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.
this is stupid, azim premji is an ismaili. muslims they are, but their socioeconomic profile is very different from sunni or ithna ashari (twelver) shia in india. this is about as valid as using the success marwaris as data points in trying to understand why hindu dalits are not doing well when marwaris are.
umm, Tata is Parsi. Godrej is Parsi. Wadia is Parsi.
Im just listing three from a pretty small community in itself. Wtf is wrong with hindus? Letting people from other religion to prosper in hindu-stan!
What I want to know is : how many hindu industrialists prosper in Pakistan? WSJ should write an article on that, if the reporter survives the beheading, or isnt deported back from the airport.
end rant.
p.s. premji is a nizari ismaili from what i can tell. just to be specific.
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.
when i read surveys of eastern cultures (japan, korean, china) and nations on occasion there are apologias for why the chapter on religion is somewhat of an afterthought. the authors often offer that religion isn’t as salient a feature of these cultures as they are in the islamic world or india. there is a way that this is false, japanese were after all forced to register at buddhist temples during the tokugawa period after all (as part of the extirpation of christianity from japan). that being said, if you look at religious affiliation rates east asia has very low rates, in large part because institutional religion as a central element of one’s identity has been not particularly important there. there are some tensions between the 25% of south koreans who are christian and the 25% who are buddhist (e.g., fundamentalists attacking buddhist “idols”), but not anything like in south asia between muslims and hindus (or even in lebanon between christians and muslims). long story short, i do think it makes sense that you wouldn’t mention the religious identities of many east asians simply because usually they aren’t as important to the formation of their world view in a way that marks them off from their citizens. christian han chinese are still han chinese (muslim han chinese though become hui).
re: differentiating between the non-ismailis and ismailis, i think a good line of inquiry would be to examine variation between different indian muslim communities. e.g., the muslims of kerala vs. those of UP. one assumes that the former have a lot more remittances being pumped into the community, how is this translating into education or accumulation of capital?
The elites DID leave for Pakistan. I do think there was a vacuum created in local North Indian communities which prevented the formation of an aspirational class which would have brought out more of the capable.
christian han chinese are still han chinese (muslim han chinese though become hui).
And yet the Chinese leadership seems to not like Evangelical Christians and is actively promoting Confucianism as the basis of the “national culture’?
that after partition, the best and brightest Muslims left for Pakistan.
I know KXB you are stating the general wisdom on socio-economics of 1947 migration. Maybe, ALM could chime in too.
Broadly, it is true that a lot of UP and Punjab, and Bengal elite muslims immigrated to Pakistan. That was the idea to define their own destiny. Very poor did have not the means to move. Most of the muslims stayed put, if they were in new Pakistan, they stayed there, and if they were in India, they stayed there. Even then, millions moved cross border.
South Indian muslims were very not too keen on moving.
But this is also true, that a lot of very rich Muslims stayed in India since they had too much (their wealth) vested in India to move.
Wasn’t Azimji’s father is the same category, they have always been a very rich family, even when they were only SOAP manufacturing giant. I think his father was offered a sweet deal in new Pakistan, but he opted to stay.
Trivia: Azim Premji took more than 20 odd years to finish his Stanford undergraduate degree. When his father died, he was few credits short of his requirements, but then took over the business in India. It is to his credit that he made a soap company to an outsourcing, high tech giant. It was later he finished his requirements through correspondence/ online.
I think Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan are more role models for Muslim India – Rising from small towns, humbler background to become stars. Azim Premji, in some sense like Nawab of Pataudi, has always been the elite of India
From the article:
As he well might, given the rest of the article indicates the reporter may at best not have realized confounding factors and at worst may be openly biased. For instance, the part about the schoolboys in the madrasa not having heard of Wipro is only part of the story. I’m sure that had he looked harder (or chosen to), he would have found non-Muslim schoolboys who had also never heard of Wipro. But this reporting gives the impression that “There are Muslim schoolboys who don’t know/care about Azim Premji”, which is disingenuous in the absence of control experiments.
