Asia Association for Global Studies
Globalization, Hinduism, and Cultural Change in India
Anita Bhela
University of Delhi, India
ABSTRACT
This paper analyzes the impact of globalization on the religion, culture, and identity of Hindus in India. It describes how Hinduism, over epochs, adapted to outside influences and retained its unique character, but the sudden onslaught of globalization in our era is threatening its core values, traditions, and beliefs. As a consequence, religion in India is being disestablished and cultural identities are being dissolved. One major sign of decline is that Hindus, rather than actively expressing their traditional customs and beliefs, are now experiencing religion passively and vicariously through the virtual world of television and the Internet. What this recent development means for the cultural future of India is unclear, but it is to be hoped that Hinduism will rejuvenate itself through returning to its historic roots and counteracting the globalizing forces associated with cultural disintegration and homogenization.
RELIGION, CULTURE, AND TECHNOLOGY
Considering the span of human existence, man 's contact with machines has been brief. The first ancestors of humans probably lived about two to three million years ago, and the evolution from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens sapiens took hundreds of thousands of years. Agriculture emerged only around 9,000 BCE and writing about 5,500 years ago. The modern technological age began in Western Europe only about 500 years ago. Great advances in technology and science led to the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the eighteenth century. Continued advancements in science and technology produced more and more inventions; the light bulb, the first major electric innovation, was invented in 1879; the first generation of electronic computers appeared in 1947, and in 1969 the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet,
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