Ethnography, Religious Education, and The Fifth Cup

Abstract

This article comments on issues of concern to religious educators that emerged from ethnographic studies directed by Robert Jackson at the University of Warwick. The research in question focused on U.K. communities of north Indian background, whose members identified themselves—in some contexts at least—as Sikh or as Hindu. The comments are made in the light of a play, The Fifth Cup, and pertain to how world religions are defined and how they are represented in religious education. In particular, with regard to the sensitivity of the issue of caste for pupils of South Asian origin, the article suggests that the training of religious education teachers needs to be informed by both ethnography and historical context and also raises questions about curriculum content. I suggest that the interpretive approach entails a necessary attentiveness to pupils’ experiences and perceptions, and that some issues may additionally call for expertise in pastoral care and conflict resolution.

KEYWORDS:

• caste
• Hindu
• Punjabi
• religious education
• sensitive issues
• Sikh

Notes

“View from London: The Shame of Being an ‘Untouchable’ in Britain,” The Times of India, December 10, 2007, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2007-12-10/uk/27969580_1_caste-sikh-britain.

According to Sikh tradition, in 1699 the tenth Sikh Guru instructed male followers whom he initiated into the Khalsa (“pure” community of initiates committed to a discipline) to shed surnames (denoting caste) and to use forename plus Singh (lion). In practice, almost all male Sikhs—not only initiates—have Singh as their second name. But many retain (or have reinstated) their family name as their surname. In practice Jats’ pride in being Jat flourishes, as articulated in contemporary bhangra songs (see Naresh Puri, “Caste Divide,” BBC Radio 4, July 5, 2004, 6, http://www.countercurrents.org/dalit-puri050704.htm

As psychologist Rusi Jaspal hypothesises in “Caste, Social Stigma and Identity Processes,” Psychology and Developing Societies 23, no. 2 (2010): 44: “even in the South Asian diaspora, the notion that caste-based segregation in places of worship and in dining may be abandoned will likely pose threats to the continuity principle of identity.” Gurmail Chambers in Puri, “Caste Divide,” p. 7, reports such segregation in Bedford.

Bend It Like Beckham is discussed in Eleanor Nesbitt, Sikhism A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005), 105; and Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, Sikhism: An Introduction (London: I.B.Tauris, 2011), 222–224.

For discussion of the Behzti affair, see Gurharpal Singh and Darshan Singh Tatla, Sikhs in Britain: The Making of a Community (London: Zed, 2006), especially pages 138–141; and Ralph D. Grillo, “Licence to Offend? The Behzti Affair,” Ethnicities 7, no. 1 (2007): 5–29.

One could include too productions by Rifco Arts, such asMeri Christmas, The Deranged Marriage, There's Something about Simmy, and Britain's Got Bhangra, and by Tamasha, a company whose first stage production, Untouchable (in 1989) was, like The Fifth Cup, on caste discrimination, although in 1930s India.

Dalit castes (also referred to in some older literature on the Indian context as “Scheduled Caste” and “ex-untouchable”) are regarded as below the four-fold varna (class) hierarchy of brahman, kshatriya, vaishya, and shudra. “The size of the UK's Dalit-origin population is uncertain but is estimated somewhere between 50,000 and 150,000 people,” to quote Annapurna Waughray, “Caste Discrimination: A Twenty-First Century Challenge for UK Discrimination Law?” The Modern Law Review 72, no. 2 (2009): 6, footnote 28, citing publications by Dalit Solidarity Network UK and Voice of Dalit International. Puri, Caste Divide (2004) cited an estimate of “200,000 people from formerly Untouchable backgrounds living in the UK” http://www.countercurrents.org/dalit-puri050704.htm, accessed June 4, 2011. Another milestone for UK Dalits was the Valmiki Studies Workshop in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in 2004, reported in Julia Leslie and Matthew Clark, Creating a Dialogue: Text, Belief and Personal Identity (Proceedings of the Valmiki Studies Workshop 2004) (London: SOAS, 2004).