I have once heard Azim Premji speak when I was in college. The absolute last thing that anyone in the audience must have thought of on listening to him was classifying him into religious or other such bins. If his public speaking was representative of his real thought process, (which I see no reason to doubt), then religion is way, WAY down on his list of labels to identify with. In fact I was surprised to see that anyone could come up with his name to answer the question “Who is the richest Muslim millionaire?”.
He’s a good speaker. Wish he would give more talks on his vision.
KXB, interesting post. The article by Trofimov did strike me also as being quite shallow in its analysis, and altogether too glibly facile in its sweep of facts into explanations.
Still, I think it is true that in North India, the educated class did leave for (West) Pakistan in 1947, and continued to do so for roughly the next two decades, and so the mohajirs (refugees/immigrants) in Pakistan are much better educated, on average, than other Pakistanis. So initially they formed a disproportionate segment of the professional class (lawyers, doctors, professors, scientists) as well as bureaucrats. Eventually they began to be discriminated against, even there, but that’s a separate story. In South India, this also occured amongst the educated class in Hyderabad, but not nearly as much as in North India, and not so much at all in any of the other three Southern states. So the overall status of Muslims in the South is not nearly as bad as it is in the North, though it is quite bad in parts.
As an explanation for Muslim underachievement in India, the departure of Muslim professionals wholesale for Pakistan – has common elements with the view that the presence of black professionals side by side with less educated blacks during segregation was beneficial to the latter, because it provided examples of success, there were spillover effects, etc.
The extent of discrimination against Muslims in India is often under-acknowledged, and too often unjustifiably dismissed as an explanation for their underperformance. Entrepreneurship in small business by Indian Muslims is a reaction to this discrimination by the official sector in India, just as desis in general set up small stores or drive cabs, etc in the West in reaction to similar perceptions.
I agree also with Razib’s overall point @1 and suede’s point @ 2: he is both socio-religiously atypical and completely off the chart financially to draw any broadly valid conclusions from. I think it’s also possible that his Ismaili background as well as his wealth prevents his seeing the true extent of anti-Muslim discrimination in India.
And BTW, he also does acknowledge that his family learnt how to play the game during the license-permit raj quite well.
Final BTW:
Link
And yet the Chinese leadership seems to not like Evangelical Christians and is actively promoting Confucianism as the basis of the “national culture’?
it’s more complicated than that. not to take the thread off topic, but the main issue that chinese elites have had with religions is that they create separate and alternative power structures which can threaten the state. evangelical “house” churches do that, which is why there is more hostility toward them then there is to the “tamed” recognized official churches. that is the same reason that they oppose falung gong. that is the reason than in the 9th century hundreds of thousands of buddhist monks and nuns were de-frocked and temples closed and their properties confiscated. though form a liberal perspective there no justification for the oppression of the chinese state toward christianity, do note that many of the “evangelical” churches are veering into syncretistic directions similar to taiping.
also, i should add that azim premji is also a khoja. a salient point from wiki: Pir Sadruddin lived for some time amongst the rich Hindu landowners of Sindh known as the Thakurs. After studying their way of life, Pir Sadruddin enlightened them to a new faith. Before the arrival of the Aga Khan, Khojas retained many Hindu traditions including the one about ten incarnations (Dashavatar) of Vishnu. Only difference being that they believed Imam Ali was the tenth and last incarnation (Avatar).
in fact, i recently read some material on savarkar where he did not reject that the khojas were part of the hindu nation because of their syncretism.
this sort of story is common. there is now a whole genre of impressionistic human interest stories about ‘moderate muslims’ since 9/11. the problem is that the ‘muslim problem,’ which exists across the muslim world and into regions where muslims are minorities, will be solved by hard-headed data analysis, and appreciation that glib generalizations don’t get you anywhere with 1.2 billion human beings.
