Truth to Tell by Nirmalya Deb
The ultra-secular view that education should be totally detached from religious training is not even debated in the huge secular academy of intellectual labour where religious authority plays no role, and where religion is dissected historically by researchers, if not pathologically like a frog in a laboratory. The researchers are as dispassionate about the religion under focus as the scientist dissecting the frog. The process of secular
attainment of objectivity – search for facts and being unbiased about facts – is essential to scientific methodology
Union minority affairs minister Najma Heptullah in a recent seminar on Madrasa education lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of modern Indian Muslims armed with the Holy Book in one hand and computer in the other. She even qualified the Prime Minister’s vision with one of her own portraying modern Indian educated Muslims with book in one hand and tool in the other, thereby symbolically portraying the inner creative urge for engineering and entrepreneurship among modern educated Muslims in the country which the PM’s vision also encapsulates. This vision is laudable, highly so in the context of negative polarization among Indian Muslims in recent times, particularly with the shadow of international jihad looming ominously on the sub-continental political horizon, terrorist attacks and the perversion of secularism characterized by the politics of minority appeasement have created a sour taste in everybody’s mouth. In fact modern education and, therefore, modern Muslim education, should necessarily be free from such larger disputes but, sadly, in reality it is hardly ever so.
The state of education reached by a people and the state of thought and discernment of the functions of education in social life are not detached from the collective social effort of organization of intellectual and manual labour which culminates in structured social institutions with definite functions like the government and bureaucracy, the judicial system and the defence and police forces. In the hierarchy of the social division of intellectual and manual labour, education manifests itself as a formation of ideology, a reflection of the identity of a people. To this extent, the Holy Book has undoubtedly been a historical marker of Muslim identity and the source and moral outline of the religion and the race. Existential confusions and political decisions should obviously be taken and the social life of Muslims should also obviously be governed in the light of the Quran’s tenets. In a democratic society tolerance of other religions to this right of the Muslims ought to be beyond doubt.
In India such a vision been constitutionally accredited by the fundamental right to practice and propagate one’s religion, and Madrasa education is officially recognized as the proper vehicle of dissemination of instruction at the general school level. Whether the Madrasa syllabus is properly structured as to equip learners with skills and resources to compete in a market-driven economy is a question for enlightened educationists to discuss. The important point is to find out whether there are shortcomings in the realm of proper scientific and technical training of an advanced nature that would arm students with resources to fit into the global economy.
Modern advanced education is almost wholly drained of moral or religious significance of any kind and technical success and market swings care little about faith: This much enlightened people of all faiths know for sure. The Indian way of education has traditionally been the inculcation of social and moral values. Religion as a means of social attainment of salvation – a theological notion shared by Islam and Hinduism – has been the basis of Indian civilization that is a great melting pot of religions, cultures, ideologies and ways of life. There is absolutely no reason to tailor faith to suit the market or the other way round, and such talk is futile because the role and social significance of religion in social cohesion and identity formation (the historical source of the political power that religion wields) is undeniable and can’t be replaced by secular mumbo-jumbo.
The natural sciences, mathematics, the history of the development of the different languages, cultures and religions, societies, belief systems, philosophies, moral codes, judicial systems and the historical crosscurrents that shape the destiny of a race are areas of research and study that employ methods that have nothing to moral correctness or religious belief. Even in the history of theology, the research programme could be so refined as to employ an objective methodology to study the laws of development of faiths; a methodology which is scientific as in fact-based, and non-committal theologically.
So the social development of humanity, irrespective of the religions and their political development, is itself a domain of secular learning over which faith ought to have no authority. If it is objected at this juncture that social development can never be studied in isolation from religious development, the reply can promptly be made that the methodology of the social sciences employ scientific criteria to discuss issues like social, cultural, and religious progress and economic and political growth, however contested the ideas of progress and growth might be. Strictures enshrined in the great texts of all religions don’t concern social scientists who seek to rationalize either empirical or ideological phenomenon. The history of thought itself is a series of conflicting critiques. In their investigation of social reality researchers seek to achieve a level of clarity and exactitude that the natural scientist investigating the biological development of the human race has as his object. Again, whether this is possible is a debate better carried on by researchers keen on assimilating the methodology of the social sciences to that of the natural ones, but this also is an area of study where religion has no role to play.
The ultra-secular view that education should be totally detached from religious training is not even debated in the huge secular academy of intellectual labour where religious authority plays no role, and where religion is dissected historically by researchers, if not pathologically like a frog in a laboratory, and the insights intended to be revealed relate to its role in society and civilization. The researchers are as dispassionate about the religion under focus as the scientist dissecting the frog. The process of secular attainment of objectivity – search for facts and being unbiased about facts – is essential to scientific methodology, which historians too strive to achieve and implement in ordering their discipline, or better still the facts about their discipline. And if this is the scientific methodology of understanding human history, then all revealed insights contained in the sacred texts of all religions about the histories and destinies of races can be read only out of historical interest and all political effort to idolize sacred texts leads to obscurantism.
But all said and done, the role of moral education in personality building and social organization can scarcely be slighted. Sacred texts remain objects of great historical interest and examples of the tremendous effort of the moral self to order haphazard nature – the disorder characteristic of “the state of nature” idealized by Rousseau. Their literary value, too, is immense and aesthetic appreciation of past achievements and their historical continuity with present aesthetic, literary endeavours is an enlightening area of study. Secular appreciation of the inner beauty of all religions and their message of harmony and peace is essential to combating dogmatism and obscurantism of all shades. But, although highly essential in character-building and nation-building as noted, moral and religious education comprises only a small part of primary and advanced education. This secular orientation is essential with respect to framing of the syllabus, which is a reflection of what we believe the young should know. Such an important social decision should be taken in an absolutely secular spirit for the benefit of the future
generation.