Case for academic study of religions

After the BJP-led NDA coalition government was sworn in at the Centre a year ago, religious arguments on television and public platforms have become shriller and often hostile. Indeed even before the general election of last summer, in February 2014, The Hindus: An Alternative History, written by prominent American professor of Indian religions Wendy Doniger, was in effect banned in India after her publisher declined to fight a suit filed by a Hindutva activist unhappy with its content. In an essay published in The New York Review of Books, Doniger deplores œthe clash between pious and academic ways of talking about religion, and about who gets to speak for religious traditions. While India has numerous theological colleges, there are few forums where students can engage in the academic study of religions and therefore, œshared assumptions underlying this discipline are largely unknown in India, she laments.
This comment raises an important question: What is the academic study of religion? Certainly it™s not theological study for pious believers trained to propagate certain beliefs. Nor is it a grouping of zealous skeptics intent upon destroying cherished religious beliefs with ideological sledgehammers. Academic study of religion is focused on examination of religious texts, beliefs and phenomena with two objectives: interdisciplinary study and open space for inquiry.
I can visualise numerous impediments to this pedagogy in India. An initial difficulty is the association of religious studies scholarship with colonialism and Western scholars™ attempts to categorise or impose their cultural assumptions on Indian and other colonised people. But this argument about the origins of religious studies education is inaccurate, irrelevant, and somewhat outdated. It minimises the undeniable contributions of many dedicated Western scholars to the study of Indian religions, and ignores the nuances and self-awareness that contemporary religious studies scholars bring to their subject.
Beyond this initial problem, there are four home-grown difficulties. The first is a cultural bias in Indian higher education and wider society. Indian education is heavily biased towards technical and professional training. Therefore, certain widely-held notions in society about what constitutes œmodernity, œsecularism, and œprogress make study of religions in higher education institutions  less-than-respectable. A second difficulty flows from political activism. India has a highly aggressive religious right (sangh parivar) ready, willing and able to resort to violence to enforce its narrow definitions of India and Hinduism. Consequently introduction of formal religious studies education as defined above is quite likely to become a flashpoint in India™s œculture wars.
A third impediment is legal. Until Parliament clearly defines dangerously ambiguous laws such as s. 295 (a) of the Indian Penal Code which punishes œdeliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs, religious studies educators may find themselves dividing time equally between classrooms and courtrooms.
A final difficulty is institutional: to establish successful religious education faculties, colleges and university managements need to be willing to promote and defend the right of students and scholars of religious studies to engage in their work unimpeded.
Yet despite these difficulties, I believe that academic study of religions would have two broad benefits for Indian higher education. First, it would prompt interdisciplinary conversations across several faculties. Secondly, the study of religions is deeply invested in the wider goal of higher education to prepare students for the world as it is ” not a sacred or secular fantasy.
Moreover, the academic study of religions compels students to confront irreconcilable and irreducible differences between faiths and sets of beliefs while simultaneously preparing them to be comfortable with ambiguity.
Despite their popular portrayal, religions are necessarily ambiguous. In the current charged environment, society needs religious scholars and commentators with a nuanced and capacious understanding of religion. Right-thinking people and opinion leaders who understand both Mahatma Gandhi and Hindutva zealots in Hinduism, Quakers and Crusaders in Christianity, and Islamic State militants and Sufis in Islam. We may disagree with the interpretations of some proponents of these religious doctrines on ethical or moral grounds, but we need to acknowledge that they draw from the same sources.
While the difficulties for promoting the dispassionate study of religions in the Indian academy are real, I believe it is necessary for India™s future development as a mature, stable nation. Such studies would encourage Indian students to embrace the nation™s diversity and more fully inoculate them against ideological and religious extremism. Encouraging religious studies in Indian education will prompt intelligent, nuanced conversations about topics that have real impact on the lives of citizens and the nation.
(A alumnus of the Harvard and Chicago schools of divinity, Sean P. Bala is assistant professor, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat)