Open Thread: Bharat wins at Norway Chess, but something is off with Bollywood

A long time ago, during the 1st-2nd AD, there was a state called the Kushan Empire that ruled over most of Central Asia, the Tarim Basin, and northern India. The rulers of this dynasty followed the Zoroastrian religion; in fact, they actually worshiped an Iranian goddess named Nana, who originally was the Mesopotamian goddess Nanya, the daughter of the goddess Enana. She was depicted as riding a lion with multiple hands, yielding weapons in a few of them, and holding the moon in his upper left hand, while holding the sun on the opposite side. Eventually, the Kushan empire fell, and the Zoroastrian religion declined with the state, in addition to the goddess Nana being absorbed into Shaktism, hence producing the lion-riding goddess of Durga that we see today.

The basic point I am trying to make stems from the fact that most external religions always have a massive risk of being absorbed into the mainstream Hindu religion all the time. Zoroastrian and Iranian deities, for example, have continuously been subsumed into the Hindu religious tradition all the time. The need for exclusivity in some sense is needed to remove aspects of syncretism and overlap to ensure that a complete absorption can never happen. This is especially true for religions that have historically been more dependent on state patronage for their expansion. For example, Islam is more common in the Deccan and North since they were ruled by Islamicate dynasties that actively helped patronise their religious institutions. The Vijayanagara empire, on the other hand, did not produce the same amount of patronage, hence it is lower in places ruled by that state. A similar thing happened with Zoroastrianism in the Sassanid empire; it was the state religion until the caliphate conquered the region and made Islam the main religion, which gradually caused Zoroastrianism to decline.

Jainism and Christianity are merchantile religions that are more dependent on commerce to expand rather than the government. Historically (and even today), the Jains represent a prosperous community that has a lot of economic clout that they often use to increase their political and social capital. A good example would be the expansion of Jainism in the Deccan, where the Jains started as a migrant religious community from the North that gradually settled and developed an economic base in the Deccan. Their economic influence was so large that the local nobility tried to gain their favor and even patronized their institutions. Christianity is similar since the Enlightenment due to the broader secularization of the state and the introduction of the market economy that detethered the religion from the state. Christianity spread through commerce rather than direct government support as a result.

State-oriented religions tended to have aristocratic support, hence didn’t require the need to have strong grassroots connections and could be selective about such interactions without having to go beyond the comfort zone. When the Mazdakite movement developed grassroots connections and challenged the Zoroastrian religion, the magi priesthood convinced the Shah to purge the Mazdakites. Merchantile-oriented religions do not have that privilege, hence they need to actively engage with grassroots efforts and local connections, as there is no guarantee the state would be open to them.

State-oriented religions spread fact when they have government support, but weaken when the opposite happens. State-oriented religions that state support becomes more insular and vulnerable since they lost their patron and (depending on how many grassroots connections they have) don’t have local connections needed to support themselves. Merchantile religions take longer to spread from one region to another, but they are independent of the state and harder to uproot. So these religions tend to have local connections and can be more open to the broader society since they are well-rooted in a given society. Like Christians and Jains played a more active role in developing regional identity, Jains developed the Kananda language, and Christians are closely tied to things like the Dravidian movement. Now, Hinduism is a mix between the two methods; some sects are merchantile and others that are state-oriented, so even if one loses traction, the other kind can easily take over.

This isn’t an absolute argument since exceptions are there, but they still fall in line with the principle. The Mappila muslims of Kerala stand as an exception since they spread without state support; however, they were always a merchantile community with strong local connections. This might also explain the North Indian muslim close affinity with the two-nation theory before 1947, since they originate from a state-oriented tradition via the Delhi sultanate and Mughal empire, which means that they would have difficulties working in a non-state-oriented merchantile setting.