The lived religious beliefs and experiences of English Hindu teenagers at home and at school

ABSTRACT

This paper constitutes a study of the lived religious identity and practice of Hindu teenagers in the UK. More specifically, utilising an ethnographic approach designed to give voice to what is academically an extremely unrepresented religious community, this is a study of how Hindu teenagers in the UK experience their religion at home and at school. After outlining the contrast between these teenagers’ home life and school experience, I ultimately argue that Hindu teenagers experience a strong sense of cognitive dissonance pertaining to their religious identity: a juxtaposition between their home life and school life whereby the former is a healthy relationship with their religion and the latter is a sense of anger and shame. Finally, I outline what in particular the teenagers themselves believe is lacking in the RE classroom and what they regard as the key features of their Hindu faith.

KEYWORDS:

• Hinduism
• religious education in secondary schools
• yoga
• lived religion

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to the participants of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Vertovec (2000), for example, speaks only very generally of a ‘Hindu diaspora’.

2. It should be noted that the Scottish curriculum is different.

3. No students attended schools of religious character. In theory this meant that there was an expectation that RE would cover a broad range of traditions.

4. Woodhead has especially emphasised a British and wider-European trend away from organised religion and towards a more informal ‘postconfessional’ religion. See, for example, Religion and Change in Modern Britain (2012).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph Chadwin

Joseph Chadwin is an FWF Fellow in Religious Studies at the University of Vienna. Particularly favouring ethnographic methodologies, his teaching and research predominantly pertains to childhood and adolescent religiosity, Chinese religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, and religious education. References