Religion, education and the politics of recognition: a critique and a counter‐proposal

Abstract

How should religion be integrated into school curriculum? The authors compare two recent controversies about religion in school curriculum to provide an overarching perspective that can guide educators in their efforts to use religion for pedagogical purposes. The first controversy concerns curriculum approved by the California State Board of Education on ancient India and the second is a lesson approved by the Kerala State Board of Education textbook. Drawing upon political philosopher Nancy Fraser’s work, the authors argue that the first conflict is illustrative of a ‘politics of recognition’ while the second exemplifies a ‘politics of redistribution’. An analysis of the two cases provides an ethical framework that alerts us to the dangers and the possibilities of integrating religion in education. The authors propose that curriculum about religion that is based on a ‘politics of redistribution’ has the potential to contribute toward a more just and equitable society.

Notes

1. Even older political conflicts, such as the one between Palestine and Israel, are about territory and sovereignty but colonialism is resignified as a conflict between the Islamic world and Jews and Christians.

2. Compounding this tragedy is the irony that one was a Christian and the other a Sikh.

3. Details of the controversy, lawsuit and settlement are available on several websites and news articles. See http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/textbook/PressCoverage.html; and http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/textbook/LettersOfSupport.html for public documents on the California textbook controversy.

4. A widely circulated open letter to the California SBE by Professor Vinay Lal, an associate professor of history at UCLA, for example, opens with the statement, ‘I write to you as a professor of Indian history at UCLA, as an Indian American presently resident in California who, as the father of two school‐going children, is also heavily invested in the quality of education offered in state schools, and – last but not least – as a Hindu who is keenly aware of the immensely diverse strands of belief, religious practice, and history that have gone into the making of what is today called ‘Hinduism’. (retrieved at http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?230129 on January 26, 2010: italics mine).

5. Professor Witzel, distinguished scholar of Sanskrit at Harvard University, was singled out for attack by the Hindu advocacy organisations because he was the first to draw public attention to their prejudicial role in the textbook revisions and was later called upon as an expert consultant by the CSBE.

6. Casolari (2000) documents an early proponent of Hindutva, B.S. Moonjee’s travels to Italy during the fascist period and his careful study of the fascist organisational form in Italy, including a meeting with Mussolini, where he speaks of his desire to study the Italian fascist form as an inspiration for a similar organisation of Hindus in India.

7. The RSS does not maintain membership rosters in spite of a legal requirement to do so, making it difficult to state with any certainty the size of the organisation. Bhatt (2001) estimates the RSS membership to be between 2.5 to 5 million.

8. For a detailed analysis of the early Sangh institutions in the US and their political and financial support for the Hindutva project in India see CSFH 2002 report The Foreign Exchange of Hate. Also see Bose (2008, 19) for a diagrammatic representation of Hindutva institutions in India and their corollaries in the US. There is relatively little systematic research on the newer organisations that were at the helm of the textbook revisions campaign. Little is known, therefore, of the institutional and financial connections of these organisations to the RSS and the Sangh Parivar, although a review of their websites and blogs underscores their ideological unity with the Sangh Parivar.

9. The information about HSC’s links to the Sangh Parivar was removed from HSC websites when secular Indian diasporic organisations such as FOSA and CSFH began to expose these connections. See archived online news articles that provide evidence of the relationship between HSC and the Sangh Parivar. Retrieved at http://www.rediff.com/us/2003/jul/26tan.htm. More details available at http://sanghsamachar.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/intro-to-the-hindutva-american-foundation/ and the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate website http://stopfundinghate.org/campaigns.html and their report http://stopfundinghate.org/sacw/index.html.

10. Examples are the Dharma Conference held in New Jersey in 2003 and fund raising for residential and day schools for rural and tribal children. For the former see http://sanghsamachar.wordpress.com/2007/07/27/intro-to-the-hindutva-american-foundation/. For the latter, see Sanjana 2009.

11. For an account of the socio‐economic issues affecting the above mentioned South Asian immigrant communities and organising efforts to address these see Das Gupta 2006; Mathew 2008; Maira 2009.

12. Jeevan is a Sanskrit word for Life and thus was not made an issue by the Hindu nationalist groups. It is not unreasonable to surmise that if the child’s name in the lesson had been Arabic or Urdu, Hindu nationalist groups would have demanded it be changed. The full report by the High Power Committee on Textbook Review is available at http://www.education.kerala.gov.in/FINAL%20REPORTnew.pdf (accessed 20 July 2010).

13. Online access to the position papers and textbooks published by the national curriculum body are available at http://www.ncert.nic.in/index.htm.

14. Conversion has been made a hot political issue by Hindu nationalist groups. The Sangh Parivar in India has launched a programme of mass conversions of Scheduled Tribals to Hinduism though there is no practice of conversion in Hinduism. This is a new political tactic to raise alarm about the purported growth of Muslim and Christian populations in India. The census data shows that the population ratios of these respective religious communities remain constant since independence.