Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Meera Nanda's The God Market










































































































Critique Ferozepur Chapter and Philosophical Society: A Students Discussion Forum of the Dev Samaj College for Women, Ferozepur City, Punjab organized a discussion on the recent Book “God Market” written by the renowned scholar Meera Nanda, Visiting Fellow at the Jawaharlal Institute of Advanced Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The session was presided by the Navdeep Kaur student of B.A. final year. Amongst the speakers Bhawana, Pushpinderjeet, Rupinder, Kuldeep Singh, Rashpinder Singh, Ratan Singh, Rajan and Ambuj Sharma of the College shared their insights and views with the students and faculty of the campus.

In the first round of discussion Rupinder and Bhawana appreciated the work of Meera Nanda and said that “God Market is a resourceful book in understanding the journey of spiritualism to capitalism. It focuses on the concept of Globalization and Secularism in India” They further said that “Meera has outlined and stated that politicized religiosity seems to be the order of the day everywhere. Even in India this religiosity is being cultivated by the emerging state-temple-corporate complex that is replacing the more secular public institutions of the Nehruvian era.”

Pushpinderjeet, argued that “people of the country are not at applying their rationality to understand spirituality and religion but they are going by and are encouraging the Godmen who are minting huge money in the name of spirituality.”
She further added that until every individual in the society is not liberated of poverty, there cannot be an Individual Salvation.

The participants further focused on the concept of Enlightenment stated by Kabir of India and Immanuel Kant of Germany that people should come out of the self incurred immaturity and apply critical rationality before believing any thing and understanding the discourse of life.

Around three hundred students of the campus interacted in the discussion and agreed that the larger questions of food, employment and health are more important than any other discourse.