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.’27 Gandhi’s views were rooted in his own era, chiming with the theories of anti-colonialism and non-violent protest that earned him the title ‘Mahatma’, or ‘great soul’ in
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