This project was substantially reported in Eleanor Nesbitt, “'My Dad's Hindu: My Mum's Side are Sikhs:’ Issues in Religious Identity” (Charlbury, UK: National Foundation for Arts Education, 1991), http://www.casas.org.uk/papers/pdfpapers/identity.pdf; as well as informing Eleanor Nesbitt, “Valmikis in Coventry: The Revival and Reconstruction of a Community,” in Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain, ed. Roger Ballard (London: Hurst, 1994), 117–141; and Eleanor Nesbitt, “Religion and Identity: The Valmiki Community in Coventry,” New Community 16, no. 2 (1990): 261–274.

Although many members of the churha caste have adopted the name of (Rishi) Valmiki, honoured by Hindus as the composer of the Ramayana, many chamars took the name of Ravidasi/Ravidassia from Ravidas (Raidas), a medieval mystic poet whose compositions are part of the Sikh scriptures. For exploration of Punjabi communities’ resort to religiously based redefinition in a bid to escape the stigma of untouchability, see Mark Juergensmeyer, Religion as Social Vision: The Movement against Untouchability in 20th Century Punjab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). For analysis of the Valmiki community's relationship to Valmiki, see Julia Leslie, Authority and Meaning in Indian Religions: Hinduism and the Case of Valmiki (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003).

Statement on “Punjabi Community” by John McDonnell in: Hansard Parliamentary Debates, sess. 1999–2000, vol. 610, col. 141, March 7, 2000, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmhansrd/vo000307/halltext/00307h02.htm#00307h02_time0.

Some Punjabis from a similar (i.e., chamar) caste background to Dr. Ambedkar (the lawyer who framed India's constitution) followed his lead in espousing Buddhism. They are known as Ambedkarites.

For discussion of ambivalence regarding self-defining as Hindu, see Eleanor Nesbitt, in Creating a Dialogue, 25–31.

For methodological reflection, see Eleanor Nesbitt, “Photographing Worship: Issues Raised by Ethnographic Study of Children's Participation in Acts of Worship,” Visual Anthropology 5, no. 3 (1993): 285–306; and Eleanor Nesbitt, “Ethnographic Research: Some Methodological Issues,” British Journal of Religious Education 23, no. 3 (2001): 144–155.

See Eleanor Nesbitt, “Religious Education and Sikh Identity: Is This a Special Case?” World Religions and Education: Who Am I? The Search for Individual and Group Identity (London: Shap Working Party on World Religions in Education, 1997), 32–37; Eleanor Nesbitt, “Bridging the Gap between Young People's Experience of their Religious Traditions at Home and at School: The Contribution of Ethnographic Research,” British Journal of Religious Education 20, no. 2 (1998): 102–114; and Eleanor Nesbitt, “Representing Faith Traditions in Religious Education: An Ethnographic Perspective,” in The Fourth R for the Third Millennium: Education in Religion and Values for the Global Future, eds. Leslie J. Francis, Jeff Astley, and Mandy Robbins (Dublin: Lindisfarne, 2001), 137–158. See also Eleanor Nesbitt, Intercultural Education: Ethnographic and Religious Approaches (Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2004).

See Juergensmeyer, Religion as Social Vision; Leslie, Authority and Meaning; Eleanor Nesbitt, “Religion and Identity: The Valmiki Community in Coventry,” New Community 16, no. 2: 261–274; Elanor Nesbitt, “‘My Dad's Hindu,’ Valmikis in Coventry: The Revival and Reconstruction of a Community,” in Desh Pardesh: The South Asian Presence in Britain, ed. Roger Ballard (London: Hurst, 1994); and Opinderjit Takhar, Sikh Identity: An Exploration of Groups among Sikhs (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005).

Juergensmeyer, Religion as Social Vision; Nesbitt, “‘My Dad's Hindu' ”; Takhar, Sikh Identity.

Kathryn Lum, “The Ravidassia Community and Identity(ies) in Catalonia, Spain,” Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory 6, no. 1 (2010): 31–49.

Eleanor Nesbitt, “South Asian Christians in the UK,” in Invisible Diaspora: The South Asian Christian Diaspora in Europe and North America, eds. K. A. Jacobsen and Selva J. Raj (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 17–38.