It was a vegetable oil and soap company, that started in 1945. Here is WIPRO’s history from wiki.
Note: There were not that big till 70s, and 80s. It has seen an amazing acceleration.
Parsis = Small tight-knit mostly Gujarati-speaking religiously distinguished community with a partly Indian partly non-Indian sense of identity.
Khojas (Nizari Ismailis) = Small tight-knit mostly Gujarati-speaking religiously distinguished community with a partly Indian partly non-Indian sense of identity.
Maybe there’s something about being part of a small tight-knit community with a strong sense of identity with roots in and around the commercial hub of the nation – especially if your community already had a foot in business and trade in the region when a few insignificant islands were transformed into a world-class commercial city by the colonial power. (Insert something about Jains…)
I found this old video, where Charlie rose interviewed Azim Premji and Nandan Nilekani. Azim Premji is very articulate and makes some really intelligent observations.
“article” huh? that’s what people say about muslims who exhibit some lexical range…. 😉
I’m not disagreeing with the idea that Muslim elites, particularly in northern India, left in 1947. I just had trouble drawing the causal relationship between their departure in 1947 and the status of Indian Muslims in 2007. After all, you could make a similar argument about almost any Indian community that had members leave to seek success in the West. For most of India’s independent history, the question has been “Why do Indians have to leave India to be successful?”
Secondly, the presence of a Hindu elite in India did not lead to rising living standards for other Hindus. Generally speaking, elites are interesting in maintaining their status, and not necessarily sharing the wealth (which can explain the resistance to market competition).
After all, you could make a similar argument about almost any Indian community that had members leave to seek success in the West.
but the argument hinges on a question of numbers. e.g., did more than 50% of the top 10% in assets leave for pakistan? more than 90%? less than 50%?
but the argument hinges on a question of numbers. e.g., did more than 50% of the top 10% in assets leave for pakistan? more than 90%? less than 50%?
Are you talking about assets like capital? My understanding is that most who migrated between India and Pakistan at Partition lost everything. Or are you referring to an educated elite?
Are you talking about assets like capital? My understanding is that most who migrated between India and Pakistan at Partition lost everything. Or are you referring to an educated elite?
i assume that those with physical capital didn’t take a lot of it. regardless, if they were entrepreneurs i don’t that that’s relevant in the aggregate since they have ‘human capital’ that they’re running with in any case. and yes, educated people too.
Looks like someone else had issues with the article:
India’s Secular Mentality
My understanding is that most who migrated between India and Pakistan at Partition lost everything.
That is why the ones who had lot of property did not move. Only the educated but not that rich (in terms of immovable wealth) ventured the journey.
Another trivia:
Premji’s son Rashid is married to a Hindu, Aditi….or the name sounds Hindu
His other son Tariq is rumored to be Manisha Koirala’s boyfriend. There is 10 years difference, Tariq is 25, and Manisha…..
“Hindu India” – what bollocks.
Seriously, has the quality of journalism at the WSJ gone so bad? Shoddy work.
In the IT industry, religion has little bearing. I speak from personal experience as someone who has had muslim bosses / peers / subordinates, religion has little bearing. The only differnt aspect has been that Muslim chaps disappear on Friday afternoons. Further, with women, across 3 large firms I have not seen a single lady wear a burkha or a hijab. Things may have changed now.
How about comparing Indian Christians with Indian Hindus and spin a tale that Christians are outperforming Hindus. Is it true? Are Indian Muslims uniquely disadvantaged. Yes and No. Depends on whom you ask.
It is also true that the number of Muslims in the IT industry as a % of population is skewed. In fact, come to think of it, it is skewed across all areas that I am aware – except politics.
@ KXB #16
“I’m not disagreeing with the idea that Muslim elites, particularly in northern India, left in 1947. I just had trouble drawing the causal relationship between their departure in 1947 and the status of Indian Muslims in 2007”
Exactly! However today, Indians no longer have to leave India to be successful. Read “The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us” by Robyn Meredith.
