Speaking in 1916, Mohandas Gandhi warned that India faced a pernicious new kind of commercialism. “Western nations are groaning today under the heel of the monster god materialism,” he told students at a college in the heartland state of Uttar Pradesh. “Many of our countrymen say that we will gain American wealth, but avoid its methods. I venture to suggest that such an attempt, if it were made, is foredoomed to failure.”
