardy “India is secular and there is no institutional discrimination in India.”
You must be kidding me! While the Indian govt. claims to be secular on its face, I feel that it is absurd to claim that it is in fact so. Indian society and govt. is clearly NOT secular. The majority of Indians (like it or not) are Hindu, and live by Hindu prinicples. These principles carry over, as they would for anyone, into their careers and politics. And dont’ even get me started on institutional discrimination. Have you heard of the Dalits?
I think the ‘west’ is stuck with analyzing the subcontinent through the lens of religion, sometimes much more so than the subcontinent itself. Remember a few years ago, France was all agog with an ‘untouchable’ President in ‘Hindu’ India? Then that a Sikh was the prime minister in a Hindu dominated country. And this?
I think I’ve said it before, the people who are written up around the world by definition have transcended the binds of their religions and other origin-based markers to the point with mostly they are seen for their talents, least of all their religion. I don’t know if many others here feel like that, but when I see PM Mr. Manmohan Singh, all I see is a huge brain in a turban :). I mean it’s a globe-trotting, academia-conquering, astute thinking instrument; the fact that he is also a Sikh is almost irrelevant to me. The same goes for any of the others.
Perhaps my view would be in the minority somewhere, but I know for sure that Manmohan Singh is not seen as ‘that Sikh ruling over us’ by anyone I’ve talked to over in desh.
I really wish this mis-representation would finally stop.
vivavidya, please see my next line
39 Krishnan Frustrating to hear such characterisation. Maybe BJP should send a thank you note to these lazy writers. **
BJP is a mainstream party anyway. But it could be said the other way too, right? “Kangress/CPI should send a thank you note to these lazy writers. (!!!)
The sub-editor obviously is looking for impact and at the same time there is some level of truth to the “Hindu India” claim. There is an official India and there is also an unofficial India.
My observation has nothing to do with BPJ, or JPB. You just have to figure out how a subeditor’s mind works, some realities on the ground and connect the dots.
71 I really wish this mis-representation would finally stop. **
The article is written for western readers. For them india is viewed as a religious country. There are many of us dyed in the wool secularites who have transcended divisive labels, but and that is an important but … their numbers is still small.
Were the article written for the middle class Indians in an Indian newspaper you may have less likely encountered “Muslim Engineer” and definitely no “Hindu India”.
The article is just written for a different audience based on their perceptions. When the day comes when most Indians do not consider religions as a major force in their life — such characterizations will recede.
Any ideas on the number of Ahmadiyas and their influence.. I think Pakistan and Bangladesh being Muslim majority have made them non-Muslims, but in India I guess they are still treated as Muslims (being the minority, reducing the number is not desirable I believe, but do you know of “tensions” between the different sects).
Razib, I quote Stephen Colber!, “I accept your apology” 😀
Any ideas on the number of Ahmadiyas and their influence.. I think Pakistan and Bangladesh being Muslim majority have made them non-Muslims, but in India I guess they are still treated as Muslims (being the minority, reducing the number is not desirable I believe, but do you know of “tensions” between the different sects).
i think the treatment of them as non-muslims is in pakistan. they aren’t popular in bangladesh, but i don’t think the gov. has declared them non-muslims (i could be wrong). there are a lot of conspiracy theories regarding ahmadiyas in non-ahmadiya muslim camps. i have a friend whose family is from an ahmadiya background and she vouch for the fact that prejudice among american muslims against them runs strong. to non-muslims the differences seem minor though, and it seems to me that ahmadiya are more conventional muslims in many ways than nizari ismailis…but their purported rejection of muhammad as the last prophet is the deal breaker (ahmadiya deny that they hold to this view, but that is the mainstream muslim perception).
I take umbrage to your speaking out of your arse.
To complete my thought, Indians do not live by any principles. Even the recent TOI sponsored ‘LeadIndia’ Campaign inspires snide remarks such as, “We would welcome leadership, if there were any”, or “We are all leaders. Why should we follow anyone”.
There is only one hindu principle: no beef!
I agree. Indians are naturally postmodernist.