Where are the sikh billionaires ?? I suspect that the Hindu’s will never allow this 😉
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.
**
In my experience, the above statement is not hard to believe. I know of many people who can speak two regional languages in addition to Hindi and English.
I’m not disagreeing with the idea that Muslim elites, particularly in northern India, left in 1947. I just had trouble drawing the causal relationship between their departure in 1947 and the status of Indian Muslims in 2007.
It did not cause the poverty of current day Muslims in North India but it did skew the percentage of number of elites (doctors, lawyers, engineers) in the current Muslim population of North India. With social mobility in India being traditionally pretty low, it is no surprise that if the majority of the North Indian Muslim elites left India between (47 and 62) this had led to a smaller percentage of elites in the current North Indian Muslim population.
indianoguy, thanks for that video. great watch.
I dont believe discrimination is the reason why Indian Muslims are lagging in development. As far as I can tell there is almost no institutional discrimination against minorities in India. Plus India is so corrupt that getting almost anything done needs a bribe and bribe knows no religion.
Terrible sectarian violence aside, the Indian Muslims who go to school and get good grades do rise up the chain of Hindu dominated companies.
Though all people in India have a low level of trust in the system, IMO Indian Muslims probably have even a lower level of trust in the system than Hindus in general. So taking the traditional path of going to school, getting educated and finding a middle class job might not seem as attractive a career path to Indian Muslims as it does to Hindus. There seems to be a bigger reliance on small entrepreneurship which in the end gets passed on to future generations as the career choice.
The title of the article stating “HIndu India” is irritating. That is so inaccurate and misleading!
The title of the article stating “Hindu India” is irritating. That is so inaccurate and misleading! **
An interesting headline needs to be catchy and arresting, Which this one is. In some ways it is accurate as well, since Hindus make up the majority and religion is an important factor in India (unlike the west). Also the headline tries to convey how a muslim made it in supposedly adverse conditions.
This part is also rather weak. people have no comparative or historical perspective. if you look at the history of any nation (the u.s. is one of the best examples) you will find that the first indigenous people to get wealthy invariably did this through the explicit help of the state or government (either “legally” or “illegally”, the definitions of the latter terms being subject to change as regulations change). when the market regulations (that are normally politically constructed) are not settled, or alternatively, written by a foreign entity (and not them), this is how elites make money. but then they end up helping to write and enforce market regulations (by changing preexisting rules) sometimes in concert, at other times in negotiation and contest with the state and other social groups.
I do think there is truth to the statement that Indian Muslims need to very secular to get ahead professionally, while the Hindu majority can be quite devout at the highest levels of the private and public sector enterprises. I guess the same is true in most countries though.
I do think there is truth to the statement that Indian Muslims need to very secular to get ahead professionally
This may be true, but Hinduism, as exemplified by its adherence to pluralism is inclusive in nature and secularism is not alien to it. A religious muslim might would not be keen not comfortable to function in secular sorroundings. Thus you would find only secular Muslims here. Indian moviedom may probably be a good example.
Where are the sikh billionaires ?? I suspect that the Hindu’s will never allow this 😉
The Ranbaxy brothers 1 2
There are many non hindu indian billionaires 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)
BTW, there is another Muslim Indian billionare. Yusuf Hamied of Cipla was listed as 25 richest indian worth 1.2 billion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusuf_Hamied
http://news.moneycontrol.com/india/news/smartmanager/yusufkhamiedjewish/ykhamiedcarrieslegacy/market/stocks/article/192401
@ 36
Yeah I missed him 1.85 billion in the list http://www.forbes.com/lists/2006/77/biz_06india_Yusuf-Hamied_ITUQ.html
can’t remember where, but there was a very similar article – making more or less the same points about his religion/”secular” viewpoint/success as a Muslim in India etc. — a couple of years ago.
