WHEN business gets stressful some managers call in the consultants. In India, however, the stressed-out consultants are calling in the gurus.

Every weekend Piyush Mittal, a successful chartered accountant, heads off to the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon where he will pray, study the Sanskrit texts of scripture and connect with 20 fellow yuppies under the guidance of a holy man.

“I personally think India is in a confused state today,” Mittal said. “There is a huge western influence on our society and very few people are able to reconcile it.”

Mittal has found his refuge at the Chinmaya Mission, a group inspired by Hindu gurus to provide “practical means for spiritual growth and happiness”.

“These are largely professionals, people working in large companies. People who have no dearth of resources,” he said.

As the economy opens up to globalisation, creating a new generation of middle-class Indians and making a few fabulously rich, the shock of the new has sent many in search of old truths.

Like American evangelists who preach that God wants his faithful to prosper, some gurus are offering more management than karma. “Obviously bringing spirituality into business is a good thing,” said Mittal. “I use it to the hilt.”

It is certainly good business sense for the mission, which uses the donations from well-off devotees to fund good works in India and abroad, including Britain where it is a registered charity.

For decades India was ruled by secular socialists who made a cult of modernity. Then city dwellers famished by austerity rushed to embrace consumerism, money making and the glitzy world of Bollywood. Family ties weakened and some intellectuals lamented the decline of religion.

“You had a God-sized hole,” said Renuka Khandekar, religious editor of the Indian Express. “A lot of Hindus were embarrassed by their religion — you know, child marriages, suttee [the practice of a wife immolating herself on her husband’s funeral pyre], the treatment of widows. They wanted to dump the baggage.”

However, fears that Indians were losing their religion were premature. The nation’s dominant faith proved its resilience in the face of change.

“There was a quiet cultural revolution going on,” explained Khandekar. “Corporatisation, hire and fire, reform or perish — these things are stressful for anybody anywhere in the world.

“But the big difference with Hinduism is the absence of guilt. Nobody has a problem with making money.”

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