I meant that in the sense of general skepticism towards grand narratives of any sort. As trollerboi wrote:
I meant that in the sense of general skepticism towards grand narratives of any sort.
Exactly, the most telling recent event is Karunandhi questioning “Was Rama a civil engineer? Which college did he graduate from?“
India is defined by one word: Bhasad (chaos). If you can make cash amongst bhasad, more power to you.
Yes it looks like on Bangladesh there is no official designation.. but quite a bit of trouble.. link
Targeting the Ahmadiyyas
There is a clear danger to the state at this point. The danger comes from men who have decided to define religion for the country. The more disturbing part of the story is that some people in the administration, such as sections of the police, seem to be involved in the process. The outrageous way in which some policemen acquiesced before some fanatics in Bogra last week by agreeing to put up a sign designed by the bigots on an Ahmadiyya mosque says something sinister. It should have been the job of the law enforcers to enforce the law. Instead, what they were doing in Bogra was to compound matters by clearly violating the rights of the Ahmadiyya community. The question here is not one of who is or is not a Muslim. It is one of a silent, peaceful body of worshippers becoming the target of unprovoked attacks by fanatics whose motives are obviously the creation of a bad law and order situation in the country. It is such motives which have been condoned by the Bogra police. It is now for the government to come up with an explanation of why the police in Bogra chose to act in a way that was clearly partisan.
But that is not the end of the story. Here in the capital, a well-orchestrated campaign has been going on under the aegis of the self-styled Khatme Nabuwat Movement. It has been known to all that the outfit has been whipping up communal sentiment against the Ahmadiyyas in the last few months. But what happened in Dhaka on Friday is clearly portentous. The khatib of Baitul Mukarram, the national mosque, has now made his position clear. He is of the view that the Ahmadiyyas should be declared non-Muslims. Under what law and by what right he has chosen to act in such a manner is unknown to us. But for the country as a whole, it is a clear provocation on his and his followers’ part. It is morally indefensible that men who try to plunge the country into religious or communal disorder should be at the helm of such important bodies or places of worship as Baitul Mukarram. What the khatib has done is to send out the very wrong message that a mosque, a place where the glory of the Almighty is praised and His blessings sought, can at the whims of individuals be turned into a platform for religious and political chaos. The khatib and his friends have gone further by making it clear that they will not accept any ruling by the highest judiciary on the issue of the Ahmadiyyas. That is not only an outrage but also a plain and clear threat to the authority of the state. No government with self-esteem can afford to look away from such grossly bad behaviour on the part of individuals, no matter how well-placed or influential they might be. We hope the authorities, especially at the ministry of home, will deal swiftly with the matter.
Kush, The whole Ramsetu issue is extremely complicated and it is because Ram does not evoke the kind of sentiments in South as it does in the North. A southern politician, where there is the whole Dravida movement (a powerful one I believe), it is hard for a politician to be pro-Ram. This whole fiasco about Ramsetu is one more example why India can not have a National party with leader that has appeal throughout the country. Higher degree of federalism on its way.
1 Palonji Mistri (Zoroastrian) 2) Adi Godrej (Zoroastrian) 3) Cyrus Poonawalla (Zoroastrian) 4 ) Malvinder & Shivinder Singh (Sikh) 5) Azim Premji (Muslim) 6) Vikas Oberoi (Sikh – Possibly) 7) Dilip Singhvi (Jain) 8) Indu Jain (Jain) 9) Pradeep Jain (Jain) 10) Shiv Nadar (Catholic – possibly)
I believe this list is very misleading, mostly because it seems to rank these people in terms of wealth, and in that case this list is not even close to corrent. Azim Premji is by far the richest on this list, it is also incomplete.
Here is a partial list along with wealth.
Mainly the original list gave a misplaced view that Parsis are economically dominant in India. That may have been true before, when India was essentially a corporate state, and back then many of the top corporatations were run by Parsis. I think what you see in the overall picture, clearly, is that economic liberty really has challenged companies to become professional entities rather than family firms. For this reason I believe you will soon see the end of such domination of the top of the list by specific groups….like parsis, marwaris etc, and those who are talented and ambitious will rise just like any other society. The companies that adapt will no longer be family companies. Those that dont….i would say Godrej falls into this category, will slowly fall out of favor and decline.