31 venkat
An interesting headline needs to be catchy and arresting, Which this one is. In some ways it is accurate as well, since Hindus make up the majority and religion is an important factor in India (unlike the west).
–> I dont think it is accurate to call it Hindu India. Yes, they are a majority but last time I checked, India was secular. As far as religion is concerned, its private importance to the majority does not translate into its use in public branding of India.
NPR referred similarly to India in its program on Pakistan’s 60 year anniversary of its independence.
Frustrating to hear such characterisation. Maybe BJP should send a thank you note to these lazy writers.
Youtube version is here.
BTW, I don’t think Premji’s particularly articulate, or incisive or insightful. I agree though that ‘articulate’ is a particularly condescending compliment. Let’s remember the old boy did go to Stanford, even if on Papa’s money. 🙂 And Charlie seems overly awed, and goes so easy on him, lobbing him softballs, not challenging him enough.
I was far more impressed with Nilekani, who comes in the second half, especially on India and China. Premji’s platitudes won’t pass muster even at the sophomore level, while Nilekani can do battle with the best of the intellectuals. His points on the Indian savings rate, the superior (financial) capital productivity, etc are made at the grad seminar level, so it was an extremely worthwhile half-hour with him. And Charlie does push and challenge him in ways that he doesn’t with Premji, though Nilekani understandably dodges the question on how and whether India and China may clash in the future.
All this my opinion only, of course.
by ‘west’ do you mean ‘europe’? i think religion is pretty important in the US. i also think the ‘west’ is an imaginary entity by now.
Kush, Premji is just as important as Irfan and Zaheer. Sports and entertainment are great and all, but not realistic options for ordinary folk. I’d like to see more muslim nine-to-fivers. Premji, with exceptional talent and silver spoon, is still an office going babu. We already have a desi version of Either you sling crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot. We need more education —> job —> stability type of muslim role models.
this thread is interesting in the context of indian muslims being held up as ‘successfull moderates’ in the west. i.e. a lot of policy wonks point to the muslim community in india as one that proves that muslims can live in moderate society, and be successfull..
29 “bribe knows no religion”
true, but it knows gender ! during my passport formalities, i had come across an inspector who turned away a muslim mother & her daughter & asked them to send her husband (apka kam ho chuka hai, ap bas unhe bhej dijiye). Obviously not wanting to ask them for the bribe.
There is an undercurrent of discrimination everywhere in india, in cities, e.g. Jains do not allow meat eaters into their housing societies, In one case i was even asked what kind of brahmin i am, when going for a rented accomodation in mumbai. But when it comes to education , business & government institutions the difference is alomost absent. but of course the problem grows manifold in the villages.
I don’t blame the WSJ. These guys do go to regional experts, many of whom are probably of Indian origin who were educated at certain schools in the West and India where “Hindu India” is conscientiously used. It makes complete sense when you look at the coverage of India’s 60th anniversary. The only way to cover the Partition and Kashmir without identifying a particular villain, aside from the Brits, is to refer to India as “Hindu India”. As a concession some of the reporters SAJA has prevailed on will use “mostly Hindu India”, but the point they are making is still “see why this problem is intractable?.. we are talking about crazy Hindoos”.
re: yusuf hamied, his mother was a lithuanian jew. his father’s name was khwaja abdul hamied. another khoja?
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 always thought Rushdie used Premji as the inspiration for the industrialist in The Moor’s last sigh – who went from being a pepper trader to mob-boss/drug trader/oligarch who ruled over mumbai. Any truth to that?
@RAZIB
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 think you raise a very interesting point, but one that needs some expansion on, if you have the time.
I have always been curious about the differences between Sunnis and Shias in India, and their possible resultant socio-economic status in relation to one another.
An article in ibnlive about this. btw, anyone here who also digs premji’s hairstyle ?