The expression “Hindu Rate of Growth” was coined in the late 1970s by economist Raj Krishna to describe India’s low GDP expansion, roughly 2–3 percent annually, in the three decades after Independence. Over time, the phrase migrated from its academic context into political rhetoric, where it acquired connotations that far exceeded its analytical value. What began as a critique of policy stagnation morphed into a civilisational generalisation, subtly implying that India’s sluggish economic performance was a cultural or religious phenomenon linked to Hindu society itself.
This conflation deserves a rigorous scholarly challenge.
The term smuggles cultural essentialism into economic analysis
Economic outcomes are products of policy regimes, global conditions, technological capacity, capital availability, and institutional design. To attribute the structural underperformance of a newly decolonised, resource-constrained state to the “Hindu ethos” is to commit the fallacy of cultural essentialism, the idea that a religion determines macroeconomic behaviour.
Modern scholarship overwhelmingly rejects such civilisational determinism. India’s post-1950 growth constraints were shaped by: a highly regulated Licence-Permit-Quota regime, import substitution policies, heavy reliance on state monopolies, limited foreign investment, and Cold War–induced geopolitical constraints.
These were policy choices, not cultural traits. To label them “Hindu” is historically, economically, and intellectually inaccurate.
The phrase reflects a colonial habit of pathologising Hindu society
The term gained popularity because it echoed a long tradition of colonial commentary that portrayed Hindu civilisation as static, fatalistic, and incapable of dynamism. Scholars of postcolonial economics have noted that such phrases subtly reinforce the orientalist trope of India as a civilisation trapped in inertia.
Ironically, India’s spectacular post-1991 reforms proved the opposite: when institutions changed, growth accelerated. Culture did not change; policy did.
Contemporary growth exposes the limits of the original label
India today is the fastest-growing major economy, often expanding at 7–8 percent. If the earlier 2–3 percent growth was indeed “Hindu,” then logically the present trajectory should also be described using the same framework. Yet no economist or commentator proposes a “Hindu Rate of High Growth.”
This inconsistency reveals the intellectual weakness of the original term. It was never intended to categorise Hindu civilisation; it was a rhetorical flourish that has since outlived its usefulness.
Hindu civilisation historically fostered economic enterprise
The historical record contradicts the notion that Hindu society is antithetical to economic dynamism. From ancient trade guilds (shreni), sophisticated maritime networks linking India to Rome and Southeast Asia, advanced metallurgical innovations, to banking systems developed by merchant communities, the Indic world possessed a vibrant economic culture long before modern capitalism emerged.
A civilisation with millennia of commercial sophistication cannot be reduced to a label coined during a period of postcolonial developmental constraints.
The persistence of the term reveals biases in economic discourse
The continued invocation of “Hindu Rate of Growth” reflects a deeper intellectual bias, the tendency to culturalise failure but universalise success. When growth was low, it was labelled “Hindu.” When growth is high, it is attributed to reforms, policies, or global integration, never to the same cultural matrix. This selective application exposes the ideological underpinnings of the phrase.
Conclusion
The “Hindu Rate of Growth” was always a misnomer, analytically imprecise, culturally reductionist, and historically uninformed. It conflated policy choices with civilisational identity and served, intentionally or not, as a disparaging commentary on Hindu society. Contemporary economic performance decisively falsifies the cultural thesis embedded within the term.
A more accurate understanding locates India’s earlier stagnation in state-controlled economic frameworks, and its current momentum in institutional reform, demographic vitality, global integration, and technological adoption.
In short, India’s growth trajectory is not the product of a derogatory label; it is the outcome of choices, capabilities, and aspirations rooted in a civilisation that has always been more dynamic than its critics acknowledged.
