An industrial, psychological consultant told me a fascinating story about an ambitious Bombay entrepreneur who wanted to increase productivity. He began interacting with his employees in a more personal manner, discussing problems and relating in a more “equal” and more “human way.” A strange, unexpected development occurred. Workers, even those making decent wages, began to leave the firm. Why?

A clue to this bewildering development can be found in patterns of traditional societies. There are primary ways that human beings related to other people, nature, and supernatural beings for several million years until the advent of the modern West. They viewed particular problems and actions in terms of exemplary categories, mythic models, and ideal religious precedents.

Members of traditional societies asked the same basic questions we do. Why were they born into conditions over which they had no choice? Why did they suffer? How shou? What happened after death? How could they find meaning and significance in their lives?

They found answers to these questions in their sacred teachings and other models from the past. Instructive were accounts of how and why the world and human beings were created. Our human condition was the result of some primodidal sin or cosmic event. Religious myths provided models for performing rituals and other actions. Mystic, shamanic, prophetic, and other visions taught us how to solve our problems. And gods and other supernatural beings revealed to us basic values for living meaningful and significant lives.

India, although constitutionally and legally a pluralistic secular democracy, illustrates this traditional orientation. This can produce great bewilderment for outsiders, even when examining seemingly secular, modern, economic and political developments. When I first came to India, I recall meeting politicians who could have been part of the Mafia or of Mayor Daley’s Chicago machine. They had perfected the skill of brute power politics and were exemplars of transparent corruption and patronage payoffs.

And yet the Indian masses often seemed not to relate to these politicians as real flesh-and-blood, ruthless individuals. They revered them, garlanding and bowing before them in awe. They romanticized, idealized, even deified them as mythical-religious figures, larger than life.

An excellent, not atypical, example was Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. How could India have elected a woman to head its government, something still beyond the reach of the “modern” United States? Part of the reason was seen in the traditional orientation of the Indian masses: Indira Gandhi was often assimilated to an ideal Hindu goddess, deified as a reincarnation of Mother India.

Recall the Bombay capitalist who wanted to improve the motivation and productivity of his workers. On the surface, he operated a modern capitalistic firm. But in a more traditional Indian socioeconomic-religious context, his workers had a cultural need to view themselves and their relationship to their boss in a clearly defined, hierarchical manner. In order to justify the dominant power position of the capitalist and to adjust to their subservient roles, they felt the need to idealize the personality and virtues of their bosss; to place him on a pedestal.

When their boss tried to relate in a more “human way,” sharing his real problems and relating on a more equal basis, this did not improve motivation and morale. Instead it cvational consultant concluded that the “modern” Bombay corporate head had run into unforeseen cultural barriers. His reforms would have worked in a U.S., but not a traditional Indian, economic and political context. What seemed to impress the consultant was that the corporate CEO of Chrysler tries to improve morale and assuage workers’ anger and George Bush campaigns for votes by packaging themselves as ordinary human beings, sharing our everyday concerns about declining standards of living, lack of decent jobs and health care, and inadequate funds for housing and education. (Part of Bush’s problem has been that people just don’t believe “he gets it.”)

The situation is really more complex than the consultant assumed. In traditional Indian contexts, there are clear hierarchical idealizations to justify unequal oppressive power relations. In less traditional U.S. socioeconomic and cultural contexts, there is also a falsification of real persons and their interactions in order to justify unequal power relations of domination. But we follow a reverse process of justification.

Several generations ago, we still had a strong tradition of idealizing bigger-than-life virtues of U.S. industrialists and of “the president” (not the real person). This changed radically. Rather than deifying those with power over our lives, it’s important to show that they are just “ordinary people” — like us. There is an ideal type, but it’s not some superhuman Indian image. Those with extreme economic and political power are not revered as members of a white, male, ruling class. They are portrayed as ordinary people, playing with their pets, jogging, chopping wood, and sharing our common concerns.

This sometimes brings psychological and cultural comfort, or at least acceptance, by the majority who suffer and feel powerless, just as it does in India. But because we are more used to our ideological patterns of power legitimation, we usually fail to see that our modern images conceal real unequal power relations just as effectively as do Indian hierarchical models.

Doug Allen, professor of philosophy at the University of Maine and editor of the recently published book, “Religion and Political Conflict in South Asia: India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka” (Greenwood Press), is doing research in India on a grant from the Smithsonian Institution.