On religious socialization, see, for example, Eleanor Nesbitt, The Religious Lives of Sikh Children: A Coventry Based Study (Leeds, UK: Community Religions Project, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Leeds, 2000); and Eleanor Nesbitt, “Research Report: Studying the Religious Socialization of Sikh and ‘Mixed-Faith’ Youth in Britain: Contexts and Issues,” Journal of Religion in Europe 2 (2009): 37–57. On identity formation, see Eleanor Nesbitt, “Sikhs and Proper Sikhs: The Representation of Sikhs in Curriculum Books and Young British Sikhs’ Perception of their Identity,” in Sikh Identity: Continuity and Change, eds. Pashaura Singh and N. Gerald Barrier (Delhi, India: Manohar, 1999), 315–333.

Eleanor Nesbitt, “Researching 8–13 Year Olds’ Perspectives on Their Experience of Religion,” in Researching Children's Perspectives, eds. A. Lewis and G. Lindsey (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 2000).

Eleanor Nesbitt, “Quaker Ethnographers: A Reflexive Approach,” in Theorizing Faith: The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Ritual, eds. Elisabeth Arweck and Martin D. Stringer (Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham Press, 2002), 133–154; and Eleanor Nesbitt, “Interrogating the Experience of Quaker Scholars in Hindu and Sikh Studies: Spiritual Journeying and Academic Engagement,” Quaker Studies 14, no. 2 (2010): 134–158.

Eleanor Nesbitt, “Bridging the Gap between Young People's Experience of their Religious Tradition at Home and at School: The Contribution of Ethnographic Research,” British Journal of Religious Education 20, no. 2 (1998): 105.

Harjot S. Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition (Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Ron Geaves, “The Borders between Religions: A Challenge to the World Religions Approach to Religious Education,” British Journal of Religious Education 21, no. 1 (1998): 20–31; as well as Eleanor Nesbitt, “Pitfalls in Religious Taxonomy: Hindus and Sikhs, Valmikis and Ravidasis,” Religion Today 6, no. 1 (1990): 9–12, reprinted in The Growth of Religious Diversity: Britain from 1945: A Reader, ed. J. Wolffe (London: Hodder for Open University, 1994); and Jacqueline Suthren Hirst, Mary Searle-Chatterjee, and Eleanor Nesbitt, “Report on Teaching South Asian Religious Traditions,” Centre for Applied South Asian Studies, The PRS-LTSN Journal 1, no. 1 (2001): 77–79.

Nesbitt, “Bridging the Gap.”

Nesbitt, Intercultural Education, 98–112; Nesbitt, Religious Lives; and Eleanor Nesbitt, “'We Are All Equal:’ Young British Punjabis’ and Gujaratis’ Perceptions of Caste,” International Journal of Punjab Studies 4, no. 2 (1997): 201–218.

Nesbitt, Intercultural Education, 66–80; and Nesbitt, Religious Lives.

For example, Michael Keene, Sikh Beliefs and Issues (Badger KS3 Religious Education) (Stevenage, UK: Badger Publishing Limited, 2007), 53: “Sikhism grew up as a separate religion from Hinduism because of that faith's teaching about the Caste System. This prejudice against lower members of society has no place in the teaching of the Sikh Gurus.”

See Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010), 24–28; and Arvind-Pal S. Mandair, Religion and the Specter of the West: Sikhism, India, Post Coloniality, and the Politics of Translation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

Oberoi, The Construction of Religious Boundaries.

Eleanor Nesbitt, Sikhism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005), 74.

Mandair, Religion and the Specter of the West..

Geaves, “The Borders between Religions”; Roger Ballard, “Panth Kismet Dharm to Qaum: Continuity and Change in Four Dimensions of Punjabi Religion,” in Punjabi Identity in a Global Context, eds. Pritam Singh and Shinder S. Thandi (New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press, 1999), 7–38; Eleanor Nesbitt, “Hinduism and Sikhism,” in Brill's Encyclopaedia of Hinduism, Volume 4, ed. Knut A. Jacobsen (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2012).

Roger Ballard, “The Re-Establishment of Meaning and Purpose: Madri and Padre Muzhub in the Punjabi Diaspora,” in Mobile Bodies, Mobile Souls: Family, Religion and Migration in a Global World, eds. Mikkel Rytter and Karen Fog Olwig (Aarhus, Denmark: University of Aarhus Press, 2011), 27–52.

Nesbitt, “Pitfalls in Religious Taxonomy.”

Nesbitt, “Bridging the Gap,” 109.

