Abstract
School as a Secular Space, the 6th monograph in the Oxford University Press series on Education and Society in South Asia, tries to understand the meaning-making processes around secularism in an educational setting. It is an ethnography of an English-medium, co-educational Delhi school called Azad Bharat Vidyalaya (ABV), where the author spent over 10 months between 2015 and 2016 to explore how secularism is practiced, negotiated and contested in everyday life.
One can delineate five key pivots that constitute the larger argument that this ethnographic study makes on secularism. First, it highlights the school as a discursive space where meanings are produced through language, rules, practices and everyday interactions. The meaning-making processes are continually shaped and reshaped through discourse, power and practice. For example, the curriculum definitions of what is the ‘correct’ history change. The author highlights how the earlier history textbooks had a chapter based on the National Curriculum Framework 2005 titled ‘our pasts’ in plural to teach diverse perspectives (that the history of ordinary women and men is different from the history of kings and queens). However, in the new textbooks, this dimension of subjectivity is diluted, and there is an attempt to highlight a distinct Indian identity and its civilisational roots.
Employing Gordon et al. (2000) evocative analogy of dance, the work brings out the interplay between the official school (correct steps), the informal school (the improvisation by the dancer) and the physical space of the school (ballroom). At ABV, the formal school draws on the constitutional ideals of secularism, equality and freedom, aiming to cultivate ‘good’ citizens to build a united, secular India. The school carries forward the legacy of Lala Lajpat Rai, the nationalist leader who envisaged an Azad India, and is managed by Jan Sevak Samiti, a non-profit organisation originally founded by Lala Lajpat Rai in Lahore (1921), which shifted to Delhi post-independence. This is reflected in the way the teaching and activities are planned at school. The school is 60% male and 90% Hindu, with the majority of its students drawn from low- and middle-socio-economic families.
The informal school draws on Bernstein’s expressive order (Bernstein, 1977) to highlight how teachers and students mediate the official school in real life. They enter the school carrying their sociocultural identities, meanings and aspirations. By exploring the text and subtext of the everyday jokes, prayers and staffroom gossip, the book reveals how lived experiences reshape the school’s social reality.
The second pivot examines how Indian secularism is characterised by equality of all religions and the maintenance of a ‘principled distance’ (Bhargava, 2010; Madan, 1997), distinguishing it from the Western model of secularism based on a strict segregation between religion and state. In this light, we find that religion is deeply embedded in the everyday life of ABV and is seen as an important anchor, instilling values and morality in a fast-changing world. As one teacher observes, ‘schools are like temples but while temples may not permit everyone, schools allow everyone’ (p. 121). However, the author poignantly demonstrates in her work that neutrality and/or equal distance from all religions are not practised in ABV. Instead, Hinduism, as the majority religion, defines the school culture. The majority Hindu nationalism permeates the common sense of the students and teachers.
The third pivot examines the ‘hidden curriculum’ (Apple, 1979) where a civilisational and cultural Hindu identity is normalised, rather than a pluralistic one. This discourse moves away from Hinduism’s philosophical core of diversity and pluralism and instead echoes Savarkar’s framework, which defines Hindu identity as not merely religious, but civilisational, cultural and geographical. Students and teachers often use the terms ‘Indian’ and ‘Hindu’ interchangeably. This notion marginalises minorities. The findings of the book highlight how students are aware of prejudices and stereotypes about minorities, especially Muslims, even if they do not accept them. There is an interesting question where the author asks, will you go to your classmate’s house on Eid; of the 86 students interviewed, 80% (69) say yes (5 say no and 7 are undecided). But while they want to celebrate Eid, they also carry notions like Muslims are different, hostile, eat only non-vegetarian food and are loyal to Pakistan. In one interaction about Eid kheer, a Class IX student shares that On Eid, my neighbours who are Muslims gave us kheer (sweet). My mother took it but later I saw that she threw it away. When I asked her, she said that we can never be sure what they may have put in it (p. 143).
