For millennia, Hindu India had been the proverbially rich country, and for long, the wily money-making “Hindu bania” (merchant) had been a favourite enemy-image projected by the Indian Muslims and Leftists, and given new flesh more recently by the economic successes of the overseas Hindus; yet, when Nehru imposed stagnation on India’s economy with his Soviet-style five-year plans, the secularists called the disappointing economic results of this non-Hindu policy “the Hindu rate of growth
