Understanding Hindu religious entrepreneurship: a translation perspective

Abstract

Hinduism, the world’s third-largest religion, is underexplored in the literature on religious entrepreneurship. While there is a popular association of Hinduism with the renunciation of material pursuits, its prescribed values to orient life (Purusharthas) highlight rightful economic activity (Artha) as one of the key goals. Further, modern entrepreneurship is rooted in the Protestant ethic, which viewed indigenous religions like Hinduism as anachronistic and out of step with modernity, relegating them only to the private sphere. However, in recent years, we have seen a rise in entrepreneurship rooted in the tenets of Hinduism. We examine this contradiction through a qualitative study of 15 Hindu religious entrepreneurs. We develop a model of how Hindu Religious Entrepreneurial Intention (HREI) takes shape and influences subsequent venture formation. We find that HREI formation is shaped by dissonance, decolonization, and Dharma (duty). This, in turn, drives Hindu religious entrepreneurship, wherein the entrepreneurs engage in translation work – contemporizing religious knowledge, importing philosophical foundations, and concretizing contemporization through entrepreneurial expression. This moves Hindu religious narratives across temporal silos in the present time to address anachronisms and across compartments of the colonized mind to make religious tenets relevant for the contemporary world.