What happens to the minority students in this environment? It is not hard to imagine the kind of position this puts the minority students in at school, where their dietary habits and religion are stigmatised. For example, in one of the instances of a fight between students, one of the students tells the other student tu ja, ja ke Namaaz padhkar aa. The insights into the experiences of students belonging to minorities constitute the fourth pivot. Erum’s book Mothering a Muslim (2017) tells us what these ‘casual’ remarks, stereotyping, mazak about ‘being Pakistani’ does to small children and their families, affecting their sense of belonging and causing deep anxieties.
The pertinent question is, while all of these conversations are happening in school, how does the school respond to this? The answer is silence. The school curriculum professes the values of secularism but remains silent on such issues, often validating these through the unwritten, unofficial lessons that dictate who the ‘default’ citizen is. The examples of chanting the Gayatri Mantra and Upanishadic hymns in assemblies, celebration of Diwali, Janmashtami and Saraswati Puja illustrate it.
The fifth pivot, interestingly, explores caste and secularism, highlighting how reservation debates often invoke reflection on what secularism means. While the school is 90% Hindu, it is diverse in terms of caste and community, drawing students from Jat, Gujjar, Punjabi and Rajput communities. The author highlights how the school upholds the constitutional promise that there should be no discrimination on the basis of caste, but this is contested by the everyday forms of casteism. She delineates two narratives on secularism emerging around caste—one that sees affirmative action as a violation of secularism and the other articulated by marginalised groups that sees affirmative action as a reflection of equality and democracy. The author highlights how caste permeates everyday interactions in schools. She recounts that when she was introduced as a teacher in the classroom, the students immediately wanted to decode her caste, and when they realised that her surname is Mittal, she was introduced to some other students and told Ma’am, welcome to the Mittal parivar (family). Students routinely invoked their caste: I love Punjabi music, going to the gym and of course I’m Gujjar.
While there is an explicit caste consciousness among students, the teachers are uninterested or unsure on how to engage with this. Teachers in the staff room often blame students’ indiscipline on their caste, community and religious backgrounds. The teachers’ voice caste stereotypes like Jats and Gujjars as inherently aggressive, rowdy and uninterested in studying, and reproduces the very biases the secular curriculum aims to dismantle. Jis mahaul se aate hain wahi karte hain (They act in accordance with the environment from which they come) (p. 168). At the other end of the spectrum are problems associated with talking about caste. For example, Karthik (p. 173), a social science teacher, shares that when he was talking about the historical marginalisation of a certain community, the students used the same text to weaponise the identity of their peer groups. Students began calling out their classmates’ belonging to a certain caste, yelling across the classroom: Look, what this says about you! (Dekh tere bare mein kya likha hua hai). This example highlights a profound pedagogical dilemma of how to teach and engage students on questions of caste.
The present book gives us much to reflect on. Schools like ABV mirror the tensions and secular paradoxes of our times. It highlights how secularism is not a condition a school can simply possess; it is a relation the school must continuously produce. One cannot simply declare a school to be secular. It is not an inherent quality or a property of a building, like the number of classrooms; it is a relation that needs to be continually produced, a dynamic relationship between the school, its students, and the diverse beliefs of the community, which needs to be nurtured. To be secular, a school must constantly work to remain inclusive through its daily choices—what it teaches, what it leaves out, and how it handles conflicts.
The book also makes one think about the questions of secularism, power and neutrality. The school believes it is neutral because it does not explicitly espouse communalism. But neutrality in a context of prior inequality is never neutral, as it reinforces the existing asymmetry of cultural power. When the majority defines the public culture of the school, the minority must either assimilate or be marked as deviant. In this context—every assembly, textbook teaching and celebration is an opportunity to either reinforce or undermine secularism.
This book would deeply interest scholars of sociology and anthropology of education, inclusion studies and citizenship studies who can build on this work to explore the intersections of education, religion, caste, gender and citizenship.
