Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how Swaminarayan Hindu youth working in London’s financial districts reconcile practicing the religious ethic of detachment from worldly aspirations while aspiring for economic mobility. What kinds of ethical work help them navigate tensions and entanglements?

Paper long abstract:

Scholarship on Hindu economic ethics began with Max Weber (1958) and Karl Kapp (1963), both of whom used the philosophy of select Hindu texts as evidence that economic betterment was not a primary concern within the broad spectrum of traditions known as Hinduism. Economists such as Raj Krishna (1978) further interpreted this as evidence for the slow economic growth of postcolonial India, coining the term “Hindu Rate of Growth.” Contemporary scholars acknowledge the meanings ascribed to aspects of modern economic life, such as the pursuit of wealth, which are tied to moral behaviour and exemplified by the personification of wealth in Hinduism (Gregory 2018).

This paper goes beyond the previous streams of scholarship by introducing an ethnographic scene that challenges the oft-repeated binary of absolute engagement and absolute detachment. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Swaminarayan Hindu youth working in London’s financial districts (Canary Wharf, The Square Mile, and Lombard Street), we demonstrate how Swaminarayan Hindu youth, often first or second-generation immigrants, contend with personal and familial aspirations of economic mobility in a competitive capitalist market economy while adhering to a religious ethic of detachment.

We argue that, through creative methods such as cognitive reframing, engaging in dialogue with peers, and fostering social networks at work, Swaminarayan Hindu youth can visualise the temporal nature of their economic aspirations and grapple with their agency within a competitive capitalist market economy. However, these processes often give rise to irresolvable tensions that necessitate a fundamental shift in how they ontologically view the economy.