Revitalizing the Concept of Corporate Social Responsibility with Traditional Indian Wisdom

Corporations are legal entities operating within the boundaries of society. They have social responsibility both for business and moral reasons. The responsibility encompasses economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic aspects and in the context of deterritorialised global business environment, the responsibility assumes wider ramifications especially in the context of diminishing role of governments and ascending role of corporations. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now an offshoot of the realization that corporation is answerable for the consequences of its operations. Ethical way of doing business for social and economic sustainability is inherent in the thinking of seers of ancient India who proclaimed for universal peace and happiness. The essence of CSR can be traced to Rig Veda which pronounced that a person who enjoys himself being totally oblivious of society is taken over by sin. The sense of charity, sacrifice, dharmic way of doing business and the ideas of live and let live permeate throughout the literature of ancient India. The search for spiritual routes strengthens the convictions towards CSR and for preserving the planet for future generations. An attempt is made in this article to discuss the nature of CSR in the global perspective and try to search for the roots in the cultural milieu of ancient India and trying to integrate the ancient Indian spiritual thoughts for the modern arguments favoring corporate responsibility. The intention here is to strengthen the theoretical thought structure with spiritual inputs for better appreciation and promotion of CSR. The aim of the article is to get insights in to ancient wisdom for connecting spiritual linkage to the theoretical edifice of the CSR and hence the methodology is exploratory in nature aiming to understand the concepts in a better way.