Given India’s vibrant religious landscape, there is a somewhat surprising paucity of depart‐ ments, centres or even programs for the academic study of religion. This article discusses this issue based on the preliminary results of an interview study conducted at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, India, in 2014 and 20 Its focus is on the views of university teachers and researchers concerning the place, role and function of religion and religious stud‐ ies at BHU. Twenty‐eight semi‐structured interviews were conducted. In (...) the course of their analysis, six themes emerged: 1) the place and role of religion in society; 2) religion as ‘religi‐ osity/spirituality’ or sanatana dharma vs. political ideology/communitarianism; 3) religion vs. dharma; 4) secularization; 5) religion in education in general; and, 6) religion in the education at BHU. The informants agreed on the increasing importance of religion in India, and most of them viewed the meaning of secularization as being ‘equal respect for all religions’. Moreover, a majority distinguished between ‘religion’, in the Western sense, and the Indian conception of dharma, considering it regrettable that the latter, described as the common ground of all reli‐ gions, is not taught more extensively at BHU. They also considered the original ideal of BHU’s founder, Madan Mohan Malaviya, to be of signi cant importance. That ideal involved not only teaching students the knowledge and skill sets found in a standard modern university, but also equipping them with a value‐based education, grounded upon sanatana‐dharma. As our project progresses, further understanding of this turn toward dharma education is something we intend to pursue through the lens of multiple modernities, developed by Marian Burchardt et al. as multiple secularities. (shrink)

Joseph T. O’Connell drew attention to the relative scarcity of academic work on religion in South Asia, and o ered as a plausible explanation for this state of a airs the tension between secular and religio‐political communal interests. This paper explores the potential role of phi‐ losophy as an established academic discipline within this situation, in the context of India. It argues that objective study, including evaluation, of the truth claims of various religious traditions is an important aspect of academic (...) as opposed to confessional engagement with religion, and that philosophy in India is especially well suited to undertake such re ection and to provide corresponding education. Unlike Western countries, philosophy and religion were never clearly separated in India and did not evolve in tension with one another. The history of Indian philosophy therefore includes and is included within the history of its ‘religions’, in a way that makes philosophical examination of the truth claims of Indian religions internal to those religions themselves. By tracing this history, the discipline of philosophy can help to unsettle the idea of religion as a matter of xed dogma. It can also continue the procedure of interpreting and evaluating metaphysical and epistemological theses that has been an intrinsic component of Indian religious thought for most of its history. (shrink)

The teaching of religions has long relied on the World Religions paradigm to guide curricula throughout education, which has led to a widening gap, on the one hand, between what is taught in schools and in universities and, on the other, between research and teaching. While the World Religions paradigm has allowed the inclusion of non-Christian religions in education, it has also remodelled them according to liberal Western Christian values, influencing the conception of ‘religion’ beyond educational contexts. This article argues (...) that it is time to discard the World Religions paradigm altogether in favour of a more critical approach to the study of religion, as a constructed category, as well as a study of religions in their contexts. (shrink)

Evolutionary psychology and social constructionism are widely regarded as fundamentally irreconcilable approaches to the social sciences. Focusing on the study of the emotions, we argue that this appearance is mistaken. Much of what appears to be an empirical disagreement between evolutionary psychologists and social constructionists over the universality or locality of emotional phenomena is actually generated by an implicit philosophical dispute resulting from the adoption of different theories of meaning and reference. We argue that once this philosophical dispute is recognized, (...) it can be set to the side. When this is done, it becomes clear that the two approaches to the emotions complement, rather than compete with, one another. (shrink)

The article examines the construction of religious identity among the Sikhs from the socio-historical perspective. It has been argued that the Sikh identity was constructed as a result of the colonial intervention in which the emphasis turned to the appearance instead of faith as such. The new identity was a product of the politics of the times and it was perpetuated in order to maintain the hegemonic domination. Sikhism, despite its egalitarian ideology, failed to create a casteless community. Discrimination and (...) exclusion of lower castes continued. An empirical investigation into the conditions and perceptions of the lowest caste, namely Mazhabi clearly demonstrated their exclusion, whereas discourse of equality among the Sikhs is used to create a moral community. Despite the equality of worship among the Sikhs, the Mazhabis at the local level are denied the equal religious rights in the gurdwaras owned and controlled by the upper dominant castes. Roots of the exclusion have to be located in the history of the making of the religious community and the way a few castes after benefiting from religious conversion perpetuated the caste-based exclusions. (shrink)

This article deals with the complex personality and legacy of a mysterious saint known both as a Sufī (Ḥājji Ratan) and a Nāth Yogī (Ratannāth) and links his multiple identity as well as the religious movement originated from him, to the specific cultural context of the former North-West Indian provinces. The first part is devoted to Ratan in the Nāth Yogī tradition, the second to his many facets in the Muslim tradition, in connection with his dargāh in the Panjabi town (...) of Bhatinda. The third and main part explores a particular movement, the Har Śri Nāth tradition. Presently centered around a “ dargāh mandir ” in Delhi, this movement, with its two branches issued from Ratan and from his “son” Kāyānāth, was rooted in what is now Pakistan. The influence of location and history has led to many peculiarities which lead us to stress the blurred boundaries between Islam and Hinduism and the essential part played by charismatic figures in the construction of religious identities. (shrink)

Like the other great cultural areas of the Indian subcontinent, the Punjab is endowed with a living heritage of oral tradition: all kinds of songs and tales are hawked by itinerant bards, and after the day's work is done, people particularly like listening to them reciting legends of love, the most moving passages of which they sing to their own accompaniment on various traditional instruments. The stories most popular with village audiences are local epico-lyrical legends; these function like myths for (...) Punjabis, forming a symbolic system according to which they can organize and think through their experience. (shrink)