Author:
Publication: Hinduism Today
Date: July / August / September
2004
Introduction: Philadelphia editor
says Americas' leader need more Hinduism
The Philadelphia inquirer newspaper
is an unlikely place to encounter a dissertation on Siva Nataraja-especially
when it is written by the newspaper's editorial page editor and explains
why America would be better off if the country imbibed a bit more Hinduism
and the next president learned to "Dance with Siva." Chris Satullo is the
surprising author of the piece, entitled "Center Square, Econ 101: Duality
of Hinduism Could Help," which appeared in the March 14, 2004 edition of
the popular newspaper.
"Here's my problem with America's
now-raging debate on the economy: not enough Hinduism," he begins. "I'm
a churchgoer myself But I have to concede this: Christianity, in its simplistic
(i.e., political) form, is prone to binary thinking: good/evil, white hat/black
hat. Applied to the economy, this habit leads many folks to cling to specious
couplets: corporations bad/unions good; tax cuts good/social spending bad.
Think, by contrast, of Hindu philosophy. One of the chief
Hindu Gods is a fellow named Siva.
The Destroyer-that's the moniker He mostly goes by. But another of His
epithets is the Creator. Destroyer and Creator? How can that be?"
With a decent grasp of Saivite theology,
he goes on, "Well, Siva embodies a central paradox of life. To create the
new, you must destroy the old. To create fire, you must destroy wood. To
make oil, animals must die. For the automobile to prevail, blacksmiths
must suffer. For Bill Gates to rise, the typewriter repairman must fall.
Siva destroys; Siva creates."
He applies this concept to the development
of capitalism in America. "Look back over America's long love affair with
free-market capitalism. The net result clearly has been more wealth and
more health for more people. This is so, even though the ledger includes
much suffering, injustice, inequality and corruption, much strain on families
and on nature. The point is: free-market capitalism is Siva. It is neither
all good nor all bad; it is what it is, at once creative and destructive.
The point is: The job of government is not to 'run' the economy. Siva does
not submit to a harness. Much waste and mischief occur under that delusion.
Yet, neither is it government's role just to worship free-market capitalism,
to hand over the keys. Capitalism can do too much damage to public goods.
In a democratic republic, those goods should be valued more than mere wealth.
They include little things such as, oh, justice, equal opportunity, stable
communities, education, health care, parks, clean air. Government's job
is to defend and expand those public goods. Free markets make that job
harder, because their mania for efficiency and innovation creates victims
and inequalities. Yet free markets also make that job possible, by generating
wealth and innovation which government can tap to heal victims and foster
public goods. Any leader worthy of the name must master this dualism. A
good leader needs some Hindu in him."
Satullo goes on to criticize President
Bush as "rigid" and a worshiper of capitalism. "Not only isn't he much
of a Hindu; he needs work on the Christian thing, too," concludes Satullo-because,
in his opinion, the President isn't showing enough mercy towards those
hurt by economic problems. Satullo takes a few equalizing swipes at the
Democrats, then concludes his piece. "God, I miss Bill Clinton, even more
than I want to slap him. He was the Democrat who got it, who mastered the
Hindu dualism. He knew that, in the long run, you hurt working people by
attacking free trade and innovation. But he also saw that it is an unpardonable
breach of faith to ignore the harm those forces do to some workers in the
short run. Even Clinton wasn't smart enough to predict today's dilemma.
He didn't anticipate off-shoring, didn't see that Bangalore might soon
start eating San Jose's lunch. Maybe off-shoring is just a ripplet that
hysteria has hyped into a tsunami. That is a Democratic habit, after all.
I'm not smart enough to know. What worries me is none of the guys running
for president seems to be either. I'm looking for a sign, for someone who
knows how to dance with Siva."
The editorial is a welcome change
from a general trend in the Western press to use or refer to Hindu metaphors,
concepts and imagery in demeaning and derogatory ways. There is the common
phrase in economics itself, "the Hindu rate of growth." The term refers
to India's post-independence Gross National Product growth rate of two
to three percent a year under Nehru's socialism. It was the slowest in
the region, and a pattern which only accelerated in the 1980s. One never
hears of a "Muslim rate of growth" to describe Pakistan's economy, or a
"Christian rate of growth" to describe Haiti's, both with lower GNP's than
India. Our kudos go to editor Satullo for an insightful and useful application
of Hindu philosophy to the problems of modern America.