Recently in a conversation with a Puerto Rican co-worker, she mentioned how at her previous job she had a friend from India but he is muslim. To which I said “And, he is muslim” and had to spend the next hour edumacating.
As for bhasad in India, remember when Katrina happened and there was no law and order and all kinds of looting and chaos broke out? India has some how managed to function in a near katrina state 24/7. Something about chaos creating a vacuum in power, and some bad meteorological analogy of winds traveling from high pressure to low pressure seems in order.
Deliver me from equilibrium.
“Those that dont….i would say Godrej falls into this category, will slowly fall out of favor and decline. “
Thang God. Godrej is responsible for and popularizing and manufacturing those ugly metal dressers Indian women love to use.
62 Ardy,
Ardy, it is better to say UP, Punjabi and Bengali Muslims rather than all Indian muslims, because they are not the same everywhere in India. For instance Muslims in Tamil Nadu are more prosperous than many of the Hindu communities.
@85
I dint rank them according to their wealth, I just listed the non Hindu Billionaires
Kushal Pal Singh(Sikh??) 10.0 Billion is not Sikh he is a Hindu Jat
Does anyone know of the religious riots in China, Japan, or Western nations?
There are riots of all kinds in India and most of them are engineered by political outfits. It’s as much a law and order issue as it’s an issue of genuine prejudice and hatred. If you bothered to find out, you wouldn’t ask irrelevant questions. WSJ, on the other hand, is supposed to enlighten its readers and is expected to have better insights. The fact that there are riots, not genocides, should also tell you something. Caste and poverty are entry barriers – I’m not sure religion is at all, but it could be in the unorganised sector. I’d like to know what barriers muslims face in getting a seat in a college or a job when they have the qualifications.
Wrong answer! Classic Indianizm…answer has nothing to do with the question! ha ha
Example:
Q: What is 1 + 1? A: India invented 0. We were very very rich thousands of years ago….
In my opinion i think that the elites and middle classes left for Pakistan because they could. Leaving behind the poor and uneducated of most rural areas. These becoming insular places with a village mentality. The imams left just have no idea how to deal with a rapidly changing world, since most rural folk cant really read nor write, they follow them because thats all they know which means, and also the fact they have no other role models which in turn means they will be left behind!
Its not race or religion that holds anyone back, its ignorance and lack of education.
Actually Azim Premji is a Khoja – Shia Ithna-asherry which is a tiny group of about 100,000 people around the globe and happens to be one of the richest people’s.
Wrong! As someone mentioned in the thread, he is a Khoja Ismaili which means Ismaili Nizari (headed by the Aga Khan). There is a Khoja Ithna Ashari sect also ( which Jinnah seems to have joined after being born Ismaili) but this has few people of significance in India. Ithna Ashari is otherwise the mainstream twelver Shia sect in India (similar to Iranian and Iraqi Shias) but Indian Ithna Asharis have never been known to participate in any terrorist violence ever and are a somewhat effete community. There are few prominent Isna Asharis in India outside the film industry. They generally sit in their havelis and mope about times gone by. Typical Isna Ashari names are Rizvi, Naqvi, Abdi, Zaidi, Bilgrami etc. Good people. Many married Hindus. Unlike Sunnis, do not insist on Hindus converting. Moderate, gentle, educated and tolerant but terrible underachievers unlike the Ismailis, who include Premji, Khorakiwalla (wockhardt), Hamied (Cipla), Air Chief Marshal Latif (Suleymani Bohra), Dr. Salim Ali (also Suleymani), Badr ud Din Tyabji (Sulaeymani) and thousands of highly successful Dawoodi Bohras plus hundreds of successful Aga Khani (Nizari) Khojas.
All Islamic terrorist acts in India have been carried out by Sunnis alone.