Faith-based teaching and secular society

School of thought Indian Express : Saturday, July 29, 2006

Faith-based teaching and secular society aren’t necessarily compatible, in the West or in India

A debate has been joined by Amartya Sen in Tony Blair’s Britain, and it carries useful resonance for plural societies like ours. In a variety of fora, including the ICCR’s Nehru Centre in London and a newspaper interview to that city’s Daily Telegraph, the Nobel laureate has been expressing concern over the British government’s move to give parity with Christian institutions to schools specific to Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. As he put it succinctly in that interview, the trend leaves him “appalled”. He draws a distinction with Christian schools, emphasising the great contribution made by Jesuit institutions in countries like India, because these evolved a specific pedagogic character over a long period of time. Newly established faith schools in England, he fears, would simply confine a young student to his or her religious identity and hamper participation in a larger secular space.

In recent years, especially after 9/11, societies in the West have struggled to draw various cultural and religious strands into an expanding middle ground. France, for instance, took a rather different view, by banning overt symbols of religious allegiance from public spaces like government schools and offices. The fact that one solution seldom fits all came through by the discomfort faced by Sikhs in that country, with turbans coming under the ban. Britain’s alternative has been to allow different religious communities greater space to run their own institutions. It carries, as Sen points out, the danger that different groups will mingle ever more with only their own, drawing them ever more apart.

India is far better placed in the context of religion and education. It has a long tradition of its different communities running educational institutions catering to the mainstream. But there is one reform that needs to be urgently implemented. For long, governments have had hesitation in making mandatory the introduction of a modernised curriculum in faith schools. The majority of faith schools run on modern curricula. But the fringe, no matter what their religious affiliation, cannot be left to their own devices. It is, most of all, not conducive to the very progressive aspirations of their students. editor@expressindia.com