The Adi Granth (also known as Guru Granth Sahib) is Sikhs’ living Guru in the form of the principal scriptural volume, the Dasam Granth is a compilation of works attributed to the tenth Guru, Gobind Singh, the janamsakhi narratives are hagiographic accounts of Guru Nanak's life, and the rahitnama literature is a series of codes of discipline.

See Nesbitt, Sikhism; and Ealeanor Nesbitt, “The Body in Sikh Tradition,” in Religion and the Body: Comparative Perspectives on Devotional Practices, ed. Sarah Coakley (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 289–305.

Robert Jackson, Religious Education: An Interpretive Approach (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997).

Gerd Baumann, Contesting Culture: Discourses of Identity in Multi-Ethnic London (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 122.

Jaspal, “Caste, Social Stigma and Identity Processes.”

Nesbitt, “Quaker Ethnographers.”

Nesbitt, ‘“We Are All Equal,’ ” 212.

Email communication from Elizabeth Wayne (21 May 2011) reports this is relation to classes based on an AQA syllabus for GCSE.

See note 29 above.

For example, Edexcel: GCSE Religious Studies Question Number 39d) AO2 “Hindus are right to have changed their attitudes to caste” (‘Reasons for supporting this statement could be” and “Reasons for not supporting this statement could be”) Unit 5RS13/01 Mark Scheme, Summer 2010.

From page 56 of Robert Jackson, Julia Ipgrave, Mary Hayward, Paul Hopkins, Nigel Fancourt, Mandy Robbins, Leslie Francis, and Ursula McKenna, “Materials Used to Teach about World Religions in Schools in England” (Coventry, UK: Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of Warwick for Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2010) Research Report No DCSF-RR197. Available at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wie/research/wreru/research/completed/dcsf/reportdcsf-rr197.pdf.

Ibid., 66.

Ibid., 76.

Eleanor Nesbitt, “Ethnography, Religion and Intercultural Education,” in International Handbook of the Religious, Spiritual and Moral Dimensions in Education, eds. M.de Souza, K. Engebretson, E. Durka, R. Jackson, and A. McGrady (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2006), 387–398; Eleanor Nesbitt, “But What Does Ethnography Have to Do with Me?” REsource 23, no. 3 (2006): 4–8.

Nesbitt, “But What Does Ethnography Have to Do with Me?”

Eleanor Nesbitt, “The Teacher of Religion as Ethnographer,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion, ed. Peter Clarke (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009), 965–985.

Nesbitt, “Sikhs and Proper Sikhs.”

Nesbitt, “Bridging the Gap,” 110.

Roger Ballard, “Honour Killing? Or Just Plain Homicide?” in Cultural Expertise and Litigation: Patterns, Conflicts, Narratives, ed. Livia Holden (London: Routledge, 2011), 123–148.

Ibid., 147.

Barbara Easton, “Aspects of the Experience of Young Ravidasis in Wolverhampton: A Field Study” (unpublished assignment for the MA in Religious Education, University of Warwick, 1999).

Jackson et al., “Materials Used to Teach about World Religions in Schools in England,” 12.

See pages 9–10 of Naresh Puri, “The Caste Divide,” BBC Radio 4, 5 July 2004, accessed 6 June 2011, http://www.countercurrents.org/dalit-puri050704. For CasteWatch UK see www.castewatcuk.org.

See Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

Ballard, “Honour Killing?” 147.

For example, locally to Coventry and to events in The Fifth Cup, schools can draw on the Quaker West Midlands Peace Education Project: http://www.peace-education.org.uk/west-midland-quaker-peace-education-project.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eleanor Nesbitt

Eleanor Nesbitt is Professor Emerita in the Warwick Religions and Education Research Unit, University of Warwick, where she worked from the mid-1980s. She is a founding member of the Punjab Research Group and she has published widely on the religious socialization of young Christians, Hindus, and Sikhs, and especially on cultural continuity and change in the UK's Gujarati and Punjabi communities. Her publications include Interfaith Pilgrims (Quaker Books, 2003), Intercultural Education: Ethnographic and Religious Approaches (Sussex Academic Press, 2004) and Sikhism A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2005). Most recently, with Ian Florance, she has co-edited a poetry collection entitled Gemini Four (Only Connect, 2011). E-mail: [email protected]